Cassandra Mortimer

The Beast – A Boston Poem

The salt and sand,

your stomach acid.

Churning, crunching,

your mouth opens slow

(You monster)

a gaping maw that devours

people.

Whole.

Your stomach lining is cold,

covered in a thick plastic,

green-grey

speckled with phlegm

and age spots.

Yellow and black nerves,

bright against your flesh,

trickle, drip downward.

I want to press one,

see what you’ll do.

But I’m too content,

(warm air seeps in)

the caverns and pits

here are snuggly and

perfect

for my body

to sit here and decay.

I hear something lick you

from the outside,

a cattle prod of lightning,

making your muscles

squeeze, shift, spasm

into motion.

I am thrown sideways in your

indigestional turbulence.

Hoping you

will void me soon,

that it will be over.

I will stop clinging

to your innards,

(a parasite).

My skin will burn,

rubbed raw by the acidic grains.

My joints, my knee caps,

will buckle and grind.

My ears will pop and bleed,

and I will hear

“Thank you for riding the T.”

I hear the snap of wings against stone and brick, pelting the air around me, buffeting my body from all sides like a tempest formed of breezes multiplied and harnessed. My jaw cracks wide and breath rushes from my lungs. I don’t remember holding it in before sleep took me, but the ache in my chest doesn’t lie. My naked breasts sag in relief.

Screeches echo along the spire I’ve been crouched upon. My skin is still warm from the sun, from soaking it in all day long. My claws grip the ledge, and I let myself fall.

The darkness choking the city skyline, broken only by the purple smog reflecting traffic lights and skyscraper towers, is enough to widen my eyes bit by bit until they are consumed by pupil. They crave more and more light the higher I fly, and so as my body drops, plummeting toward the concrete they soak in every glare and light bulb I encounter.

My eyes are not the only part of my body longing for luminescence.

When a grumble reaches my ears I think it will be him, the one who follows me and tracks my movements in the night. My guard. My minion. My lovesick fool. But it’s my own insides, screaming in hunger. My body wants light, needs it, and the city is where I can get some, but lately a fix is harder and harder to acquire.

To obtain the light, I need to touch it, but in its embrace I can be seen. For the past thousand years this has not been a problem. When we traveled to this side of the world, finding shelter on the high roofs of spiked buildings; humans were creative and stupid enough to take credit for our appearance. As long as we were quiet, and returned to our post when the sun breached the horizon no one was the wiser for it. But the times have shifted, and more and more buildings were alive at night, later and later until we had no choice but to curtail our active lifestyles to only an hour or two and reduce our hunting grounds to fit the harsher schedule.

Every ounce of light I can bear to swallow must be consumed between the hours of three thirty and four thirty in the morning, when the humans are scarce. Never gone completely, as there are always street walkers and curb sleepers and insomniacs and troubled youths with their bedroom lights blazing until five. But scarce.

A hiss behind me, and I know my guard has caught up. I wonder if he is the one who screwed up. Who exposed us. Who forced us into our ultimate nightmare.

The humans know we exist now.

They lay out traps of high street lamps, burning just the tiniest bit too brightly to ignore, and then the nets, the electricity, the guns. None of us are sure how it happened, but overnight we went from complicit parasites, syphoning bits of light from cats’ eyes and car lights to monsters they hated with vehemence I personally think we don’t deserve. They didn’t notice us for hundreds of years. Suddenly our way of life is unacceptable.

Regardless. We cannot survive if we don’t eat. Now we are just more cautious. More timely.

I head to one of the skyscrapers, my legs heavy and dangling with me as I push my wings higher and higher. This new diet, only a few lights per night, is weakening my muscles. Soon will I even be able to glide? I shudder, my shoulders cold with the night wind. Come winter one side of this war will retreat. It’s all a matter of luck at this point; who will back off first. At this point I’m not sure which side I’m rooting for. I’d rather just leave. Try to find somewhere new. But my family has dug in so to speak.

The blue lights signaling fair weather blink from the tower, a few fluorescents on in the tall expanse of glass and metal. Workers forgetting to shut off their desk lamps. Custodians who are sympathetic to our plight. For a while there were protesters by our building: two sides of the feud. Those who threw candles and matches at our feet, wanting us to fill our bellies with tiny meals, and those who threatened us with wrecking balls and bulldozers as if we were simple sculptures.

It took the humans little time to realize we could not be damaged while we slept. Moved, sure. Dumped into the bottom of the ocean, of course. But not broken, not even chipped.

We’re cursed, but not to die. Cursed to live.

It would be pretty dangerous to spend more than half of your life unconscious to the world if it meant anyone could walk up to you with a hammer and be done with it.

I slow in time to grip one of the window ledges by one of my favorite offices. This woman always leaves her light on for me. The window cracked by the tiniest centimeter to not instantly lock. A picture of her and a shiny yellow dog stands proudly on her desk.

My guard lands on the ledge beside me, his claws scrabbling for purchase. He has always been a tad bit clumsy. His face turns to mine and he offers me an honest smile, fangs dripping past his lips, nose broad and flattened by years of rain with his face aimed at the heavens. He doesn’t speak much. But he once let slip he always slept that way so heaven could see in his eyes how they all suffer. His muscles are impressive, and I’ve always admired them. When he crouches his thighs bunch and his torso bends and he has always been attractive to me. But what he wants I will not give him.

I will not bring more gargoyles into this world. We are enough. I will not use my body as a breeding ground for soldiers. I will not push this war forward. If we wither and die so be it. He doesn’t push the issue anymore, and this is why I allow him to stay by my side. His affection for me apparently outweighs his desire to destroy them. I don’t think he understands how much that means to me.

When I push the window open and allow my feet to touch the soft carpet floor I wave him inside. He can have this meal. My guard. My sweet, quiet companion. He often sacrifices his rations for me. Again, I think this is in the hopes that I will someday change my mind about the war and bear him children, but there are only so many times I can refuse before the hunger breaks me of my morals.

He fumbles in behind me and reaches for the desk lamp, his gray hands resting lightly on the bulb, absorbing the glow into his palms. He closes his eyes, the dark tint of his skin lightening into a pale winter sky color. Rolling his shoulders, his whole body relaxes; the tense muscles in his back are finally warm and loose. The bulb begins to flicker and he releases it. We used to short out bulbs all the time. Now it is forbidden.

We leave and it’s on to the next building, and the next. I see brothers and sisters fly from here to there, hunting as I hunt, looking for a scrap of light that isn’t coming from the end of a Taser. Technology has evolved to both better feed and destroy us, and so I am never sure if I hate it or not.

Sometimes I miss the simple delicacy of fire.

I get my first fix of the night from an empty gymnasium, the bulbs sickly green with cheap light. I touch one long bulb, then another, then another, sipping from them. It’s not the most efficient, but no one will know I was here. It’s almost time to scamper home. Another successful night avoiding a mob, avoiding starvation, postponing the fight I fear is coming soon.

My guard watches me with warm eyes I try my best to ignore, but I smile in spite of myself.

Suddenly a door creaks open, louder than a shot as the metal scrapes over the waxed floorboards.

Instantly he is shielding me with his body. His wings open and spread wide. I’m invisible in his mighty shadow.

“Hey!” a voice shouts. “Monster! Help, a monster! A monster is here!” I peek my head around his broad shoulder and see a man wearing all yellow. He looks horrendously ugly, fat in strange places and in such a garish display of color.

“Hey! Hey! A monster!” he continues. I grip the broad shoulders and start tugging him backward. We could kill this man, but that is not what I want. I don’t want my guard to strike. I beg him with my tugs to retreat.

He eventually accepts my ministrations and together we turn to flee but beside the window we entered there are people. I count them. Eight. All in the same awful yellow. Head to toe.

I clear my throat and try to look harmless.

“Please…” I say in a scratchy but passible-human voice. I have watched and learned, having spent many nights above a bar, only pretending to sleep. “Please let us go. We don’t want to hurt any of you.”

“You think you’re going to hurt us?” one of them taunts.

“Please,” I say again. My guard moves to my side as he tries to keep track of the man at the door, and this cluster at our exit. For all I know we are currently surrounded. I think of the woman who leaves her lamp on every night. I know they can be swayed to see reason. “We weren’t breaking any of your lights. We’re just hungry or else we wouldn’t have even come here. We didn’t hurt anything. Or anyone,” I add. “We’ll leave now.”

“You steal our electricity, you haunt our houses and buildings like devils! And now you think we’ll let you waltz into a school and then leave? You’re as dumb as you are disgusting. Gray-skinned freak!” He pulls out a gun and my guard instantly reacts, his eyes blaring white with inner light and his fangs dropping low as he howls at them, shaking the foundations we stand on.

The group shivers as one but as some of them men cower some pull out more weapons.

“No! Stop, please!” I scream, but thunderous shots ring out one by one as they fire. I’m hit on the leg and then on the shoulder before instinct gives in and I move, my wings beating against stale air to lift me and carry me up and over the group. My guard races past me, claws extended as he rips first one man off the floor, then another. Gripping their hideous yellow shirts and throwing them to the side like toys. He is still so strong, my companion. I envy his power, although until now I would have sworn I never wanted it.

Black blood drips to the floor under me as I struggle to get past the group. They’ve closed the window but I break through it, my arms covering my face and neck to avoid the sharp glass. I tumble to the grass below.

Getting to my feet, I wait for him to follow me. My legs ache. I hear him cry out and I know he’s hurt, but there is no way he is defeated, or so I tell myself again and again each second he is not bursting from the empty window to fall at my feet.

I’m shaking from cold and pain and fear but eventually I can’t stand not knowing, and so I rise up a few feet, and I see the battle end. He has turned to shred a man shoulder to hip with his clawed hands, but one of the fallen, spitting and choking on his own blood, raises an arm.

The bullet hits him square in the back. And the man fires again. And again. My guardian falls onto his knees. Then to the side. He attempts to turn and face the gun. For what end I will never know.

But his eyes meet mine, and I hover stagnant at the window, and I see the life leave him.

The tether keeping me outside breaks and I rush to him. My knees crack on the gymnasium floor as I press my lips onto his. He wasn’t perfect, but he was mine. I hear the shooter choke on his last breath and my eyes shut tight.

I wish I had delivered the killing blow. I wish I had felt him pay. For a moment I cannot breathe.

A gasp reaches my ears. I twist my head and see one man rise. He had been knocked into a stupor, his head sluggishly leaking blood down his fucking yellow shirt. Swaying, he raises an arm. A small silver gun winks from his hand.

I do not think, I do not feel. I move.

I’m on him, and his neck is in my mouth, under my teeth. Breaking beneath the assault, his blood pouring down my throat. It’s hot and thick and makes me gag, but I clench my fangs down harder, drag my head back and forth to tear at the skin. He is ripping like tissue paper and it feels good.

I release him and he drops like a stone onto the floor. He wheezes.

I lean down close, so that he might see my face, gray and black and red all over, and I smile at him. My kind does not mix with his. We do not exchange words or gestures, and until just weeks ago they did not even know I existed. But now they will. Now they will see.

When his eyes widen at my gruesome face something flickers there. Was it light? I lean closer to examine it, my mouth only inches from his. I search their depth and then… warmth. Sweet, aching warmth. My belly fills with it as he breathes out and I breathe in. His eyes grow dim and become flat, meaningless disks swimming in his skull.

My skin is as white as puffy summer clouds. I haven’t felt this fed in weeks.

And now I know something that will change the tides.

How foolish we have been to only eat the lights that shine obviously in front of our eyes. How careless we were to not try a more discreet type of energy. I shake my head, my body swimming with power.

This could mean a violent, bloody war, I think. But when I see my guard’s body, sprayed with so many holes, the black puddle beneath him still widening into a pool, I know it won’t be a war at all. It will be a massacre.

And I will lead the way.

The sky begins to lighten and I rush back to my spire, my family waiting and eager for my return, concern etched on their faces. There is no time to tell them, and I feel my limbs freezing in place.

Raising my face to the sky I allow my bloody face to smile at the heavens. We may be cursed, but when I awaken the night will welcome us with open arms, covered in harmful little human beasts to devour. We will scorch the earth of them, and spend our evenings drinking souls and starlight. My claws tighten on the roof, and fury sings in my heart. My eyes close out of habit as the run reaches us.

I sleep through the day, my skin made of sharp stone edges and smooth rock curves, and I am ready.

Night falls.

My eyes break open.

Mitch: A Short Story

I’ve been living in this cave, in this mountainous country, in this wild copse of bush and rock since the very first moment of my life. I have never seen another living being besides my mother, and in the years since she was taken I’ve yet to meet another soul.

When she was stolen from me, a night many years ago, it was only after warning me to hide. She had sensed it coming, the woman I called Amala, sometimes Mother; she explained to me in words and signals, touches and movements, that I was to stay.

Waving graceful arms, she gestured to the jars of pickled flowers, and then the low fire in the corner of the cave’s single room. Petting my cheek, her large brown eyes round and wet with tears, she shook cave dust from her fur and strode into the hall and out of our home. When she met the snow and wind of a dark winter the smell of gasoline fires and wax carried off the back of her shoulders. Rusty blood and guttural chants echoed against the stone walls, carried into my ears, bouncing in my skull, mocking me. I huddled under the blankets she had made for me, crying into the smell lingering in each stitch. My mother, sacrificed to the Bonpos, her blood precious wine on their evil lips. Hairless, cruel, monsters.

Amala had described all others this way. Hairless. Cruel. Monsters. She pointed one out to me, from the safety of a high cliff, as they struggled to climb while carrying heavy loads of cloth and dried meats. They had metal and wood and wheels and guns. Cruel. With heavy fabrics covering their limbs and centers. Hairless. They killed animals for sport, watched them suffer for sport, hated anything different, anything special. Monsters. It was drilled into my head, day in, day out. Sun up, sun down. Hairless. Cruel. Monsters.

But I didn’t want to believe what I was told. I still don’t.

I refuse to think that, although they are different from me in size and they have no fur and when they speak it sounds like rubbish to my ears, that they are too different to connect with. It is my dream that one day I should find one of them, one of the humans, and wrap my arms around them.

When the chirping, squeaking calls carry into the cave I know it is time to rise, to start gathering for the day before the animals have taken the best pick. I stretch and raise my arms high, enough that were I to jump they would graze the smooth surface of the ceiling. Mother had scraped it flat with a heavy piece of lava rock, black and shining with dead mountain.

The blue sheep has already wandered away in search of high grass and low shrubs. I have not named him, because I am afraid as soon as I do he will feel how tightly I cling to him and he will leave. That is how I imagine all wild creatures must feel. There are snow leopards, and musk deer, and wild boars, and I’m sure if I was patient I could buy their companionship with trails of food and the promise of a warm, quiet place to rest, but this blue sheep seemed to need me. It bleated and groaned in a way I thought was lonely, like myself, so luring it into my friendship was less difficult than a more independent or violent beast. Although, I admit, a snow leopard would be a hunting partner more equal to my skill. The sheep only leaves to eat, then returns to rest, and continues that cycle every few clicks of the sun until it is dark. On the other hand, I remind myself, were I to invite the snow leopard into my life, he might eat my blue sheep, and the creature is dumb, but sweet, and I would miss him.

