Sometimes wizards forget to do magic.
And that’s what makes it easier to eat them.
Because they’re human, really, no? Casters of charms, yes, but still bones and flesh. One snap of the neck away from gone.
Sofi sits atop a high charcoal gate, overlooking the Subang Jaya cityscape. She’s light, airy—the gate does not creak or move with her weight. A passing draft tosses her peach satin gown into a dainty dance with her waist-length hair.
The gate sits on a hill that gives quite the view of the dim, sunset-stained sky. Blueberry and lemon tones colliding ahead offer much reprieve from unsightly buildings brawling below, their lorongs barren and filled only with the fecal matter of stray cats.
She perches there pleasantly, her large conical ears as alert as charm-casters searching for something, anything at all that could resemble a breath of resistance.
The air in the alleyway beneath her shifts. A single molecule lost.
Slow footsteps ensue.
Slower. Tentative.
And then brisk.
Sofi points her toes downward like a ballet dancer and descends from the gate, soundless.
She hears the softest whisper: “Nur.” And then the alleyway lights up faintly. Shaky breaths crispen the cloddy footsteps as they come immediately one after the other.
Sofi shrinks back into the shadows, her spine pressed against the metal bars of an abandoned pawn shop. The grill digs into her back, but she doesn’t so much as wince. She needs to concentrate.
As the granite-tamping paces build momentum, Sofi calculates how much longer until she’ll be able to release herself. Five and a quarter seconds.
Four.
The light is coming closer.
Three. Sofi’s toes curl into the dirt. Just like how her Figures have taught her.
Two.
She springs forth and surges toward the figure at lightning speed, clapping both bony hands around its neck. It fits easily between her palms. Four deciseconds, and she tenses her own flesh and twists.
Cold skin and hands lock around her own neck. They press.
Sofi cannot breathe. She tries to gasp and it comes out a gurgle, air too thick a sludge to draw into her chest cavity.
Who the hell would do this?
Who would dare?
What kind of psychopa—
She turns and finds two ice black eyes staring at her. Brown skin over sharp teeth. Short hair in quilt-patched shades of brown that falls over long eyelashes. This being is shorter than her, and is clenching upward around her neck. They are also steadily extending their arm, holding her like a trophy after an award acceptance speech.
Sofi can’t die. But it doesn’t mean she cannot feel pain. But it isn’t even about that. She doesn’t care that she is being choked out of her mind. What concerns her is the audacity. The outrageously despicable confidence of this being. She could put an end to them right here where they stand, so why are they not running in fear?
The being—oh, she knows what this being is, it is just disgusting to have its name at the tip of her mind—robotically rotates their stick-straight arm and sets her down on the ground. In their other hand is the head of the skinny, hoodied person Sofi had pounced on. The eyes bulge, veiny and teary stress balls. The mouth shrieks a vibrant opera, deafened by the airtight seal of a pressing palm. The being brings the wizard’s throat to their chest. To Sofi’s absolute horror, the v—being snaps it.
Crack.
And that is all. And Sofi doesn’t even get to enjoy it, because she is somehow cemented to her spot on the ground, her feet unable to move. And she is fuming. Raging, and the air smells burnt. How dare this creature steal from her? She is starving.
And the creature wasn’t even looking at the wizard as they did it. They were looking straight at Sofi. Grave face shadowed by the hood of a raincoat.
Traitors.
Wouldn’t even look and enjoy the demise of their prey.
Sofi finally speaks: “WHO ARE YOU?!” Steam flies from her ears and nose—smoke, rather; black and billowy, unlike the lame gimmicks humans showed in their cartoons. Her skin is gaining a red glow as well, toes once soundless now a wash of noisy lava.
The creature lets out a soft, melodic sound. Short, but almost… Gentle. It makes Sofi’s soul go stiff. They remove the hood from above their head.
They are a woman. Bangs of cropped hair partially veil the small, crescent-shaped tattoo of womanhood on her right cheekbone. She has both soft and sharp traits; cheeks held round and full, shining white halves of teeth that rest between pale, parted lips. And again, she is significantly smaller than Sofi is. And her eyes are glistening. And she has just laughed. Her lips still bear the shadow of a curl.
Laughed.
And she does it again now, and Sofi’s nostrils flare, which is when she realizes her own facial expression has otherwise slackened, no longer tense like it was two moments ago. How uncomfortable. She frowns as hard as she can. “Who are you?” she growls deeply.
Human body still in hand, the eyes still open and lifeless, tears and drool dribbling down the chin, the creature approaches Sofi slowly, her steps—allegedly, impossibly—even lighter than Sofi’s had been. “You know,” her response is another ridiculous, songlike inflection, “you’re beautiful.”
“Who do you think you are.” Sofi can feel the nerves popping from her forehead as she strains to move. “Filthy vampire,” she spits.