I help myself to some pickled rhododendrons, sweetened with garlic and sugar. There are some cubes of meat left in the wooden box by the hall, the wind and salt within keeping it fresh, but I think saving those bits until lunch will make for good motivation not to wander too far.

When I take morning walks, hoping to catch fish, or a sickly boar, or a plethora of edible flora, I have a tendency to head more south than I should. The mountains, carrying from one side of my vision to the other, are grandiose and change colors with the sun. I wish to climb each one, individually, and name them to my liking. After-all, if I cling to them afterwards they have no choice but to suffer in my grip.

My stomach full of purple flowers I meet the morning sunshine with a fresh eye. It is late in the blooming season and soon the heat will rise, forcing me to hide longer in the shade of home to avoid tiring and lightheadedness. Everything is green and brown now, in varying shades of each color so that the sunlight makes each tint stand alone, a cacophony of tones and hues that sparkle and amaze. Wide space reaches out before me and my steps are sure on the spongy earth. I do not feel the twigs or rocks beneath my toes; my feet hardened long ago, and as my muscles tingle awake, they are urging me to be faster, to explore with every second available to me.

So I run. With great leaping strides I pass through the land I know so well, trees and rock formations, plants I have known as landmarks, and even the blue sheep, all race past my eyes. Running feels right, the powerful muscles in my legs carrying my weight with ease. It lightens the air in my lungs, makes my throat burn a bit with spirit. I forget about loneliness and cruelty and blood and instead there is just me and the rhythmic thump of my heavy steps.

I’ve headed south again, I scold myself, but a smirk alights my cheeks. I cannot help it. I want to touch each mountain with my fingertips, although they are all still so far from me. Will each one feel the same? I have asked myself this question many times, and I’ve decided one will feel warm, one will feel jagged as if with spiny bugs, one will be moss-coated and soft. One will be covered in the chalky dust of volcano ash. I will come home to the blue sheep and describe each one in detail to his dopey face, and then I’ll pet his fluffy hide and feed him grass.

A slight crash sounds beside me, and with a calm that comes from years and years of spontaneous sounds I turn my head. A bear is watching me, its paw raised over a group of broken branches. It had fallen through a patch of rotten wood, and its eyes were wide with fear. I crouch low to appear less intimidating and when it lowers its paw back to the ground, seemingly uninjured, I back away, eyes and face aimed to the side, as if I were a wolf allowing dominance. It understands the gesture and moseys on its way. Bears have chased me before. When they are hungry my companionship is not worth the meat on my bones, or the hot blood in my chest.

I watch it lumber away, its brown fur shiny in the sunlight. I take its healthy coat to mean fish are plentiful and make my way east so that I can try my own luck with baiting and snatching a meal.

The sun is high when I reach the stream which widens in the north. There are colorful flashes of scales beneath the frothing waters, and the sight makes my mouth swim with hunger. I imagine their blackened skin falling away in the fire, the meat beneath white and pink and warm sliding into my belly. My mother ate most of these animals rare, the ones that shoot beneath the surface in darts and squiggles. They move like a dance too fast to follow, involving too many creatures to ever recreate. It is choreographed to the weather, the size of the stream, the depth, the smooth textures of the rocks their scaled tummies graze. I wished to be one for a short while, and even learned to cross the stream as a frog might, with legs spread wide, but when I outgrew the naïve dreams of breathing as they do, I still attempted to appreciate their wilds without my intervention.

Using the tumbled rocks on the edges of the river I build a small wall. It is simple enough to add branches and boulders and a fallen log to enhance the barrier, fortifying the wall into a solid mass no fish could wriggle through. As they pelt themselves against the sticks and stones, a few managing to tumble over into freedom, I build a similar structure a few feet down the stream. It is not in their nature to head back to wherever they’d been traveling from, and I have them blocked in within minutes. Now they are a pool of food; all I need is to snatch them from the water.

I hold my fingers outstretched, nails pointed as five sharp spears. With all my speed I flash my hand into the water again and again. Sometimes I make contact, other times I miss, but for the majority I strike food gold and pull up a squirmy creature. One quick tap on the rocks beside me and it grows still.

With a pile of fish amassed I kick down the barriers and allow the rest to continue their journey. I have no idea what they are so eager to get to, but it must be important.

Because my stomach is yelling at me to do so, I eat one of them raw, but the rest I carry in my arms back west and north, to the place I spend my nights. My cave. My home.

I have a basket for such uses, but I hadn’t wanted it weighing me down as I ran. Now I can stroll, smooth and quiet, through the forest and along the fields, against the rocky outcroppings that pop up like blemishes on smooth hills of grass. The sun lowers, and a breeze lifts the fur on my arms. The air caresses my face and I breathe in the smell of wild flowers and something sweet enough to be honey. I will return later and steal some of their gooey crop if I can put them to sleep long enough. Honey is good to put on meat, or grain, or the flowers and food I grow out of the ground. It’s good on almost anything, come to think of it.

The blue sheep spots me and trots after me as I head into the hall. The smell of pickled flowers and fire embers tickle my nose as I enter. A wash of peace slides over me, and the walls around my body tell me I am safe.

When I drop the fish into the wooden box I add more salt and settle down onto my blankets, ready for a break. There are several pitchers, some with tops and some bare, laden with various levels of fresh water. I see that I am low but my legs are weary from running and carrying fish the long way. The light outside is dimming and I know I will have to eventually grow the fire back into roaring flames, as well as replenish the pitchers, but for now I close my eyes and let the blue sheep’s breathing as it reposes similarly lull me into a short nap.

The dying light and encroaching night chill wake me and begrudgingly I start to build the fire. The sheep looks on with dull eyes. It has no idea what I’m doing, but I might be keeping it alive. I see other wild sheep now and then, so I know they survive at night without a fire, but I believe they pile into a heap or something similar. The flames crackle and pop, chewing the wood with loud teeth, and I roll my shoulders, enjoying the sensation and the warmth pouring into my little home. I could cover the hall with blankets and large rocks, which keeps out the storms of winter, but it is not nearly that cold yet. I have months more to enjoy before such measures are necessary.

The sheep bleats quietly, his gaze curious on the corner where Amala’s pickling instruments lay on a slab of rough wood, held up by a series of roughly-square blocks. I tell the sheep to not think about it. He knows those tools are important. They are my puffy wool, they are my grass. The animal shivers, moves closer by an inch or two to myself and the fire, and closes its eyes again.

I lick my lips and down one of the pitchers. I now only have one left, and it is still fresh but Amala’s voice is in my mind, telling me water and food and the cave are all that stands between a heartbeat and a cold death. I heave a sigh, a smile forming despite myself. She was full of wonderful sayings. Words that were so wise, and sometimes so beautifully said.

I only learned a few terms, as well as a couple of important phrases, but for the most part we understood each other without the need for language you could write or teach others. We had one book; tattered and faded and with missing pages. Amala had taken it from an empty campsite. She had wondered aloud how someone could leave it behind, but the words were written in lines and criss-crosses neither of us could understand. There were picture of plants on every other page; mostly mushrooms and their different shapes, but the one time I stole the book from her possession and wandered about I was unable to find any of the plants the book depicted. It was weeks later when I would accidentally stumble on a patch I recognized from its pages.

I had a dizzy spell, a horrible stomach ache, and raging fever dreams when I ate the lot. From that point forward I never ate mushrooms that Amala did not specifically pick for me and cook until burnt.

Pitcher in hand, I leave the sheep to his toasty fireside sleeping spot and head into the night. The sky is enormous, taking up more than half of the world. Where the tree tops end it starts, and it just keeps going. Tonight the sky is a purple-black. Sometimes it seems bluer, sometimes with hints of green, but the purple there tonight make the movement of the stars more magical. I see a star dart across the sky. It rarely happens, and I hope it does not fall onto the land near me, for I imagine the landing to be awful and intense, but I still feel my mouth drop open at the sight.

Amala said that I should always appreciate a falling star, because it meant somewhere, far away, someone had made a wish so large it caused the sky to tremble. My wishes had never been large enough to cause one to fall. I have simple wishes that no star needs to be involved with. Food. Water. Fire. Companionship. Good weather. I don’t know what else there is to wish for, to be perfectly honest.

This far north the waters are denser with silt and the fish have spread wide making a game of build and catch troublesome. This is why I get to enjoy a walk south now and then. But the water itself, when filtered, is crisp and cold on the tongue, perfect for sipping, guzzling, boiling, mixing, anything I could think to do with it.

My arm muscles bunch as I haul the water back towards the cave, but something catches my eye. A waft of gray-black smoke against the clear star-bedazzled sky rises in a thin but steady stream. It is not the right time for grass fires, and it is not coming from the direction of my home. For a second I am relieved. My blue sheep did not roll into the fire as he slept, leaping out into the open air to spread the flames from tree to tree. It’s a dream I’ve often had, waking me with short breaths and a sweaty face. But no, it is too north, and not enough east. Plus, it is not moving.

I leave the pitcher by an overgrown weed with tiny yellow flowers, keeping low to the ground as I stalk the source of the smoke. I am careful to place each of my toes just so, one at a time, on the lookout for any misplaced stick or leaf that might announce me.

When I near a copse of tall bushy trees the smell of burning wood carries on the wind. I hear meat spitting its grease onto the flames, feeding them with blood.

Crouching alongside a thick tree trunk rich with bugs and small, squirrel-type animals with striped fur, I peek my eyes over its rim. There are three of them. Hairless. Cruel. Monsters. But they do not seem mean to me. Sitting on a fallen tree they have made a small fire and roast a hunk of boar over its heat. Two of them are talking, the smoke and gravel in their tones somehow making their meager frames more impressive. They have language, and numbers, two things I have always been without. This makes them dangerous to me. But still, I inch closer, the idea of humans, real humans, too enticing for me to rebuff.

I think of approaching them with my head down, with my hands up, with my body low to the ground, with a smile on my face, but all my imaginations result in screams. They have guns at their feet. One of their group, who sits slightly away from the two conversing, is watching the surrounding woods with a cautious eye. Side to side he slowly shakes his head, scanning the ground, then the trees, then the sky only to repeat this process time and time again. I wonder if there is a song he knows which matches the rhythm or if this is simply a habit too ingrained to ignore.

Maybe in the dead of night, as they sleep under the stars, I will steal their guns, hiding them under piles of lively earth, and the ground will swallow them whole. Then I can announce myself, quietly, and to much fanfare as they inspect my thick coat, my bright eyes, my strong limbs. Maybe they will not be threatened.

I sigh to myself for childish needs and think maybe this is a wish big enough to shake the sky loose. Wishing for these men to love me as I love my cave, my sheep, my land, my legs.

I crouch an inch too close and the fire must reflect on the dark part of my eyes, for the man separated whips his head to face my direction. Slowly I back away, my heart pounding and tightening in my chest. If he sees me, if he raises a weapon, I do not know that I can outrun its power. This man is wearing different clothes from the others, I notice belatedly. Less of it, but better material, made from strong animals and tightly-woven strands of wool. The others are in layers and layers of thin and gray tunics. I wonder what they would think of my fur.

The man moves his head away, his eyes leaving my spot by the tree and speaks to the others, breaking through their conversation with a thin and wheezy voice. I do not understand the verses he speaks, but they are rhythmic like poetry. His tone is calm and I almost feel at ease, simply crouching in the dark, listening for as long as he will deign to continue, but then, unmistakable, one word stands out bold and brass and full of peril: Michê.

Amala had said the word to me many a time. When she held me, when I cried, when I made her proud catching a rabbit or picking her flowers to make her smile. Michê. I thought of it as my name, and when I tried to ask her, pointing to myself, repeating the word with the question blatant in my eyes, she nodded, but then seemed to change her mind. I was “Mitch,” but I was also michê. She was michê. We were michê. I finally understood. This was the name of our species, at least as far as she was concerned, and now this man covered in skins and fabrics is talking about us, about me.

Fear flying through my veins I turn and run before they can pick up their guns. The night air is cold in my lungs, the earth hard and frigid under my thick feet. Everything seems unpleasant to the touch as I flee for my life, although no sounds, no footsteps, no gun blasts follow me. Amala said they would sound like thunder and burn like lightning against the eyes and ears, the smell sharp. Nothing of the like finds its way to me, and as my steps slow I feel another, even more distressing horror. Have I overreacted? Would they really have shot me? Maybe I should return. Hairless. Cruel. Monsters. Hairless. Cruel. Monsters.

I shake the words from my head like water. The wars inside of me rage. Safety and danger. Alone and together. Known and unknown. I raise my lips to the night sky and think of roaring, shaking the stars free with my cries, but I keep silent, my mother’s voice repeating and strengthening until it is a shout, until it forms into black noise as she walks into the snowy night to die, never letting the Bonpos know she had left someone behind.

With slow and dragging steps I finish the trek home and immediately attempt to sleep, the blue sheep not even aware I had left. Somehow that hurts me, but I ignore the twinge of disappointment, letting the orange glow of the fire against the cave walls lull me into slumber.

I make a point, the next day, to ensure my routine remain unchanged. It is time to gather rhododendron flowers, to pickle them as Amala did, and to keep myself healthy and strong. I head south, carrying against one arm the basket she had made for such a process. It is long and only slightly curved so that from far away it appears almost flat. It was not made for carrying berries or water or mushrooms, but the flat flowers, purple, pink and white, which were her favorite treat drenched in sugar and vinegar and with a sprinkling of salt. I prefer the garlic, myself.

Quick and sure, I head to the Zemu, which is what Amala had called the area. I thought the name stood for the sound of the wind as it whistled between the two tallest mountains, but she only laughed when I told her so. The flowers grow in huge bunches here, especially at this time of year. I am to pick sparingly now so they continue to flourish, but when the wind picks up and the summer sun is swallowed by the leaves that fall in droves I am to pick the plants clean, take every flower I can carry, in as many trips as it takes. Then I will soak them in the salt-vinegar mixture and lock them tightly in full jars.

Amala made sure I would have enough vinegar to last me many wholesome years. When I run out, if I run out, she said I will have to learn to make do without the flowers. I simultaneously hope and fear that I will not live to see the end of my vinegar supply.

When I first come upon the bushes I start picking without thought. The motions are instinct now, something my fingers do without the rest of my body being aware. I gaze to the left where I see boar tracks. Is this where those humans caught their dinner, I wonder. Are those the tracks they followed and hunted?

“Tombazi!” a voice yells and the sound startles even my hardened nerves. I jump and cram the basket against my side in reflex. My legs tremble beneath me as I search for the source of the shout.

There. The humans from the night before. They are west of my position, the human with skins and cloth raising an arm in my direction, gesturing to the two others with wild motions.

One of the two others, with a faded red scarf about his neck, raises a box, shiny as mountain rock, to his face. The flowers tumble from my hands and I drop the bucket, instinct telling me to scamper, to zig-zag, to sprint until my body gives way. I run, and when I turn to peek behind me I see they are trying to follow, but there is no way they can match my speed. They are weighed down with heavy bags, their legs thinner than mine, their chests smaller and unable to hold as much air. My long strides eat up the green earth beneath me and when I reach the tree line into the thick wood they cease to trail me.

I watch them from my location for many clicks of the sun. They settle down into the grass to eat. The one in red argues loudly with the others. The one in skins crosses his arms. I replicate the gesture to see how it feels, but my arms are too big to combine snuggly the way his fit together. They set up a fire in a similar fashion to the night before. From the shadow of the wood I watch them eat, relieve themselves, talk in hushed voices, then loud, then hushed again. These are humans? They seem so simple. They seem so close. My eyes are keen and I catch their body language even from this distance. I cannot see the expressions on their faces, but their muscles, strained or loose, bunched or spread, tell the stories their faces must repeat.

When one of the men unpacks his bag I see they have the pitcher I left near the weeds. How they found it is a mystery, but they are treating it with reverence. They place it by the fire after the man with the faded red scarf turns it this way and that, inspecting it in the sunlight and running his fingers over the handle. He likes my pitcher a lot, and for that I am grateful he found it. Does this mean they are fond of me? Do they want to talk to me? Befriend me?

I would not understand them if they spoke, but maybe if I brought them something to eat, or gave them flowers like I did with Amala. Gifts speak words I cannot fathom with my mouth alone.

With this in mind I leave their camp, traveling through the underbrush searching for the right bouquet. Other than rhododendron petals this area is quite sparse. I find a few weeds here and there, but mostly there are leafy greens not fit for the eye to behold. I pass them, grazing my fingertips along their leaves reverently. It is not their fault they are not colorful, they are still important. When I find a bush of purple-yellow sprouts I am elated. They made a beautiful bunch in my hands, tall and proud with little heads of bursting color. Cheerful and smart-looking, they are perfect.

The men have set up a makeshift cave, made entirely of reams of heavy weave. I watch two of the men hide inside and I am impressed with the hasty construction. The wind blows but the cave barely moves. Light shines from within, outlining their forms in white. I watch the man in the skins keep the fire alive for hours more while he sits vigilant, his back straight and sturdy like a tree.

When he finally succumbs to sleep my heart begins to pound again. On the log he lies prone, the fire shaking the shadows on his face so that I cannot tell if he is moving or still. I take my chances and head onward, the flower stems held tightly in my grip. I hope I am not hurting them, but I cannot relax my fingers.

Each step forward shakes my resolve and fear races through me with each beat of my pulse. Acid churns in my gut from not having eaten today. My face is wet from nerves. As quiet as is possible I creep closer and closer to their camp. This near to the man in skins I can smell his distinct odor; the musk that marks him as an individual. It is sharp and misty with the wilderness around him, as if it has sunk into his skin. It’s not unpleasant.

My foot nears the pitcher and instinctively I reach for it. It’s empty of water now but I hold the device close to my belly. I want to wake the human. I want to put my hand on his skin and determine the texture. Will it feel like my hairless palms? Like a smooth stone? Like a springy moss? But I know the touch would wake me, and if he is anything like me it will wake him too. The guns, I think belatedly. I should have watched where they were putting the guns. Why hadn’t I watched?

I could have hid them and maybe then I would feel more brazen. I do not consider myself afraid of many things, but the idea of this man waking and hating me fills me with terror not unlike the threat of impending death. I let my fear rule out and I place the flowers on the ground by the spot his arm hangs off the log. When he wakes it will be to their pleasant aroma and attractive colors. There is no way he would dislike the gesture, I am sure.

Movement catches my attention and I see the man with the faded red scarf staring at me from the mouth of his fabric cave. My stomach drops into the ground and panic prods me like a blazing ember. His eyes are wide with fear, but then again, mine are likely mirrors to his own.

I want to stay. I want to stand proud and face him. Try to speak, try to communicate in some way. It is what I have wanted since the moment I saw the group. To connect. If I could reach him in some way, maybe they would take me in. I could be a mother to them and teach them how to trap fish and pickle flowers and keep blue sheep by their beds.

But my body seizes and I cannot smile or spread my arms wide to embrace him. Fear overrides all my desires, all my wishes. The man nods, remaining silent. He does not alert the man I kneel in front of, nor does he call for the other he travels with—the one still hidden away—but regardless of his cooperation my body betrays me, and with a sinking heart I yield to my instincts. I run.

Without thought or control I run for miles. My face is wet from crying and I am so angry with myself I finally allow myself to howl, to roar, to scream into the night.

Stars fall, but now I see they are wishes that cannot come true. Wishes that once burned with lit ambition only to fail and flee from their disastrous attempts at achievement. In that instant I am a shooting star and as I bolt to my cave, to my blue sheep, to my slowly dwindling vinegar reserves I pray for just one chance. I plead and beg and wish to all the stars in the sky for just that one glorious incident. One occasion where I might overcome my primitive fear and shortcoming, my instinctual need to be unseen, and walk into the sunlit sky, connecting with more than just the grass beneath my toes.

The Witches of Lowell, Lawrence, and Lynn

Jillian’s family was a bunch of nature-loving nudists pretending to be normal. Like werewolves, on certain nights they stripped down to the cashmere of skin and spun in circles; arms raised, mouths flung wide. They chanted made-up words jumbled together from decaying novels and sang them like they meant something. It was a sweet noise. Pleasant and absurd, too many altos. Jillian partook when they made her, grumbling her way through ceremony after ceremony, petulant and quiet.

It never made sense to her; spitting water and rocks, lighting incense and breathing it in like love, feeling “free” and “pure” and powerful because they were “sucking strength from the moon, Baby, the moon!” It was hippie bullshit that no one else in her school had found even remotely understandable. She started feeling an envious burn in her sternum when kids in social studies lamented their woes of rising early for mass or having to pray before bedtime. She wanted her family to be right, she wanted what they said to be true, but every Sabbat, turning “deosil” or clockwise, skyclad and cold with her mother and cousins, she never felt what they did or saw what they swore was in the air. That trickling warmth of honey-scented dust that the coven thought saturated the meadow when they lit the Beltane bonfires. It was absent for her. The velvet stroke of security, the brush of a deity’s fingers. None of it was real.

Yet here she was.

The train station was crowded with gray commuters in pinstriped skirts and dark umbrellas and Jillian wiped her sweating hands on the insides of her sleeves. She could hear the violent winds pounding on the walls of the lobby. Every time one of the automatic doors swished open torrential rains poured in and pushed the waiting travelers backwards; a giant hand. Poking her ear buds further into her ears, she started keeping time by tapping her heel on the tiled floor. Her backpack was heavy, dangling over one shoulder, packed to the brim with religious paraphernalia that would make those wary of the occult piss themselves dry.

Her mother claimed a “better safe than sorry, Darling” attitude when meeting a new coven, not that her mother had changed groups in the last twenty-plus years, so Jillian had brought everything they might possibly need for an altar. She had the cauldron, the dagger, the incense, the salt, eight candles (all white), a bottle of river water, a statue of Bast, the wand her mother had given her as a goodbye gift, and her best gown.

She had waited two hours after her roommate fell asleep to pack it all the night before, dragging her trunk out from under her dorm bed and loading her bag as if she were a criminal. She tended to keep the Wiccan side of herself a secret. Despite her parents’ belief that a liberal college would embrace her practices, she was pretty sure no one would think having a witch for a roommate was cool. More likely they would think she was mentally unstable and stop inviting her to club parties. Grinding bodies and the white noise of thumping techno felt close enough to certain rites she’d attended as a child that it was just as religious as traveling sixty miles to meet a strange coven seeking new members. Sure.

She would have to keep telling herself that this was not a weird thing to be doing. Normal as pie, normal as pie, she repeated. When they announced her train was now boarding she sprinted towards the gate and took a seat in the middle of the emptiest car. She watched it steadily fill around her and made a silent plea to anything listening that no one would sit beside her, no one would talk to her, ask her where she was headed, or why. Taking a vial of sandalwood oil out of her purse, Jillian rubbed it into her wrist, feeling it seep into her blood, hoping the comforting smell of home would relax her, and maybe scare people away. It was potent, like diesel fuel, and some people would get a headache from it while she had developed a solid tolerance.

When the train started moving she sighed in relief and pulled her backpack to rest on the faded blue space beside her to discourage any latecomers from asking to be her seat-buddy. She turned the volume up on her mp3 player, swaying her head with the alternative rock bliss she favored and pulled her witches’ diary onto her lap, flipping through thin, browning pages. It was encased in leather and sported a gold trim, sun and earth, the yellowed paper made the ink read like dried blood that would crinkle and chip, falling off the page under a fingernail or knife. It was her high school graduation present; her mother hoped she would practice more once she had the freedom to choose to do so. Choice being such a lovely, sweet pretense.

“College will be amazing sweetheart, you’ll see. Oh and when you find your own coven, meeting new people; it’ll be fantastic! You’ll have to give me all the details. I’d love to see how a city coven operates, I wonder if they have to wear clothes, oh wouldn’t that be so, just, uncomfortable?” Jillian nodded absentmindedly and turned her eyes back to whatever novel she had been escaping into at the time.

When she got accepted into some small, country universities she almost took one of the offers out of spite. There were bound to be no Wiccans in Ohio or Iowa, and they wouldn’t be popular in most red states. She could escape the madness of her family’s religion and pretend to be an atheist, or someone with one god. Single gods must seem to be more trustworthy, she thought. They could not gang up on you. You could watch a god with your left eye and the road with your right, but then you run out of spare eyes if a god should have a spouse or a partner or a gay lover, all manner of relationships. She admitted to being the tiniest bit bitter about the way her family’s deities were perceived. Jillian ended up going for the city anyway. Boston had everything she wanted; a good chemistry program, outdoorsy places to lie in the sun, busy shops to keep her interest, plenty of clubs and places to eat. Surely being here was worth at least one try with the nearest coven to please her mother.

She started rereading the notes she had scrawled about magical aromatherapy, memorizing the uses for aromas like saffron, juniper, deerstongue, and lemongrass when she felt someone watching her. She looked at the seat across the aisle but the woman and her little girl were sucked into some electronic game they were sharing. She peeked over her shoulder. No one was paying her any attention. Turning back around in her seat, she saw him.

He was sitting a few rows in front of her, in a seat facing her direction. When he caught her looking he glanced sharply down at his phone, which he had lying limply in his hands on his lap. Jillian wondered if he was curious about the leather book, or if maybe he was checking her out. She was no troll, she knew that at least. Constantly being encouraged to dance naked with the rest of her family made her body image an important issue. Jillian had always been eager to keep her form in prime shape so that maybe she would feel less embarrassed about the whole skyclad business. She ran on the treadmill in their basement so much during high school that she started calling it Frank and spoke to it like a running partner who was going too fast. She had found a new treadmill at her collegiate gym and she felt sorry for cheating on Frank, but she named this one Francis and that seemed to help.

He might be looking at her for any number of reasons, but she preferred to think he was admiring her beauty. He was pretty sweet looking himself, with black, ruffled hair and a wide mouth, although his posture was a bit awkward and slumpy for her tastes.

Feeling brave and maybe a bit empowered by the fact she was heading to an unknown place to meet people she’d never directly spoken to (how audacious she was!), she willed him to look up. To match her gaze and give her a wink or a nod or a smile; she was a sucker for male attention, there was something addictive about it, like chocolate covered coffee beans.

When he finally looked back at her she smiled at him and he answered it. His neck turned a sly shade of salmon and he darted his gaze back down. Maybe he was a year younger than her, or maybe the color in his face gave him a boyish charm, but despite those things, or maybe because of them, she found herself momentarily smitten. On a whim, with a spark of daring, she opened up her book of spells and notes once more and thumbed through the pages until she found her section of attraction and love spells (that she had scribbled down one sad night when she got stood up by a jerk named Zachery when he found out her family’s Halloween traditions).

She browsed through the rhymes, knowing that these things never worked for her, but feeling a foolish giddiness, letting her inner child believe that words spoken in whispers could make things happen.

Focusing her sight on his hair and the tilt of his downward-facing head, she put on mental blinders, seeing him through a tunnel. She licked her lips and took a deep breath, picturing pink and red strands of light, like ribbons, snake out of the fingers of her right hands and drift lazily through the train car, wrapping around him, caressing him gently.

“By my will and moon and sun, my thoughts and actions be as one. Air and Earth, Fire and Sea, as I will so mode it be. Bring this boy’s desire to me. Love empowered, lust endowed, shower his attention on me. Let him neither break nor rest until he grants me this request.” Dark spots started spinning in her vision and she felt a moment of lightheadedness. She must have been staring a little too hard.

She watched the boy look up at her once more and she held her breath. He looked paler than she thought he had a moment ago. He nervously glanced from side to side and she was sure he was about to stand up and walk over to her seat, ask to sit down, and then request that she accompany him on a romantic dinner for two. The whole fantasy painted itself before her eyes. Beautiful pinks and blue starry nights. That was when he threw up.

Leaning into the aisle, with one hand on his stomach and one gripping the seat’s edge for support, he retched onto the floor. The sound made Jillian jump and people rapidly scrambled away from him or covered their mouths.

Jillian felt dizzy and wiped her forehead. There was no way she was the cause of that. He must have been looking at her while glancing around for a bathroom. Maybe he ate something bad just before the train ride. A conductor was now jogging down the aisle to get to him, a roll of paper towels and some bleach in hand. She got up before the boy could look for her and traveled to the next car, her breathing labored.

Jillian’s hand was shaking when she handed her ticket to another conductor and when he asked her where she was headed, a sign of pure polite interest she was sure, she broke out in a fresh sweat.

“Lowell,” she answered. He punched a hole in her ticket and handed it back to her.

“Here ya go, Miss.” As he headed into the next car she sighed in liberation, wondering if the boy had stopped vomiting yet. She spent the rest of the ride clenching her diary in cold, sweating hands and watching the trees and fences and walls pass the train windows with blinding speed, making her nauseous. But she dared not look away.

After forty minutes in the same stiff pose her neck began to cramp and her feet were numb. A crisp, electronic voice announced their arrival at the Lowell station. When she stood the blood rushed through her body and made walking into a drunken mess. She wobbled out of the train as quickly as she could, eyes trained fiercely on the ground, hoping she would not see the boy and the accusing stare she imagined he would sport at her expense.

Not that he would know her intentions, or that she had anything to do with anything. Because she didn’t. Absolutely not. Besides, she had a sinking, indisputable feeling she would never see him again.

She shook her head a little and took the stairs from the platform two at a time to get onto the bus terminal. The concrete steps were cracked and dirty under her shoes as she attempted to avoid watery hollows and crevices filled with mud. Her first impression of Lowell was red. Brick roads, brick buildings, red cars and red paint stripes on walls. Pink graffiti on the train cars and on the sidewalks. A veritable warm and bloody feeling shrouded the entire street.

She had emailed one of the coven members, someone named Sandra who used a hotmail address called powersofmagickpath87, who said she would meet Jillian at bus terminal 4 to take her to the circle. She worried for a moment, as she scanned the dozen or so people lining the bus lane, that she wouldn’t recognize her and would wander aimlessly, drifting from suspicious traveler to the next like a pick-pocket. Spotting the woman ended up being easier than expected.

Sandra was draped with silver chains and pentacles and wore a flowing black dress with lace embellishments on the collar. In white it would have been a wedding dress. She had painted stars on her temples and her blonde hair was piled and twisted in an extravagant display. She seemed to glow.

No introduction was necessary. The woman spotted her and, with eyebrows raised in surprise, glided along the wet ground and was suddenly inches from Jillian’s face.