“Ah.” The woman clicks her tongue. “Don’t dare compare us to those imbeciles.” She licks her lips and then raises the wizard head up by its neck. The gleam of her eyes spearing straight into Sofi, she opens her mouth wide, exposing long fangs along either side. Then she ducks her head and jams her face into the face before her. Blood spurts satisfyingly where her teeth sink into flesh. A crunch sounds where fangs crash through bone.
Sofi is seething with anger. That should be her. It should be her.
The woman soon straightens to acknowledge her again, wizard blood dripping from her chin, scarlet stippling her cupid’s bow. Her tongue laps up the liquid around her mouth, and she tilts her head, looking at Sofi in what seems like concern. “I’m sorry, darling. Would you also like some?”
Of course she did. But never like this. Never. “Of course not, you disgusting abomination.”
“I am a polong. Not a vampire. And you can starve then, chimera.” She waves her hand. Dips to sink her fangs into the arm of the wizard this time, sucking up blood with a loud, long slurp.
Sofi’s abdominal cavity makes swishing and popping sounds. Like embers crackling next to the sea. “How.” She strains to tear away from the invisible thumbtack that restricts her ankles. “Are. You. Doing this. RELEASE ME!” She bares teeth and snarls at the, okay, fine, polong. They’re all the same, anyway.
She is only met with another smirk. “It seems I am just more powerful than you right now, love.” Sluuuuurrrrp.
“I’ve been waiting all night for this. You traitors don’t even know how to savor your food. You savages.” Her throat is almost hoarse.
Polong takes a leisurely step closer to her, and their knees briefly touch. “Hmm.”
Suddenly, Sofi’s mouth has been hinged wide open. A limb of meat is between her teeth. Her jaw is being pulled down by the cold, cold fingers of the polong. Another hand is atop her head. Warm blood has spurted into her mouth from where her canines have cut through flesh.
Mm. In an instant, her eyes have involuntarily closed, and she feels her eyebrows relax, and she’s sucking the meat off the bone. Slowly, just how she likes to.
Mm. It has been five days… Five days since she’s had good food.
The hand on top of her thick head of hair is smoothing up and down; she is aware of it subconsciously. Her subconsciousness, as she drifts away, also hears soft utterances: “Shhhh. There you go, love. Eat, love. Eat.”
Oh, no.
Drifting away?
She is.
She is drifting.
She cannot open her eyes. It is as if they are super-glued shut. She cannot scream, growl, snarl. Her feet have long been hopeless.
She drifts. Attempts to resist.
She slips into the blackness.
* * *
Figures danced in front of her, elegantly kicking and spinning, twirling and tilting. Sofi felt the smile on her face as she watched.
This was what she wanted to be. Elegant and swift. Sofi pointed her toes and ground them into the carpet beneath her, mirroring the people on the other side of the glass.
Sometimes, she waved at them.
They didn’t respond.
They never had. One time, she had gotten a look. A long, long look. A Figure had abruptly swiveled her head toward Sofi, and she’d stared and stared and Sofi could see the veins in her eyeballs. And then, slowly, mechanically, the Figure turned back away.
Sofi had tried to wave to that Figure the next day. But she failed to catch her attention. It was as if she had never been seen at all.
It was fine. Normal. No one really talked to her, anyway. And it was okay. She was a chimera.
Sofi trudged off from the ballet studio and headed home.
She had no family.
No friends.
The Figures were the closest things to that. And they had never once spoken to her.
Chimera never travelled in packs. They were solo beings. And the best. They were far better than wizards. And vampires and polongs. In the hierarchy, vampires and polongs were beyond the lowest tier. Wizards deserved to be eaten, deserved to die, deserved everything terrible. Vampires and polongs were not wizards, but they were close to them.
They partnered with wizards. While knowing of the atrocious things that wizards did. They stood by the wizards as they captured and tortured other species. But that wasn’t the extent of it.
In a world run by wizards and vampires, to be a woman was to be a vampire. Wizards were men and vampires were women. Chimera and other species were thus, neither men nor women, which would have been just fine, except a world run by vampires and wizards required a worship of their structures. So those who did not want to associate with the standards of wizard men and resonated more with perceptions of vampire women marked themselves with a crescent. Except, ultimately, this was blasphemy anyway–a desecration to womanliness, which could only truly be donned by vampires. There was no way out, no way to appease. Chimera would never be vampire women, so they were targeted even further for their heresy, an endless, endlessly gruesome paradox. And vampires cosigned it.
It was wicked. Unforgivable.
Chimera were undoubtedly the strongest. A rare combination of wizard and vampire (usually the children of wizards and vampires were of either species), they didn’t need to obtain their power from an outside source like the rest of them.
They were naturally magical.
Chimera didn’t need to practice magic to be able to use it. They couldn’t easily die, like wizards. If they trained hard enough, only old age could kill them.