“You are going to fit lovely,” her smile was full of light, her emerald eyes iridescent.

Jillian smiled back, feeling small and fragile next to this woman who seemed so powerful in her skin. So bold and happy. A bus pulled up and Sandra spoke quietly to the driver as they stepped on board. Jillian pulled out her wallet and began counting quarters but Sandra grabbed her arm with soft fingers.

“It’s taken care of, sweetie. Markus knows us.” They sat towards the front and Jillian watched the brick buildings blur into an irresolute wall of red and yellow and brown. Her life seemed to be nothing but movement today, she thought. The streets were crowded with small groups of men and women, keeping to themselves, heads bent close, watching other groups warily through sideways glances. A bundle of teenagers sat on their stoops, counting passers-by as if cataloging them. A general sense of mistrust floated like fog above the sidewalks and busy roads.

“How long have you been with the coven?” Jillian asked after a few minutes, bracing herself against the window and the headrest of the seat in front of her as they flew over a large bump and her body rose several inches in the air. Sandra barely moved.

“Seven years now. I had a shot at high priestess you know. Turned it down though, too much drama and politics. Just like everywhere else, I guess. How long have you been practicing?” Her voice was energetic and sweet.

Jillian had to stop herself from rubbing her hands along her jeans to get rid of the sweat there. Every mile on the bus was another mile closer to this group of people she knew nothing about. Antsy pants, her mother would chide.

“Since I was born really. It was a family coven.”

“Ah, so you’re well-versed then! That’s excellent! Oh, here we go.”

Sandra winked at the bus driver, Markus apparently, as she led Jillian off the bus and into a small, densely populated neighborhood with scraggly trees and well-kept paint jobs.

“The circle is here?” Jillian pulled her backpack higher on her shoulder and realized that she had still been anticipating the deserted fields of home.

“Well, near here. We just have to go through a few yards. Grab a few people.” After looking at Jillian’s expressions she added, “Don’t worry sweetie, there are a lot of diverse neighborhoods here. Not all concrete and bricks, we’re heading somewhere a little closer to the earth. Just a minute.”

She walked straight up to a house with a bright orange paint job which burned Jillian’s eyes and rang a door-bell that sounded suspiciously like the theme from Beetlejuice. A woman with blue hair and two nose rings answered the door. Her face looked like it belonged on a 50’s pin-up girl. All sweet, white dimples. The curly blue hair somehow fit her.

“Sandra darling, blessed be. This is Jillian?” The woman said. Sandra nodded and hugged her, their smiles holding the sun, arms strong.

“Yes. Jillian, this is Arlene. She’s going to lead the circle today.”

Jillian shook her hand, which was cool and dry, unlike her own clammy, warm palms, and tried to give her best smile.

“You’re the high priestess?” Jillian asked.

“What? No! No, no, no, no, no. Thank you though. Do I really look that important?” She looked down at her light purple dress that swayed at her knees. “It’s the dress, right? I look gorgeous. Impressive, even?” She smiled.

“Oh, um, well of course, but it’s just that back home the high priestess leads the circle every Esbat.”

“The same woman leads the circle every week?” Arlene looked taken aback. “Doesn’t that get awfully tedious?”

Jillian shrugged, feeling out of place, and the discussion was dropped. Sandra, Arlene, and Jillian headed across the street and the same experience played itself over and over. Introductions, shaking hands, names she knew she would probably not remember for long. No one else had blue hair, and most of the other coven members looked normal. Not normal, blended, she thought. There were no visible tattoos of the moon goddess or crazily dyed hair or extraneous piercings. They headed into a nicer neighborhood with larger yards and high fences and Jillian wished she had worn more comfortable shoes. Her flats were covered in glitter and bows and had a small heel, despite the term “flat,” and were more form than function. She could feel a blister developing on the side of her foot.

After they had gathered four people plus Arlene, Sandra announced that the rest would meet them at the circle location. They walked down an empty street and Jillian could see a stretch of murky woods at the end of the drive. When they all climbed over a low guard-rail Jillian’s fears about her shoes were realized. Many members of the group were wearing boots under their dresses, none of which were floor-length except for Sandra’s which she clutched high around her waist.

“There’s a stream up ahead,” Sandra spoke to her quietly, “walk barefoot for now and you can wash them off there.” Jillian held her shoes in her hands and rolled up her jeans.

“Is there somewhere I can put on my dress? I didn’t want to mess it up in the city, since it was still drizzling.”

“Sure darling, when we get to the circle you can change nearby and I’ll make sure James and Gabe aren’t watching.”

“You have men in the coven?” The coven at home had been women-only. There was a separate coven for the men, and the two only ever comingled on special holidays.

“Only the two, and they are perfect gentlemen believe me. Although it was a big decision to let them in. We don’t dance butt-naked anymore, that’s for sure. Hence the gowns. It’s good you remembered to bring one. Now, come on honey move those legs!”

Normally Jillian wouldn’t appreciate the “sweetie” and “honey” business, but it suited Sandra perfectly. The woman radiated bubbles and sweets and seemed to pull energy from the air.

After they passed the stream the ground was solid and green. Leaves, grass, tree nuts and pinecones littered the floor like so much confetti after a rave. Sandra stayed back with Jillian and let her change into her dress when they had gotten close. Barefoot, but with her green gown on, glittered with small stars and lined with silver, she was reassured by a sense of ritual, with all its parts and pieces, being the same no matter where the ceremony would be.

The circle location was a small break in the trees, about thirty feet wide. People were chatting and mingling like they were attending a cocktail party, even though they were now all barefoot. Jillian took this time to offer Arlene any of the supplies that she had brought. The blue-haired sprite was impressed by her Bast statue as well as her wand, which had been encrusted with a small ruby, opal and amethyst, so they were chosen to be used.

When the others showed up the air of excitement grew. There were now twelve people. Jillian found it hard to convince herself that she didn’t, in some small part, miss this. The gathering, the sense of family among the members, the camaraderie. People were already setting up a food table for afterwards; two plastic crates with a solid slab of wood precariously balanced on top. Arlene began drawing most of a large circle using a container of salt, her feet sliding surely over the grass as if she were figure-skating. She left an opening about two-feet wide for people to enter and she clapped her hands over her head and announced “two minute warning, gird your loins!” Everyone laughed and certain members started assembling candles around the interior of the circle. Jillian was surprised they were using multiple colors, instead of the all-white or all-black set that her home coven favored. What else would be different, she worried.

“Hey, I’m Gabe.” The voice startled her and she jumped. She had been entranced by the soft swaying dance Arlene was perfecting along the edges of the circle, bending and touching the tips of her fingers to each candle. She was softly singing but Jillian couldn’t hear what it was.

“Um, hi. Jillian.” She shook his hand and noticed that he was wearing slacks and a button-up shirt (mostly unbuttoned), and his light brown hair matched the dusting of chest hair trailing in a thin line toward his navel. He was probably in his late twenties. A little too old for her. It was a shame.

“Well, you don’t expect Jim and me to be wearing dresses, do you?” Her eyes flashed to his face and she felt ashamed for so obviously scanning him up and down.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

“That’s alright. You new to this whole kind of thing?” Great, she thought, she was coming off like an anxious newbie.

“No. Um, actually I’ve been doing this all my life, just never in a city. I go to college in Boston and the Wiccan scene there is really…um, twisted.”

He laughed, and it was deep and throaty and for a moment she was struck by the timbre and how she could feel his voice echoed in the vibrations of the ground under her raspberry painted toenails.

“I have no problem believing that. I work near the city, but I don’t think it would be real over there, you know what I mean?”

“Where are you from?” Jillian couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Her brain had dissolved into cheese. Her pulse was racing. She couldn’t figure out why her body suddenly felt like ice.

“I’m from Lawrence. Had to take a train in. We’re all from local cities. Some commute more than others and it got a little tiring, so we shrank a bit. Hence the message board, which is where I’m assuming you found out we were looking. Are you here to try us on or will you just be watching?” He was twisting a ring on his middle finger. A gold dragon with sapphire eyes. Jillian watched it with avid attention, eyes locked. Was he twisting it out of nerves? Excitement?

“Oh I’ll be dancing. I’m not a spectator kind of girl.” She found herself feeding on his attention. Each time he looked at her she felt a little more sure. She could do this. She’d been doing it forever. Simple steps, simple rhythm, the glow of candlelight. She turned to look at Arlene in the circle, a spark in the air warning her that the time was now.

“Alright!” Arlene shouted, “Get in this hole with me!” A few members of the coven smiled and rolled their eyes and Jillian tried to picture how she would look after the rite, when members of her family would usually blaze euphoric and crave chocolate and wine. Arlene should be a hoot, she thought.

When everyone was in the circle, they spaced out evenly and Arlene closed the ring of salt. She took an antique lighter from a small pocket in her dress and lit the colored candles one by one, invoking spirits to watch over them. She lit a large cone of incense and the breeze carried the familiar sandalwood odor into Jillian’s nose. She let it fill her up.

Arlene’s blue hair looked green in the flickering candlelight as she called to the elements, raising her arms at the four corners of the circle, the four corners of their world, using a clear, rich voice that carried far beyond the trees that shrouded the group. The ritual began to blend and fade through Jillian’s vision and instinct and practice took over. She repeated sacred words with the rest of the group, chanting and singing and swaying. Her body warmed as it never had in the circle back home. Must be the clothes, she thought. She wasn’t used to the fabric saving her skin from moonlight and gazing looks.

Her cheeks felt flushed and her temples damp with sweat as she sang loudly the song of the goddess. Arlene’s voice carried through them all and Jillian imagined she could feel the light of the flames dancing behind them, in tune with their voices. She felt strokes of heat brush against her face and her upraised arms. Blanketed in warmth. Energy. Life.

This was new. This was incredible. It rushed into her lungs and made her chest expand, her throat held authority and her words were law. It was power. She looked around the circle and saw Gabe’s face, reflecting a euphoria that mirrored the rest of the group. Sandra seemed in bliss, her high voice a tinkling soprano. When the song changed beat Jillian was excited for the part to come. She held her arms forward, almost touching the hands of the others. Arlene was standing still in the middle and Jillian visualized the magic she was to send out into the world, through the high priestess. She imagined her energy to be a pure white, when usually she pictured it as green, but it was burning too hot, too powerful inside her to be anything but pure lightning. It came from her core, where it blazed and flew from her fingers, beams charitable to the ground and the moon and the people in the coven. This feeling was forever, she decided, and this would be her coven, her new family. The power erased any doubt.

Instead of feeling drained or even calm as the chanting quieted, arms lowered, she felt like she had swallowed all of creation. A rush unlike any other swept her from head to toe and she could run from here to Boston in ten seconds flat, or fly to the tops of the trees, or break buildings in two. She closed her eyes and imagined that her hair would be flying behind her in a wind of her own making. She could surely call the wind now.

A gasp sounded through the circle, and a faint crack was followed by a thump. A small scream. Jillian opened her eyes, knowing they must be blooming.

Half of the circle was on the floor. Arlene was lying in a heap in the center of the ring, her arms splayed away from her body, like she had been making a snow angel in the wet grass. Sandra and a few others were shakily getting to their feet, wobbling and trembling, their faces gray.

“I feel… I don’t feel well, you guys,” Sandra muttered, a hand to her head. She sat back down and Jillian heard the breath rush out of her. Arlene was stirring, but slowly. Everyone looked weak, Jillian thought. Not the glowing rapture that her family always seemed to experience. Then she noticed why there had been a scream. A few members were huddled around a body on the ground. She saw slacks and bare feet. Gabe. He was half outside the circle. As she moved to get a better look she saw that he had landed on the crates holding the snacks for after the ritual. The wooden board lay beside him. Blood seeped onto the ground in a lean stream. It looked like a red ponytail, but in the hazy yellow glow of what candles remained lit, it could have been mud. She told herself it was mud.

Sandra crawled closer to him and cradled Gabe’s head in her lap.

“I can’t do anything!” she shouted weakly a moment later, panic lacing her words. The other man in the group, James, tore off his shirt and bundled it under Gabe’s bleeding scalp.

“Sandra, come on, you can do this. You’re the best,” said James.

“No, I’m trying! I can’t feel anything, I have nothing left…” she shook and leaned to the side like she might fall but righted herself at the last moment, shaking her head free of invisible cobwebs. She placed her hand on Gabe’s chest and closed her eyes. Jillian caught snatches of a common healing rhyme that she had learned in middle school. Some spells were seen as universal.

When nothing seemed to happen she turned towards the group, eyes now searching the circle. Her eyes stopped on Jillian. “You. What did you do?”

All eyes were now on her. These weak, quivering people, half of them still on the floor, the others looking like they might join at any moment, watched her with dark eyes. What was happening, she wondered. Whatever it was, she could fix it. She could do anything. The rush hadn’t left her. If anything, it had grown. She could feel sparks at her fingertips, could feel her toes indenting the earth with the weight of so much feeling, so much vitality. The scene around her froze as she navigated the ins and outs of the night, looking for an answer.

Their energy, their power, magic, was gone. She had it. That was easy enough to figure out. But why? Why had she taken it? She hadn’t tried to. She had been giving, not taking. Giving. Not taking. She got the opposite of what she wanted. The boy from the train flashed into her mind, wide mouth twisted in a grimace before he leaned over into the aisle, clutching his stomach. She wanted him enamored. Was it possible he had been repulsed instead? So much so that he threw up? It felt like a stretch. And why now? Her mind was sizzling with all the moments she had said a spell, imagined magic and nothing happened at all. No opposite effect, no warmth, no ice. Her mother’s voice always explained away her lack of magic as “give it time dear, you’re a late bloomer that’s all. You just wait. You’ll be so different when it happens. You’ll feel different. You’ll see colors you never knew were there.” Jillian had waved her words away like the rest of the hippie mumbo-jumbo that she spouted post-circle, but maybe this time… maybe it was true.

Maybe she had magic. It was unfair that it suddenly seemed to be working against her, hurting the people she had to thank for getting her to be in this world again. This world she had missed without knowing it. She looked down at her foot, a small raised blister on its side, pink against her skin, courtesy of her fashionable shoes. Time started again.

“Jillian! Tell me what you did,” Sandra yelled again, gently placing Gabe’s head on the floor and getting to her feet, “you’re practically on fire. How did you do this to us?” She swayed but stood her ground. How was she going to fix this?

Testing her hypothesis she muttered a quick healing chant under her breath, picturing blue energy enveloping her foot, erasing the blister, easing the pain from her not-so-flat flats. “Deep in my blood, through tissue and bone, Goddess erase the ill that has been sown, heal me, heal me, heal me, as I will so mode it be.” The blister split open, ooze and blood dripping onto the ground. The pain intensified and suddenly it was like someone was digging a knife slowly into her flesh. She cried out and held her foot, blowing on it, now knowing what else to do.

It was true. She was doing the opposite. Her magic was doing the opposite. She gingerly placed her foot back on the ground and waited for the pain to recede. Sandra and the others were looking at her like she might be viably insane. She didn’t blame them.

“Jillian, answer me!” Sandra took a step forward. Jillian took one back and raised her hands.

“It’s okay, it’s okay I figured it out! Yes, I took your energy, but only because I was trying to give! I was trying to give a lot, because I felt it this time, and so I took more than you would normally give, but anyway, it’s like my foot! It’s okay. I can heal Gabe, I know I can.”

“You aren’t coming anywhere near him!” Sandra yelled.

“I can do this.” Jillian felt the power, warm and sweet, stretching itself through her limbs, like unfurling wings, and raised her arms, her eyes closed. She widened her stance, feeling the earth below her feet, the air twisting the strands of her hair, the water in the sky, the small fires still flickering in the night, the stars shining only for her. She thought of the harshest spell she knew. The one Wiccans kept only to balance all the healing and goodness they tried to spread every circle. Harm ye none, the rede said, but she knew this would do no harm. To heal she had to try to hurt. She was sure of it.

“Harm beget this foe, pain and loss to grow, bleed him, let his mind grow weak, body break and ––” A hand grabbed her arm with hard fingers, biting into her skin.

“Stop this!” cried Sandra.

Caught in the trance of her own power, Jillian could care less about this woman, who was more bug than human. She was standing in the way. Jillian would do this. The magic was starting already. She would not be interrupted.

She took a second to picture bright energy bringing Sandra closer, pulling her into Jillian’s embrace. Sandra flew backwards, her blond hair tangling itself around her eyes, her black dress dancing through the air. She landed ten or so feet away and Jillian could hear her heavy breathing as she tried and failed to use her last reserves of energy to get up once again.

Eyes locked on Gabe’s body, she continued.

“…body break and fail, be meek. Aching, anguish and torture thee. By my power I will thee ruin, as I will so mode it be.” She repeated the chant three times, red and black vines of energy wrapping around Gabe, pulsing with intent. He opened his eyes, and looked over at Sandra, who had begun to cry as she inched closer to him. She smiled through her watery face and wept into his neck. He raised a hand to cup her head through her hair. Jillian felt like an intruder.

Arlene was sitting up now, eyes wide, mouth thin and pale, having watched the whole thing with a quiet horror. She didn’t speak. No one did. The clearing was silent; the only sounds were Sandra’s sniffles. Jillian felt normal again. Most of the excess energy was gone, like it had never been. She hoped it was a dream, and she hoped it was real. She didn’t know what to hope.

It became obvious that they were scared of her now. They looked with gaunt faces, huddled together on the floor in small groups, as if against the cold.

Magic had always been a mystery to Jillian. Her parents flew under its influence like hallucinogenic mushrooms, their bodies on strings dropped by deities from the clouds. She had never understood the worship, the way that power could feel like love when you dressed it up right. She saw now why her mother would smile and sway her naked figure. Tonight had been like that for her. She would have stripped down into the cashmere of her skin, would have spit water and rocks and sang jumbled words from decaying novels for days. They did mean something. She would give almost anything for that feeling again, but the faces gazing fearfully at her glow moved her. She would not use magic again until she was sure she could control it. She didn’t know why her powers were backwards, she had no answers, but there had to be some way to get herself in order. She would ask her parents, read their books, call on any coven she could find. Until then, though she had found something lost here, she would not come back. Not until she understood herself, and not until she deserved it.

She found her wand on the grass near the altar and felt it hum in her hands in a way it never had before. Holding it tight in her cool, sweat-free fingers, she walked out of the circle and glided through the woods, speeding away from the people she had hurt, tasting the word “witch” in her mouth.

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Previously published in The Supernatural is Natural: A Collection of Stories, published through lulu.com, available for purchase here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/cassandra-mortimer/the-supernatural-is-natural-a-collection-of-stories/paperback/product-15345913.html

An Evil, Gorgeous Thing

The Roscommon Township of Michigan might as well have been the east side of Bolivia. It was all flat farms and dead land and roads that went on for hours, and I literally mean hours. Crammed into my tiny Toyota Camry, ten years old and croaking on rust, with my cameraman Jeremy and an industrial case of bug spray, I could already tell I would wildly regret taking this on. I poked my finger into the borrowed GPS system repeatedly.

“How do you spell ‘bumfuck nowhere’?” I asked Jeremy. “This stupid p.o.s. can’t find the main road.” He was spinning a light meter over and over in his hands, looking out the window and pointedly not at me.

“Still mad at me?” I reached out and put a hand on his knee, lightly scratching my nails against his jeans. He turned his blue eyes on me and I stopped. “Please Jer, this is ridiculous.” I turned back to the winding dirt road that Liz, my boss’ trusty navigation system, said I needed to follow for another fourteen miles.

“No, I’m not mad, I just think you’re being selfish about this, that’s all.”

I flicked my bangs away from my eyes. Guys are obviously born mentally challenged.

“Because I want you to tell Michael that we’re dating? He won’t care, but if we hide it and he finds out it’ll obviously look like we were ashamed or doing something wrong.”

“We’re not dating.” He said it and I wanted to punch him in the face. He’s behind the camera, not in front of it like me (although with a face like his he probably could if he wanted to), no one would notice the bruise and by the time we got back to Detroit the swelling would go down enough and even if he told on me he would look like a wuss, beat-up by a girl. It was almost fool-proof, this punching fantasy, but I abstained.

“Fine Jer, then we’re really not doing anything.”

“Look, is this fucking woodpecker worth this drive? Let’s just say we couldn’t find any, check into a hotel for a couple of days, and call it a good-try.”

“It’s a chipping sparrow, not a woodpecker and you have to start somewhere. Michael assigned it to me, and I need my face on that screen more than twenty minutes a day if I ever want to land in Abbie’s seat.”

“Yes, career first, I understand your motto, it’s not that complicated.”

“Yes,” I retorted, “and yours is sex first.”

The rest of the drive was silent and I was thankful. There were no radio stations this far north of the city (that my shitty car could register anyway) so I made do with practicing the lines I would say, holding the mic with my left hand so I could gesture behind me with my right, while Jeremy zoomed in on a chipping sparrow that we would miraculously find three minutes into this awful nature hike.

The town by the Roscommon State Forest was more of an Amish-hovel-gathering than a town. There were six buildings and twelve houses; I counted them on the way to the inn that Liz had finally managed to find. The town was notorious for being the best starting place for hikers looking to bird watch in the forest, and also for not being very hospitable. Rumor was they kept everything old-fashioned to make the forest a better breeding ground for the little chipping bastards and they never used cars, large machinery, or built anything that couldn’t be made by hand. Like I said – Amish.

It had taken us almost five hours to get there, and my ass was sore from the car seat and I regretted wearing my nice blouse, the purple one with draping in the front that made my breasts look more impressive than they actually were. People weren’t going to be interested in birds unless they had a pair of tits singing their virtues. Michael hadn’t said it exactly like that, but I got the whispers behind his words easily enough.

When Jeremy got out of the car and started unloading the equipment I had to stop myself from staring twice. He had great muscles for a camera-toting man-whore, and that’s exactly what he was, don’t get me wrong, I knew that. But there was something about him that I found hard to say no to. His blue eyes looked honest, even when he was coughing up lie after lie. It was something I admired, in a sick way that my mother would surely insist required psychiatric evaluation. I knew he would never consent to a label, but after some late-night work in the news van we had gotten pretty close, in an I-know-about-that-tattoo-on-your-inner-thigh kind of way. I was a sucker for misguided hopes.

“Angela, you going to help at all or am I the bellboy now, too?”

“Shove it, Jer,” I said in my sweetest voice, all teeth and dimples. “I’m going to go talk to some people, I’ll let you know if we should interview them. Get everything unloaded and head towards the inn.”

He flipped me off and I took that as a yes.

The first two houses I knocked at didn’t answer the door, and as no one had any car to speak of it was harder to tell if I was being avoided or if there really was no one at home. I imagined for a moment a system of flags on houses much like the ones on mailboxes. Down for home, up for away. That’s how things would run if I were mayor of this shithole.

Despite its general shittyness, the houses here were actually kind of sweet. Most of them were shabby and covered in unpainted wood with boarded-up windows and un-mown lawns. Pieces of wall had been chipped away and there were a few grungy looking men hammering plywood onto some holes in a nearby building. There were grooves and breaks in the dirt road that looked like they had been ripped open with angry metal tools, maybe an old-fashioned plow, but the church looked well-cared for and the inn had a wrap-around porch, albeit missing a few legs. I could ignore the bits of clothing on the side of the road, and the barren ground. All they needed to do was plant some flowers. It would perk the place right up.

I wouldn’t live here, I’m not saying I would, but it was less crazy-looking than I thought. Given the stories.

The third door I knocked on belonged to a Mr. Donald Thompson who was happy to tell us about a summer hike where he drew colorful illustrations of the illusive bird. Some of which he agreed to show on camera. I promised to be right back and went to grab Jeremy to capture the interview, and found him standing in front of the inn door, with our bags and his equipment lying dejected at his boots.

“What’s up? You forget to knock?”

“They won’t let us in.” He didn’t sound angry or frustrated, just tired.

“What? It’s almost five, we’re not going into the woods tonight, they have to put us up. Did you tell them we were with Channel 12 News? About the piece?”

“They said they don’t care. They’re fine with us filming but don’t want us to stay the night. Something about allowing over-night ‘tourism’ during this season and how it will affect the birds.”

“You’re bullshitting me, right? That’s a joke. It’s an inn.”

He gestured to the door with wide arms and sneered.

“Fine.” I pounded on the door, harder than I meant to, but it had been a long fucking drive and getting lost is a pet-peeve of mine. Jeremy wasn’t helping either.

A woman in her late forties or early fifties answered the door wearing a flowered dress and a white apron. She looked like a mother straight out of the sixties, her hair obviously curled the night before with rollers, and I liked the way her face looked, soft and innocent in some way. Suddenly I felt conscious of my draped blouse. I tried to play to my audience.

“Oh, hi there. My name is Angela Bonnings and this is my cameraman Jeremy. We’re doing a piece on those beautiful chipping sparrows your forest is so famous for. We’re absolutely thrilled to shoot it!” I clapped my hands together and widened my eyes. “Although, we got terribly lost getting here and we traveled all the way from the Channel 12 News station in Detroit. It’s going to get dark soon, and I was hoping if you wouldn’t mind renting us a room for the night?” Her smile had progressively gotten sourer as I spoke and I looked to Jeremy for help, to turn the charm on her that he used on me but he only shrugged and I revisited the punching fantasy.

“Look,” she started, her voice deeper than I anticipated, “I’m sorry, but there are certain times we do not allow over-night visitors. It upsets the birds and it is very important that we keep their breeding season unfettered.”

“Well, we promise to move the car further away from the forest, and we won’t go out after dark. It took us over four hours to get here, and we’d just have to come back tomorrow. It would be awful. Please?”

“I’m sorry, no.” She began to close the door but I slapped my palm against it.

“What’s your name Ms…?”

“Maggie. Peterson.”

“Well, Ms. Maggie Peterson. We really need a place to stay. I will not get back on that road. We are willing to pay double your usual rate for a room, for one night. If not, we will sleep in the car, right next to the woods, with the lights on because I’m afraid of the dark, and the radio on to help me sleep. I think that might be more harmful to the birds.” Jeremy put a hand on the lower part of my back and I couldn’t tell if he was warning me or supporting me. He knew I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but how could he not think this was ridiculous? Would strangers sleeping in an inn really cause birds performance anxiety in bed? I think not. I needed this story.

“Let me talk to my husband.” She left the door open and walked further inside. I could see that it was lit in yellows and the walls were deep beige, making the room look small but warm. There weren’t many details to the place, but the couches all had pillows and the staircase on the left was made from worn, dark wood. I smelled roasted tomatoes.

Her husband came back with her and he was a tall, gangly old man with gray hair and a mean face. I felt Jeremy tense beside me.

“We don’t want you sleeping in the car,” he said in a gruff, snapping voice. “You can have a room here. It’s $80 for the room plus dinner. You don’t get breakfast.”

“Pleasure doing business with you.” I smiled. They exchanged a dark look and although I felt bad for bullying them I was not going to drive home only to make the same trip again. I gestured for Jeremy to take the equipment inside and grabbed my suitcase and cosmetics bag, following. Our room was tiny but I liked it. The walls were done in blazon wallpaper that was covered in roses and blue ribbons, crisscrossing like a wire fence. The bed took up most of the room, but there was a small dresser that had seen better days and a rotary phone that had no cords attached to it.

“Dinner is at 6:00,” said Mr. Peterson, closing the door before we could respond. I realized that I had forgotten about the interview with Mr. Donald Thomson and sank heavily on the bed. This assignment sucked. All I wanted was enough fluff pieces to get me familiarized to the public, so when Abbie eventually had a nervous breakdown and left it would be easier for me to slip into her chair and take over. This is Angela Bonnings with your news at seven sounded much better than Abbie Yeldohrera. No one could even properly pronounce it except for her, and I doubt she was even enunciating it right. I would make it my mission tomorrow to be as cheery as a watermelon and love sparrows more than God. I would take Abbie’s seat.

Jeremy finished arranging his equipment in the corner of the room and plopped down on the bed, his hands behind his head. He looked at me with hooded eyes and I saw the invitation. The way his hips settled into the bed, with a smooth and easy grace. The way his arms were bunched and stretched over his head, reminding me of rope burns and candlelight. He knew I was every bit as aware of him as he wanted me to be. He was the ultimate manipulator when it came to my body and he could make my skin sing tunes and shimmer like metal. I shivered and felt the blood pounding in my fingers.

One last time, I told myself. The absolute last time. I gave in easily.

I leaned down and his lips met mine like he knew where I was every minute of every day. Settling my body on top of his, it was easy to feel how much he wanted me. He wouldn’t keep me, but for now he would have me and I knew the difference. Even though it would never be enough, I would take what I could. We were stuck in this place together; it was fate or something cruelly just like it and I let myself be warm and soft.

His arms wrapped around me and I felt his palms on my back, reaching under my shirt and suddenly my blouse was a great idea and he lifted it over my head. He rolled me over, pressing me down into the mattress and kissing my neck and my shoulder and my collar bone as his hands roved down my legs, grabbing my thighs and spreading them, my jeans stretching. I fisted my hands in his hair and brought his mouth back to mine so I could bite at his lips because he always moaned when I did that and I wanted this to be great for him. I wanted him to see how amazing I was, how molten, how passionate. I wanted him to eat his words on the tip of a knife and miss my body for weeks afterward and this was more important than my story. If he promised me this night after night I would stay behind Abbie, doing pieces about bake sales and sparrows. I was that pathetic.

He unzipped my pants and tugged them down in fast jerks, so that I slid down the covers a bit with each pull and we both smiled. I watched him take off his clothes and admired the way the light from the full moon outside grazed his muscles and made them sharp. He was a

gorgeous thing, my cameraman. An evil, gorgeous thing. He pounced on me then and we were wild and devoted and he brushed his thumbs against my cheekbones and that is how I knew he loved me. He just needed to be worn in, like good shoes. He licked and sucked at my skin and my back arched, my breasts pushed further into his mouth. Jeremy closed his eyes and groaned and I clenched my muscles around him as he stroked inside me, milking him of everything he would give me. Our skin was wet and I grabbed his shoulders when I came, my nails pricking his flesh. He bit at my neck the way he knew I liked. It was the perfect good-bye.

We had to hurry with our clothes. We had been panting and wrapped up like presents when I noticed the time and the Petersons seemed serious about dinner. We were starving anyway, so we threw on our things and hurried downstairs, where the roasted tomato smell was stronger and some kind of meat was sizzling.

I don’t remember much about the actual dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Peterson were already seated when we got down and we tried not to look like naughty kids as we took our seats. The dining room was quaint, just like the town, but the food was delicious. Spiced and seasoned chicken with a sauce that bordered on intense tomato-levels. The interior of their house was very Spartan. They had no knick-knacks, and some plastic sheeting covered portions of their walls near the kitchen. I don’t think we talked much, which, given our threats against their precious bird, was understandable. There weren’t any good conversation pieces in the room, either.

Jeremy attempted to be charming, and Maggie’s mouth eventually relaxed. I tried to eat slowly, so that I would have more time with them, to butter them up if I could. I had been constructing an appropriate apology in my head when my vision became blurry and my head swayed from side to side without me controlling it. I started sweating and my neck itched, a light, queasy feeling progressing from my stomach into my blood. I glanced over at Jeremy, who was peering into his chicken like it held lottery numbers.

I woke up on the bed, with Jeremy unconscious beside me, the familiar scent of our sex in the room. When I stood up I almost barfed, my stomach roiling and turning over and trying to make its way up my throat. I tried to head over to the window when I noticed I couldn’t see it properly. I stumbled to the light switch and saw why. The window was covered with wood, nailed from the outside. There were cracks between them, but they were barely an inch wide. I couldn’t see outside, even with the moonlight. I went to the door and although the knob rattled appropriately it did not open. I saw the pointed ends of nails on the edges of the frame. The breath flew out of my lungs and my fingers were pulsing with the frantic convulsions of my heart. I felt dizzy. Locked in. Nailed in. Trapped. Trapped, trapped, trapped.

Jeremy still wasn’t moving and I called his name, afraid to touch him, afraid to move. I took a step towards the bed and called his name again. His back moved up and down and I was relieved he was alive. If I was shut in here, at least I was not alone. To hell with it, I thought, hyperventilating, as I shook his body from side to side. I smacked him and he finally opened his eyes. He then rolled to hang off the bed while he threw up his dinner. I looked away and babbled to myself in my head. How do we get out? What’s happening? Why are we in here? Who did this? Who, What, When, Where, Why? Who, What, When, Where, Why? I tried to draw in a deep breath. Treating my life like a news story usually simplified things, but instead it only increased my horror. I wanted to break down, but somehow I didn’t.

When Jeremy was done I handed him a fresh shirt from an open suitcase and he wiped his mouth on it, throwing it on top of the mess, covering it up as he looked around the room. I watched his eyes, seeing them narrow, widen, and then fully dilate. I saw the realization hit his face. I went back to the window and tried lifting it, knowing it would be useless with all that hardware nailed to it, but there was nothing else to do. I heard him get off the bed and he was beside me, using his substantial arms to try and raise the window. It creaked but did not move. I looked at the clock and it was 2:09 in the morning. I sat on the bed, away from the puke, and put my head in my hands.

“Okay, so let’s figure this out.”

“Figure what out? That we’ve been nailed into our room?” Jeremy yelled. “They’ve nailed us in! We have to get out; these are obviously freaky people, Ange! Who knows what they want with us?” He strained against the window again and I could see the veins in his arms stand out against his skin.

“Jer, stop, you’re going to hurt yourself. Do you still feel sick?” He shook his head and started to inspect the door, pushing against it with his shoulder and hip. When that didn’t work he started pacing the small space in front of the door, his hands constantly rubbing up and down his face. His panic somehow made me feel better.

“Calm down, we have to figure this out.” I patted the bed beside me, impressed by my new calm detachment of the situation. I was cool, I was composed. I was an ace reporter with a cell phone. I went to my bag and rummaged through it, emptying pocket after pocket, turning the bag inside out.

“My phone is gone.”

Jeremy stopped pacing and I heard his breathing become erratic. He looked at the walls like they were monsters, the blue ribbons were snakes, the roses acting like fanged mouths.

“Jer? Jeremy? My phone is gone. They took my phone out of my bag. Please tell me you had yours on you.”

He touched his left pants pocket and his features settled into an absolute rage. I had never seen him like this. I’d never really seen him angry or worried at all. He was the cool cucumber and I was the nervous wreck. That was how it was supposed to be. I’d shuffle and run my hands through my hair five times before I went on-air. My palms would be drenched in sweat and I would constantly feel the need to pee. Jeremy would smile and relax into the tree-like stance of a steady cameraman and I felt safer. Now the whole thing was wrong and he had started pacing again. He ran into the door full-force and it shook and maybe a board came loose because we heard something clatter to the floor and stopped to listen. I gave up on calming him down and left my post on the bed. I took two steps and we heard it. A scraping sound that reverberated through my bones and that I felt in my lungs.

Jeremy looked over at the window and shut the lights off, leaning his face against the glass. He peered through one of the larger cracks in our trap. He stopped breathing for a minute and when he exhaled, his body shook with it.

“Oh my God,” he whispered.

“What?” I made my way towards him, but in the dark I bumped into the side of the bed post and cursed, rubbing my leg. I grabbed onto his side and he let me push in front of him. It was brighter outside than I thought it would be, and the ground was washed in the rays of an autumn moon. At first I didn’t know why he had gasped. All I saw were trees and rough patches of grass and dirt, but then something darted between two trees and then came forward, lunging at another hulking shadow by the side of the house next to us. Both forms stopped and below us, slowly circling each other, were monsters.

They were the size of full-grown men, but they were thick and covered in hair and had mouths encased in muzzles. The one closest to the window displayed dripping fangs, and stuck its tongue to those teeth, his hackles raised. A low growling sound seemed to be coming from all directions at once. One by one we saw them creep or dash across the yard. There were at least twenty, and they were all the same dark grey, like morning clouds.

I felt Jeremy trying to push me aside, so he could look again, but I was glued to this window, mesmerized by the couple that was still circling each other close to the inn. They lunged and grappled with each other, fierce snarling and high squeals echoing throughout the yard. The others stopped their wanderings and watched as the two clawed and bit at each other like rabid dogs, and although I hoped that they could be explained away as such, the way some of them walked, on two legs, and the way their muzzled faces scoped the land from left to right, like soldier-esque scouts, would not let me. These were not the actions of wild dogs.

When Jeremy took his turn again at the window I was pretty sure he would faint. He was already strung out being trapped in the room, and I thought this would be too much to handle. It was, and he started to laugh.

He laughed himself stupid, his arms around his middle, his body bent in half, his face kissing his knees as he guffawed in deep bellowing hoots. He was cracking.

I took him by the shoulders and tried to get him to stand up straight. Leading him to the bed, I pushed him onto it, and when that didn’t work and he just kept right on laughing like an idiot I slapped him. He was furious again, his emotions flipping like a metronome but I held up my hands.

“Get it together, Jer. I need you here.”

“We need to get out of here.” His voice was rough from laughing.

“What, and go out there? Are you nuts? Those are like… I don’t know, but I don’t want to go out there!”

He stood up, swaying on his feet despite the power in his arm as he grabbed me.

“You want to stay up here? Stay up here and rot? Or wait to get eaten by those things!” He was yelling and I lowered my arms down, telling him to shush, but that only pissed him off more.

“Don’t tell me to shush! Are you kidding me? Are you serious right now? We’re trapped, Angela, have you not noticed that? Are you that stupid? We are fucking trapped and there are fucking werewolves outside like this is the goddamn real version of Pyrewood village or some shit and you are shushing me and telling me we should stay nailed in this room waiting for death? Fuck you, Ange. Fuck you!” A large crash rebounded against the wood-covered window and suddenly there were shadows moving through the cracks and growls and claws ripping into the wood. I screamed out of instinct and immediately regretted it as they became more frantic and I saw nails, much like a tiger’s, poking through the beams, touching the glass and the sound of them against the window was torture.

“We have to go!” Jeremy yelled, dragging me to the door as he attempted to barrel it down with every ounce of energy left in his body. Hearing the door start to crack, he went berserk and I was too afraid to tell him to stop. Too scared to ask to stay there, in this room that smelled like sex and tomatoes and puke. Part of me kept thinking this did not add up. The trap, the monsters, or werewolves if that’s what they really were, the drugs that must have been in the chicken or the sauce. It all sounded like a jumbled mess and as I tried to sort it out, tried to list it in my head in such a way that it would equal an algebraic answer, Jeremy finally broke through the door and my world went silent.

He poked his head into the hallway and glanced towards the stairs. There was no noise other than our harsh breathing and the scrabbling claws against the wood at the window. Most likely others had joined in trying to break through, because now there was barking and growling that made a guttural, sick language. They were communicating to each other, deciding who would eat what and how and who would taste better, and as my mind ran away without me, my body was tugged into the hallway as Jeremy ran down the stairs. He looked at the doors and windows and realized that behind one answer lay a slew of questions.

I still don’t understand why I let him haul me around like a child on a backpack-leash. Maybe it was because at this point my coolness had evaporated like so much steam, and I was just a scared-shitless girl just out of college with a mic and a five-hour drive into werewolf-infested lands. Maybe my soul left my body and tried to flee to heaven but I would not die. Jeremy had become a wild-man, dragging me from room to room, looking for something while I kept noticing stupid things like the antique clock in the living room and how it would be funnier if it was one of those cat-clocks whose eyes move from side to side each second and drive you mad until you throw it away. Now I was cracking.

I came to my senses when Jeremy found the basement door. It was unlocked and when he opened it he listened to a deep, murky silence for a whole minute before deciding it was okay.

“Why are we going down there?”

“Might be a way out.”

“Oh, okay.” I was struck dumb by this whole situation. I kept thinking about the cat clock and how I wished more than anything that I had the power to reverse time. I could drive a few hours back towards the city and get a hotel room with Jer. Have breakfast in bed with him, feel his skin under my fingers.

We walked down wobbly steps into the dark cellar. The walls were cement and matched the floor, a pair of light bulbs swung at the bottom of the stairs and when we pulled the strings and the room was lit Jer took a quick look around before heading back up to close the door and lock it. There were chains. Everywhere. Ten pairs of them at least. They were bolted into the floor, the walls, and the ceiling, ending in black manacles that, when picked up, were heavy enough to maybe be lead. Jeremy took it in stride and he was now in his steady tree mode, nothing would move or shake him, and he was in charge of the shot. There was no furniture down here, only some concrete blocks piled into a pyramid along with a stack of wood. There was also a cellar door that seemed to lead outside and a closet door in the corner.

“Homey,” I whispered, sitting on the floor in an attempt to collect myself. I was in shock, but I was holding it together. I’d seen enough traumas on the news to know the signs.

Jeremy headed to the cellar door and pressed his ear against it. There was a latch on the doors that had a chain running through it, wrapped in circles, but it was not locked on anything, and was only one strand, so he unraveled it with careful and quiet motions. A buzzing started in my head.

When the chains were removed he turned to me and winked and motioned for me to come over. He put one hand on the latch.

“Okay, so those wolves, those things, they were on our side of the inn, right? With the lawn and the woods? Well this should come up on the right side, closer to the road, so we’re going to get out, and run to the car. It should be close enough where we can get there without creating too much attention. Okay? Can you do this?” He saw the panic in my eyes and put his palm against my cheek. His hands were sweaty but he smelled like he always did, and I was reassured by that. I nodded.

“Alright, let’s just wait a minute or two and make sure the coast is clear and then I’ll count to three and I’ll open the doors and we–” he was cut off by a large, furry muzzle, dripping with spit that shoved itself between the unchained doors. Its eyes were a bloodshot yellow and it growled as it tried to push its way through the opening, teeth snapping, inching through the break in the doors.

“Angela! The chain!” I dropped backwards to grab the chain off the floor and while Jeremy was doing everything he could to hold the doors together and latched I fumbled with shaking hands to wrap the chain around and around the two handles.

“Hurry!” he yelled, and I managed to tighten the chains and twine them into a makeshift knot. Shaking violently, I braced myself on one of the walls while the growling and snapping continued, now safely barred by the chained doors. Jeremy was leaning on his knees, and he might have been crying. We stayed like that for a long while, not knowing what to do, afraid to leave but afraid to stay.

I tried to stay sane by thinking of Jer, cataloging the pros and cons of his life, being entwined with mine, but the thoughts kept tumbling together into a mountain of harsh realities and pipe dreams. Of the tiny actions I could read love in, and the big issues I could swat away like pesky flies.

I started counting cracks in the ceiling and got to seventy-one when Jeremy started swearing. He had begun prowling the room, as pacing seemed to be his new favorite after-hours activity, and was looking in the closet.

“Ange, come ‘ere.”

I had horrible visions of Mr. and Mrs. Peterson in the closet, rotting gray corpses with bite wounds and claw marks and blood pooling in letters like Y and M. They would be propped up against a mop and bucket and the mop strands would be saturated in their blood. I shook my head, bum firmly planted on the concrete floor.

“It’s a way out, Ange.” My head snapped up and I saw that he was in the closet, I could no longer see him from my spot on the floor and panic overtook me. The fear of being left alone after all this was unbearable. I didn’t want to die, but if it was inevitable it would not be alone, I clung to that.

I walked on unsteady legs to the door and found Jeremy stooped over in a tunnel that was about my height (being too short for the modeling business) and was walled with more concrete.

“Wine cellar?” I asked. Jeremy sniffed the air and smiled.

“Smell.” I stuck my head inside the tunnel and breathed deep. Dirt. And grass. Air. A way out, just like he said.

“Wish I had fucking checked this door first instead of the others. Come on.”

“What? No!” I pulled away from him and crossed my arms over my chest. “We are not going anywhere. They are outside. How many more close encounters is it going to take for you to get that? We should wait until it’s light out. Then, they’ll be gone and the people will come back, right?”

Jeremy rubbed a hand over his chin. “You are so stupid, Angela.”

“Excuse me?”

“Who do you think these things were yesterday? They were the people. These people turned into bloodthirsty killing wolves and you want to wait until they’re people again so they can shoot us for learning the truth? We could be so famous for this. That’s what you want, right? If we get out of here we can get in the car, get back to Detroit and spill the beans on these freaks and their fake bird cautions.” It hurt me for a single second that he thought all I cared about was fame, but then something clicked in my head then. The people. I hadn’t thought about it; that these people were the same as the creatures, but it made a sort of obvious sense, and part of me had figured that all along. But that wasn’t the part of the equation that I had been missing.

“They were trying to protect us, Jer.”

“What?”

“That’s it! The drugs, nailing the room shut. They weren’t keeping us in, they were keeping themselves out! They don’t want to kill us.” He looked for a second like he might listen to me, but the smell of the air outside had seduced him and I was nothing but the girl who dragged him here. The girl who wouldn’t go to a hotel, the girl who lies and bullies to get what she wants, career always first, the stupid girl.

“I’m going, and you can go with me, or you can stay here and see what they do to you when they’re normal again. Up to you.”

“Jer!” He walked away from me without turning back and I couldn’t believe him. That he was ready to abandon me so quickly. I was ready to sit there, in between the tunnel and the room and wait. I would wait and the first hint of a growl I would close myself in the opposite end. It was the smartest thing to do. But the fear overtook me. The fear of dying alone. His footsteps were fading into the tunnel and I remembered the way he had stroked my cheekbones with his thumbs, the way he bit my neck. What if I died and never got to tell him that I loved him? That I saw his love for me in the small things he said or did? Despite his cruelties backstage, when he would criticize my delivery (he commonly said I spoke too softly), and despite his arrogance, knowing he could call me at a moment’s notice and I would always show up, ready for anything he wanted, he was the guy who could steady a swaying stock like me. He was solid. I tended to flit from thing to thing, like a hummingbird, but my desire for him was a constant. He was the one I wanted to share my bed with every night, even though I knew he could never really love me. If I admitted it to myself, half the niceties I labeled as love were really the actions of any polite stranger. The reality was that I was simply tired of being alone.

I would stay with him, I decided, and he would see that I was dedicated. That I would follow him no matter what. A small, revolting part of my brain informed me that the shared experience of this night would bond us together forever. I was diluted, still wrapped up in a fake kind of love affair.

I sprinted after him and found him as he reached the exit. “Jer, I’m sorry.” He nodded as he opened the door. A wolf shot at him from the side and pounced on him, his mouth sinking into the flesh connecting his neck to his shoulder. Jer screamed and flailed, his arms ripping at the creature’s fur. A sickening crunch permeated the air along with Jer’s wailing and the squelching of his blood pouring onto the ground. The wolf started to crawl over his shoulder, his eyes trained on me as Jer slowly sank to the floor. Seeing the wolf’s target, as I stood petrified in the tunnel, Jer kicked out and closed the door. The wolf slammed against it and I raced out of the tunnel, back to the cellar, closing the door behind me and collapsing on the floor, crying hysterically and hyperventilating again.

Jer was gone. They would eat him whole. He stood no chance. Gone. Dead… Jer. I rocked back and forth, trying to stop myself from crying so I could listen for any noise at the door. I decided that I hated doors, and I hated cameras and news channels and concrete, but especially doors. I waited there, with my arms wrapped around my knees, crying silently into my shirt and thinking about the way Jer kicked the door closed to save me, and the way he had looked on the bed, with his hands behind his head. I felt like something precious had been ripped from me. That even though Jer and I hadn’t been a fairytale romance, there still had been something between us. Something I wanted back.

I waited until I could see bright sunlight through the cellar door’s cracks.

I walked up the stairs and unlocked the door to the kitchen. No one was inside. I walked to the front door and opened it. The town was waiting outside, assessing the damage of certain buildings. A group of six people kneeled in the dirt in front of the church. A few were visibly crying. Some prayed with arms raised in agony.

Mr. and Mrs. Peterson walked towards me, wearing bland and imageless clothing that did not fit them. Mrs. Peterson’s hair was a raggedy mess that no longer looked curled.

“We are…sorry about what you have been through tonight. We can only imagine. You may have seen some things–” he stopped and looked behind me into the inn, searching over my shoulder.

“Is that um…is Jeremy still inside?” He shifted uncomfortably and I noticed that both he and his wife were barefooted.

I shook my head no, unable to speak.

Mrs. Peterson grabbed at her chest and kneeled on the ground. She started to sob, covering her face and pulling at her hair and I was struck dumb.

“We had hoped… we found a body but it… we hoped it was just a hiker nearby. We tried to stop is… So sorry…” Mr. Peterson tried to pick his crying wife off the floor but she would not be moved. She kneeled in front of me like I was a goddess and begged me to forgive her. I was immovable, I was a tree, I was a cameraman. I looked at these people who were starting to repair the town. People with scars on their arms. Mr. Donald Thomson was tracing his fingers along a set of claw marks in the inn’s wall. When he saw me he looked down and I saw the ending play out in my head. I saw this place like it was a news story.

We would pan out on the inn and its scratched walls and the barefooted people of this town would look scared and wide-eyed and guilty at the camera and I would show how the moon looked the night before, big and yellow.

The story sounded too good in my head, but Mrs. Peterson, Maggie, was still crying at my feet. I was furious. They had taken Jer away from me. But some tiny part of my brain whispered, was it really their fault? Of course it was. But it was also mine, and Jer’s. They tried to help us. I knew they did. We gave them no choice, and then Jer wouldn’t listen to me. I was speaking too softly, he would admonish. My gut had said to stay, but I let panic tell me where to run. I hated them, but I hated myself, and I hated Jer, and the last thing I wanted was to spend another minute surrounded by my mistakes. I ached with fatigue and grief. I just wanted the night to end.

So instead of calling in the bulls, I simply told them “His name was Jeremy Foster.”

Mr. Peterson nodded emphatically. “We will pray for him every night. We are so deeply sorry… about what happened to him. We tried… to protect you the only way we knew how.”

“I know that,” I murmured softly. I kneeled onto the floor and took Maggie’s head in my hands. Her watery eyes met mine and I rubbed my thumbs over her cheekbones. To tell her that I loved her. “I’ll tell them he never showed. Okay?”

“We’ll take care of everything,” said Mr. Peterson, his gruff voice now soft.

“I know that too,” I said.

I wasn’t sure why I forgave them so easily. They killed someone I loved, someone I wanted to be mine. Maybe it was the bare feet, the fact that Maggie had looked so sweet in curls, or my own sick understanding that you could never change who you were. I’d like to think it was because I was so evolved that I knew to forgive something beyond their control. Really I think it was just fear. Who would I become once I turned them in, exposed them to the world? That would be my calling card: reporter who happened to be with the cameraman eaten by werewolves.

They would let me turn them in; I could see it in the set of their mouths. Maybe it was their willingness to surrender, making me want to fight for them. I think it was a combination of all those things.

I walked over to my car, my shitty green Toyota Camry, and got in, smelling Jer on the upholstery. I put my key in the ignition.

___________________________________________________________

Previously published in The Supernatural is Natural: A Collection of Stories, published through lulu.com, available for purchase here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/cassandra-mortimer/the-supernatural-is-natural-a-collection-of-stories/paperback/product-15345913.html

A Demon’s Guide to Getting into Heaven (previously Sneezus Christ)

“Bless you.”

Michael nodded his thanks to the middle-aged man with too-large sideburns and round green eyes, and dabbed daintily at his nose with a handkerchief. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.

The line at the coffee shop wasn’t as long as he preferred. His plan was to wait, make it to the middle, make eye contact with one of the older women in line (forties preferably but thirties would do), and let it rip. If he looked sympathetic but not sick he would get the best bang for his buck. Or the best bless for his blow, as the case was. Sadly, the deflated line and the group of gaggling teenage flits wandering the shop only scored him one blessing. Still, a million pennies made ten thousand dollars. Every blessing was a penny. Every blessing counted.

Placing his hanky back into a silk-lined pocket, he pulled a small red notebook from another. A click of his pen and a line on the paper, and it vanished back into the folds of his blazer before anyone had seen him move. A tingle of pleasant, hellish warmth licked at his toes as he reached the top of the line and ordered the most expensive beverage the place had to offer. He threw a twenty onto the counter, taking his steaming cup of whatever it was, and flashed big, square teeth at the shop girl, who was only half in love with him by the time he strolled out onto the sidewalk. He would have to visit there again. A girl smitten would definitely add one or two marks a week if he timed it right.

A white lit man on the crosswalk signal told him to go but he waited, spotting an old couple with tourist maps and canes. He smiled pleasantly at them and turned to look forlorn at the busy intersection, pretending to scowl at the buzzing taxi-cabs. When the couple stood beside him he threw his head backward and sneezed, making a show of trying to cover his mouth with an elbow and leaning away from them, the elderly being so cautious of their failing health and all. He didn’t even have to dart his eyes at them for the connection to be made.

“Bless you.”

“God bless you.”

He winked at them. “Thank you,” he pulled out the handkerchief again, as dry from the last fake sneeze as it would be after this one. “Allergy season never ends, does it?”

The old man shook his head and then gently reached for his wife’s fingers as they began their treacherous journey down the crosswalk.

He took the notebook out. Two more marks. Where to next? The library? No, not today. The subway station maybe. People moved in and out so fast they never noticed one man standing there for hours. He wasn’t worried about coming off as homeless if someone were to notice his lack of movement: he was wearing his most expensive suit, his most daring cologne, his hair freshly cut, his face freshly shaved. He was GQ, the Hell edition, and he was going to sell like it was nobody’s business. Like it was his job.

He was at 436,200.

“Sixty-three thousand, eight hundred to go,” he muttered, heading to the underground station. Picking out a prime spot was easy. The biggest group was usually near the front of the station, as close to the rails as possible without falling into the hole. He liked it down here. It was warm. It reminded him of Hell.

But he wasn’t as typical as all that. Even as a demon, he could also appreciate, even admire, tall buildings. They promised possibilities. Height.

Sometimes he would walk into a skyscraper like he owned it, passing security officers and cameras like a slick shadow stuck to the wall. If he got into a crowded elevator he wouldn’t pass off the chance for a few marks to add to his ledger, but he didn’t go there for work. He went for the roof. He easily unlocked the doors with a thought and stood on the half-wall of the rooftop and looked down.

The people walking in troves like swarms of nasty little spiders. The cars, pretty little machines, boxes of cheap, sparkling metal, zooming and swerving like deranged centipedes. It was awesome seeing them from up here. That’s how it would look, he decided. When he got into Heaven.

“Sixty-three thousand, eight hundred,” he whispered once more as he wormed his way into a pocket of commuters, shuffling in his Italian leather loafers and giving a slight warning sniff.

The trick was to not look sick. Sick people made healthy people nervous. Sick people didn’t garner as much sympathy, the idea being that they should have stayed home to be sick, and not gone out to spread their sickness around. Spring was easy. Everyone gave him understanding pity nods and smiles. Summer was harder. Winter was impossible. His numbers dropped to fifteen or twenty a day then. He had to make up for it when the pollen alerts went high in April and May. That was his busy season.

He let out a small sneeze; better not to overdo it in this kind of crowd, and heard two separate “bless-you’s,” and one “gesundheit” from a goofy-looking kid in a bright yellow sweatshirt who thought he was funny. Friendly vibe this morning, he noted. It was going to be a good day.

Two more lines in the book. Unfortunately, the Germanic didn’t count since it was only a wish for good health, not actually a “blessing” from one soul to his…lack of one. The phrase was making a comeback, some hipster irony or old-fashioned revelation. He would have to calculate that into his numbers. The word also set his teeth on edge, as a certain number of them would remove a mark from the ledger, given that they technically are intended to remove demons from human bodies. He wasn’t using a human body, just a cleverly crafted disguise, but still, the intention of souls was a fickle and demented thing.

Humans went around saying words like they had no consequence. “Bless you” and “Damn you” and “Go to Hell” and they all counted. They all marked you up from the inside like cuts on an orange and if you had enough your soul would be juice for the devil to drink.

But he wouldn’t let one goofy kid get him down. It was only 7:48 in the morning. The day was his.

Sixty-three thousand, seven hundred and ninety-eight.

By lunch time he had garnered sixteen more blessings and one more gesundheit. One more and he would have to erase a mark. Sighing, he flexed and relaxed the muscles in his thighs; they felt stale under him from standing too long. His suit was covered in the filthy air of the underground system and the itch on his face meant the coal dust was probably clogging his pores. A demon had to look good to get blessed. On his way to his apartment he threw a five into a homeless woman’s empty coffee cup, his notebook out before she opened her mouth.

“Oh, God bless you sir! Bless you! Thank you, thank you!” He huffed out a laugh and marked two more down. She was a regular. She was his favorite. Easy to please, easy to anticipate, easy to reach. She lived in an alleyway close to his building. The building’s security made sure she didn’t get too close, but every day he gave her some money so he knew she would always be there. It was nice, like she was pet. Something that never changed.

Before he could open the glass and faux-gold door to his building, a wave of hot air smacked the back of his skull. His feet seemed to melt into the cement walkway. He couldn’t move.

“Michael, is it?”

Amazed to find that he could suddenly move his feet, Michael turned to find a man, easily into his mid-forties with a wide mouth and a thick beard, glaring at him from only a few steps away.

“Can I help you, gentleman?” Michael asked.

“Yes, I think you can.”

Michael leaned his ear toward the man, waiting for more, but there was nothing. The man just stood there, arms at his side, the busy street bustling with anonymous cars and faces that passed them both without notice. He saw the homeless woman wander by, her eyes straight ahead. Compelled to look away? Blind to him?

“How do you know me?” Michael asked the man. He rarely gave his name to humans, and only a few associates also stuck on this plane until they made their 500,000 blessings knew he was even in this damn predicament.

“I knew your brother,” the man said.

Michael tried to take a step backward but found it impossible. The man was drawing him in. There was a pull, a sharp yanking on his chest that dragged him forward even though every bit of him wanted to run.

“I have many brothers,” Michael deferred. “Which one do you know?”

“I said ‘knew,’” the man corrected.

Michael had three brothers stuck on this plane. David and Joseph were behind Michael’s numbers. John was ahead by three upon their last check-in. A day could mean the difference in the game, and the bragging rights for being in first were all that kept the task from getting horribly boring. Who would be ready for heaven first?

Once they hit 500,000 human blessings they would be set. They could die and be free. The human façade would wear out fast and it was a constant race. Joseph was a bit weaker, a bit more tired. Michael feared Joseph’s human face would slip and his real self would shine through.

“Which brother?” Michael asked again, this time through gritted teeth so tight his molars might be chipping under the strain.

“Joseph.”

Shit. It was Joseph. Of course it was. Shit again. Joseph’s face was always too close to the surface. He had a harder time being human than David or John. A harder time blending in. It wasn’t every demon for himself up here. It was a group effort. The more demons in Heaven the better.

“What happened to him?”

“Come with me,” the man answered.

Michael’s feet glided across the surface of the ground as some force stronger than even his demonic powers dragged him through the air. Not a single face turned towards the pair, one walking with sure steps South down the street, one half-floating, half struggling against the invisible bonds that skimmed the tips of his loafers across the sidewalk.

They turned into an alley which was bloated with garbage, empty crates, and wooden pallets. Lumps of homeless people twitched and muttered as they passed. At the end of the alley was a chain link fence full of dog-sized holes the rats must use for travel.

Michael dropped to the ground and even though it was only a couple of inches difference, his knees clicked and shook as his feet hit the dirty floor.

“What did you do to Joseph?” Michael asked, fear turning his eyes into big, black orbs.

“Why do you pick names like that?” the man countered.

“If people think you’re religious, they are less likely to feel foolish for blessing you.” He winced. Why did he just say that? Why was he talking at all? Why wasn’t he beating the ever loving life out of this man and leaving his blood to paint the ground? His arms were too heavy to move.

It dawned on him.

“You’re holy,” Michael realized, the whisper struggling to reach his lips.

“I’m the holy,” the man smiled.

An angel then, Michael despaired. He had been found by a goddamned angel.

“What—“ before he could finish the angel raised a hand and Michael felt the blessings on his slowly-developing soul ripped away one by one like the most excruciating wax job he could ever imagine. Over a thousand were gone when the pain stopped and Michael could suck in a breath. The throbbing was intense and if his legs had been allowed to bend he would have slumped onto his knees.

“Where are your other brothers?” he demanded.

“We don’t keep houses.” It felt as if Michael’s teeth were coated in sludge and he wondered if his insides were bleeding somehow.

“Yes, that’s what Joseph said. But he knew where I could look for you. Tell me where I can look for them.”

“John he… he’s in Philly. He works… he works down near some shelter. Some kitchen thing, I don’t know where exactly it is. He sees David a lot. They do jobs together. They won’t tell me how. I think John dresses up like Clergy, but it’s a fake church. Obviously. I don’t… I don’t know anything else.”

“You swear it?” asked the angel.

Michael wanted to rip out his own teeth, his own tongue. He was spilling information like a green soldier. He was over ten thousand years old! This… this thing was pulling truth out of him and it was going to get his brothers! He tried to step forward, to raise an arm, anything, but his muscles were not his own.

“Yes. I swear,” he took a breath. “How are you doing this?”

“Creature, you are not worth the answer.”

The pain ripped through him again, and Michael’s face fell away. The demon within was bare and exposed. His horns tasted the air and his tongue lolled in his mouth like a dead snake. The blessings he had so carefully collected, over so many years, hundreds of years, were pulled away one by one. The agony ripped through him, white hot, from the inside out. The pain touched every cell, every thought, until he was nothing more than screams, and then he couldn’t even do that. He was nothing.

The angel lowered his hand and rolled his shoulders. The people huddled in this place were vacant-eyed and still. They would come-to in moments, and then he would be gone.

There was no body. Only the notebook was left. The suit, the handkerchief, everything else was dust below the surface of the earth. Lower than dirt. He picked up the ledger and tucked it away.

He would find them one by one. Cleansing them. Revealing them. Destroying them. Each one gave up at least one other. They may be isolated but they haunted the same spots, they tried the same tricks. They were always in populated spots, always in crowds. As many marks as possible. As fast as possible.

He was the best at his job.

One of the women in the alley began to stir and he stopped the sinful pride slinking through his emotions in favor of leaving, heading past her on his way to the mouth of the alleyway.

“Bless you, Sir,” she muttered, as if in her sleep, curling in on herself under a thin layer of paper and clothing.

“Bless you, Child,” he answered, stopping to leave what money he did carry with him on the floor by her hand. As he turned the corner back into the light of the city and civilization, already planning his trip to the QuakerState, he failed to notice the girl as she removed from under her starving belly a thick notebook of crumpled pages covered in lines and dashes and notes. Placing the money under her head as if it were a pillow, she smiled into the grimy floor.

“Three-hundred-four… to go.”

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Previously published in The Big Bad: An Anthology of Evil, published by Dark Oak Press, available for purchase here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Big-Bad-Anthology-ebook/dp/B00D3RNNCY

Your Renaissance, My Renaissance

Everything and everyone here is dead. I’m surrounded by wet, decaying grass, loose dirt, and graves. They go on for acres to the left and to the right. I’m in the middle of dead nothing. The mud dripping off my construction-grade boots, the squelching sound of the earth pulling me in – these are the only noises for miles. This is where she is.

Like the crossroads, where demons make deals, this place is secretive and hard to navigate. The names are in no particular order, and the dates jump from civil war deaths to baby boomers saying goodbye. It’s a labyrinth and I’m supposed to feel lost; there are too many headstones to count. No one wants to feel death as being organized. Chaos is more fitting.

I try to keep my thoughts more upbeat. She’d want today to be about life. It’s not her funeral; today is her rebirth.

I carry everything I could need in the duffel bag draped on my shoulder; the bowl, the knife, the incense and candles. I got the dried sage and althaea leaves from Natalie. She offered to give me blood, too. The spell called for a virgin’s, but I still fit that category and I’m related, so things will run more smoothly if I go in alone. Natalie would have me, she’s the only one who believes in me, but she’s not who I want.

I stole the book from an occult store on the main road. The guy behind the counter wouldn’t let me buy it because I wasn’t eighteen. Guess it has some inappropriate illustrations. Doesn’t matter. It was easy to lift and hide in my sweatshirt. I’m a big guy. Finding the boline knife was a tricky matter, what with needing a credit card to buy it online, so then there was the matter of finding my mother’s and making the charge look like it was from a cooking site, but the how is not the important part. It’s the why. Her.

Laura was my cousin. Is my cousin, I remind myself. We grew up together.

My first memory is of myself pushing her down to retrieve a Lincoln log under her feet and the sound of her crying. I felt so upset that I cried too. I hadn’t meant to hurt her. When we were nine and she started hanging out with girls instead of me, I was a mess. I started having nightmares that made me pee the bed, about her disappearing into an inky mass of black goo. I would cry out her name and she would yell back that she hated me. I sabotaged some of her friendships to get her back. I’m not proud of these things.

When she got her license I bought her a really expensive cheesecake with all the money I had. It had two layers, with chocolate swirls and flowers made of sugar spelling out “Congrats!” I loved her more than my own parents, who were usually distant from me, in a way that they sometimes forgot I still lived under their roof. They aren’t mean or abusive; they’re just unable to remember who I am. When my birthday is. What food I am allergic to.

Finding her memorial isn’t hard. Her father had a statue made in her likeness. He came from money. My aunt was lucky to snag him. Her body, sculpted and swathed in marble, is polished and smooth. As I look at her, I’m sure she’s glistening just for me. She’s watching. Right now. Urging me on.

The sun is dropping down below the tree line as I lie at her feet. Her stone dress hides her toes and is caught in a permanent sway around her hips. She’s looking up at the sky, one hand reaching towards her face, like she can’t believe how beautiful the clouds are. Like she knows what’s up there waiting for her.

But it wasn’t supposed to be her time.

None of my friends think this will work. I didn’t bother telling anyone in the family. Not if my best friends, the people I thought knew me the best, looked at me scared, and branded me a loon. Magic is fake, magicians are cons, witchcraft is some silly thing preteen girls do in their closets to get kissed, blah, blah, blah. There is nothing that could stop this. The damp ground under my back is telling me nothing is solid. Nothing is definite. I feel very poetic under her feet.

She didn’t die right. That’s how I know she’s meant to come back.

She died alone. No one saw it, but her body was splayed so perfectly, so elegantly when they found her, it was like she floated to the ground on a breeze and was frozen.

It was a mix-up. She took three pills from an aspirin bottle her mother kept in the bathroom’s mirrored medicine cabinet, not knowing that’s where her mother put her Valium tablets from her postpartum depression days. Laura had backaches from the gymnastics training she had done when she was younger, so she often needed three to kick the pain. She took them with water. She didn’t notice the different letter on the tablets. She trusted an aspirin bottle to be an aspirin bottle.

It was such a small chance that they would affect her so strongly, that her body would have such an adverse reaction. It was a fluke on top of coincidence. And it was wrong.

I can’t sleep.

I haven’t slept for more than an hour or two at a time in the past three months. I ate but it might as well have been mud in my mouth. I was shrinking and becoming a pale nothing that people avoided like a sickness. I wasn’t always this pathetic. I didn’t walk around in graveyards and ignore girls who looked at me. Natalie asked me out and before Laura died I would have said yes. She’s a sexy thing with big hair and big breasts and a proclivity for laughing like a banshee. She is happy all the time. I would have eaten that up and asked for seconds.

I would have taken almost any girl to keep my mind off Laura. When we were caught kissing behind a tree at my twelfth birthday party she got hit with a belt. My parents didn’t say much to me, only that it was wrong. But I wanted her. She wanted me. Her hair was soft in my hands and I can still taste her tongue if I concentrate and think of the apple smell of her.

I’ve never had sex, not because I don’t want to, but because in some sick part of my head I was waiting for her to be my first.

It’s dark now. I pull out the book and the bowl, light the incense and the candles, and roll the sleeves of my sweatshirt up over my elbows. The curved knife is thinned to such a point that I know it would take nothing at all to bleed all over the ground.

If this doesn’t work I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe I will let myself bleed out. Maybe I will buy some drugs off Mark at school and take them all at once. Maybe I’ll stay under this statue, looking at her face, until I starve. Melodramatic gestures, sure, and Natalie will probably come looking for me, but in all honesty I can’t imagine going about my life like this. Nothing is right. The world is tilting and discolored and no one is noticing. I’ve been told by counselors and friends and strangers at her wake that I will feel better. I just need to wait out the storm and the walls will look white. Right now I only see red.

I sprinkle the herbs, crushed by hand earlier this morning, over her grave. I hold the book two inches from my face, struggling to pronounce the strange symbols in the candlelight, stumbling over the letters like a toddler. A wind picks up and I tell myself this is good, this is working. She will come back and we can leave. We can run away. I emptied my savings, brought a few clothes. We’re good. Nothing will stop us. I even snuck into her room and brought her the jeans she loved so much. She’d drawn a robot on the pocket with a sharpie during geography.

Everyone will still think she’s dead, and I’ll just disappear. It will take my parents a few days to realize I’m gone. I never leave my room now. I’m quiet. I’ll dye my hair and wear different clothes. I won’t touch Laura’s long, dark hair. Wouldn’t dream of it. I want her back just the way she was.

When it’s time to cut my hand I grind my molars together, shut my eyes, and drag the tip of the knife down my palm fast. I don’t feel it until two seconds later and then I’m holding back tears and my arm is shaking. I look at the cut, thinking I might have hit a nerve or something, but the blood is flowing and I picture Laura, her cheeks pink and warm because of my blood and it seems a small price.

I hold my hand palm-down over the grave and walk in a circle like the book tells me to. I repeat the strange words over and over until I’m screaming them and feeling ever more grateful that this place is so large and that no one comes here. Our town is very out-of-sight-oriented. I pour everything I have into the words, hoping I am saying them right, that I can hold her again, her slender body against my thick frame and bury my face into her neck. Smell her apple body spray. Hear her voice, always so serious and so thoughtful.

I don’t know where she is but she belongs here, with me, and I repeat this to myself inside where it counts as I scream the words. The wind blows out the candles and the incense cone is knocked over. It starts a small fire in the dead weeds but I stamp it out. When I stop shouting I realize other things were shouting with me. An echo fades out. Birds were cawing and the wind was howling through the barren trees, still empty from winter storms. I shiver and pull my sleeves down. I clench my bleeding hand into a fist and look up into Laura’s marble face, her stone dress. Her bare toes are the last thing I see before I pass out.

***

It’s light out when I wake up. I can hear rustling on the grass near me and think for a moment of snakes before I realize where I am and what I’ve done.

My eyes open and I see her marble toes. Breath leaves me and I feel an ache in my throat as I realize I’ve failed. But they move. Her toes grip the dead grass slightly and her feet shuffle. They are dirty. A delicate green fabric brushes her ankles. Green, not stone.

I look up, and the sun spikes into my eyes. My head pounds but I cannot close them, because she is here. She is standing, leaning against her marble replica, her arms at her sides. She is looking down at me, but the sun makes it so that I cannot see her face.

“Laura?” She kneels and it’s her. Her soft eyes, her long dark hair, her pink cheeks. It’s all here. It’s perfect. I sit up and grab her to me, cupping her head in my hand and rocking myself back and forth, clutching her tightly, trying not to sob. Tears leak from my face anyway and I find myself whispering, “Oh my god, oh my god, Laura, I can’t believe it.”

I feel nauseous from blood loss and my head is spinning but she feels so good against me. I pull back only enough so that I can kiss her but the look on her face stops me. It’s not radiant or excited or confused. It’s just, she’s just…blank.

She darts her gaze back and forth between my eyes, and I realize that she isn’t holding me back. Her fingers are brushing the grass by her ankles.

“Laura?” I ask.

“Is that my name?” she responds.

I pull away, my knees sinking in the overturned earth where she had risen from the ground, and look at her, wondering where the flaw is. Trying to find the mistake I’ve made. I followed the book. I did everything it said. I stole and lied and cut myself for this. For her. And she doesn’t even know her own name.

“Laura. Do you know who I am?” I hold my breath while she concentrates on my face. A small line appears between her eyebrows while she thinks and it’s adorable but even while I think this I can feel something inside me shriveling and crumbling like a dried prune.

She shakes her head no, looking around her at the graves.

“Am I dead?” she asks.

“No. No, you’re not dead. I…” And then I stop.

I see her crying as a toddler, and eating cheesecake and kissing me behind that tree and I don’t know what to do. She’s everything to me. She knows me better than anyone else on the planet. She’s held me together my whole life. What if I am now nothing to her? A blank face with no meaning; our history lost. But then, suddenly I am seeing it a different way.

A new history. A story I can write. I can make all the rules. We’re lovers, or husband and wife. We live alone in the middle of nowhere with only each other for company. I can tell her that I am her everything.

“You last name is Andrews,” I lie, testing her.

“Oh. Okay.” Her voice is soft and windy and she looks around her again, her eyes drawn again and again to her stone likeness.

She would believe anything. Do anything I told her. A hundred fantasies play through my mind; ways I’ve wanted to hold her and kiss her, places I’ve wanted to make love to her. She’ll never want for anything with me. She’ll know only me. I can tell her everything about herself.

A sour taste hits the back of my mouth.

What if I get it wrong? What if I don’t know her as well as I think? I know her favorite ice cream flavor, her favorite books. I can tell her about all the parties she’s gone to. Even the names and addresses of all her friends, but…then she would be this person I made. I don’t know what she thought of every minute of every day. I can’t tell her those things. She would be only what I know of her. She would be this thing I put stories in, like a box with no bottom I could fill with lies forever and ever. Even if they were truths, this isn’t Laura, this is her empty box.

This empty shell didn’t stand in line for three hours to buy me tickets to my first concert. This shell isn’t the girl who liked to trace the lines on my hands with her fingertips. Filled with my thoughts of her, would she still be her? I’m so confused I don’t notice her stand up and climb the small dais of the monument and touch her cheek against the statue.

“It’s me.” It isn’t a question, but I reassure her anyway.

“Yes. That’s you.”

“So, I am dead.” Her voice isn’t sad or angry, just flat and soft; wondering. I’m crying now and I can’t seem to stop myself. My face is hot. What have I done, what do I do, this isn’t what I wanted, this isn’t Laura. Just her body.

With one last hope I stand up and pull her from the statue. Her body is light. I kiss her. Her lips move automatically but this kiss is not Laura. I pull away, crying harder. I have lost her all over again. She looks frightened and pulls away from me. Holding my hands out to her, showing her I’m harmless, I motion for her to sit.

And I tell her a story.

When she walks away a few hours later I’m still shaking, and now I am dizzy and misted in sweat. She’s heading towards the bus stop. My duffel bag is lighter two thousand dollars.

Her name is Laura Stevens again, only because she saw the name on the statue, otherwise I would have had her stick with the new one. I’m just some guy who fell for her while she was here on vacation, trying to find some work after her parents died. There were so many loose ends. So many questions I tried to anticipate that strangers would ask her. I covered all the bases I could think of. Creating a person is hard. This girl wasn’t Laura and I didn’t want to make her a funhouse version, so instead I gave her someone new to be.

I was broken from this whole night. I felt empty and loose in my skin, like I was a different creature, just living in this fleshy costume. A new me. Just like a new her. I reached for my cell phone when Laura was out of sight and called Natalie to come pick me up. I could barely stand, let alone walk out of this place.

When Natalie asked me what happened I told her it didn’t work. She was right. Laura’s still dead.

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Previously published in Harvest Time, an Inwood Indiana Publication, available for purchase here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1478101644