The wizards hated the more powerful. They wanted to be the strongest. And so they kept all challengers in chains.
How stupid.
One of the weakest creatures in existence could never defeat the strongest.
* * *
“Wake up, dear.” A soothing voice whispers in Sofi’s ear. She feels a gentle patting on her back.
Sofi’s eyes shoot open.
She is lying down, practically being cradled by Polong. The rim of a cup is pressed to her lips. A warm liquid flows down her throat.
The traitorous creature flashes a sinister grin that sends chills up her arms. The tips of sharp fangs poke past Polong’s lips, and Polong’s eyes seem nearly glassed over.
Sofi tries to move. She can.
She doesn’t waste any time.
She bites the vampire’s shoulder. Hard.
The venom should send her off for good.
“No!” Polong shouts. She winces in pain, to which Sofi smiles. “I wanted to…I wanted…”
Polong’s glassed-over eyes freeze in place, red scales protruding from their whites. She slumps against the wall behind her. Lies still as stone.
As Sofi makes to dust off her hands and run out—she isn’t going to eat vampire meat, bleh—she finally notices her surroundings. She is in a dimly lit space, on a rugged mat woven with colorful yarn. There is a bookshelf against the wall across from her, and a coffee table between them with yarn-woven sitting mats at its base. Atop the table are two serving plates.
Only now does Sofi smell it. The spices, the crispness.
She inches over to take a better look—and sniff. Each plate holds juicy, brown, peanut-sauced steak topped with diced greens, chili and fried tempeh on the sides. Her mouth instantly waters.
Her chest pangs faintly, now. She has killed the person who delectably cooked wizard meat for her.
Immediately, she curses herself for thinking in such a way. The vampires are disgusting. Disgusting, disgusting traitors.
She dives into the meal, not bothering with the water kendi.
She savors every single bite. The drips of sauce oozing down the rib baste her fingers and chin. The best of sparks dance across every crevice of her tongue.
It is so good.
Closing her eyes and tilting her head back, she groans in pleasure.
She turns to observe Polong, wondering how such a person became such a good cook. Never before has she had wizard steak that tasted like it was grilled at a five-star restaurant.
Polong still lies there, diagonally against the wall, empty-eyed and a patch of blood trickling lazily from her shoulder. Her jaw has fallen open wider now, and her tongue hangs out a little.
Polongs were originally tiny, tiny, cork-sized vampires. They had worked together with wizards just like the people-sized ones. And then, because they were so close, the wizards had formed a spell to make the polongs people-sized as a gift. They were still vampires all the same. Sofi rolls her eyes as she remembers how the creature had insisted she wasn’t one of them.
Sofi turns back to her plate. She has cleaned it completely. Immediately, she reaches for the plate opposite from her.
A steady smile creeps across her face as she considers how fortunate it is that she has killed Polong. She gets double the food now.
Closing her eyes again, she first sucks the sauce and marinade out of the flesh. This is the best part. Having it between her tongue and the roof of her mouth, flavors colliding with all her sensors.
Scrumptious.
She bites down and thinks that heaven could be nothing but this. If only she could kill off all wizards. If only she didn’t have to only go for amateurs who forgot to strengthen their neck charms by the end of the day. If only.
She opens her eyes and they dance the more she thinks about it. The smile jitters across her lips until her teeth show, her eyebrows point, her nostrils flare. Could she? She could do it.
She would kill off all the wizards.
Her nostrils flare larger, gaping in synchrony with her mouth, until both sets of gums protrude from between her lips. Her eyebrows point up like house roofs and her eyelids slope down, pulling at her forehead.
She licks her lips and slurps at them. Yes. Yes, she could do it.
The slurping makes her realize she is thirsty. She waggles her individual fingers and turns to look for the cup of wizard blood that Polong was feeding her earlier.
A pair of bulging, cracked eyes meet her face. Pale pink lips. Greenish-brown skin.
Polong tilts her head in timed, slow ticks as she stares at Sofi. They are a limb’s width apart from one other.
Every muscle puppeteering Sofi’s skull droops in unison.
Polong’s mouth stretches. Into a wide, wide, horizontal grin. Her eyes are alight, the whites engulfing the irises so that they are tiny in comparison to their pocky, ruptured background. Her pointed teeth dig into her bottom lip as she grins and grins.
And grins.
“What are you so frightened for, my dear?” She drastically slants her head in the other direction.
Sofi is now frozen again. She cannot move. Frankly, she cannot breathe.
The vampire reaches out for Sofi’s head and shoulder. Her wild smile spreads to her eyes, making them squint. Those eyes also start expelling a sticky discharge. She blinks it away. “You will come with me.”
And Sofi’s head is twisted round her own neck.
And there is a loud, loud crack.
* * *
Her back is very, very sore.
Next comes her shoulders. They could very well be fossilized in rock.
Her eyelids are unable to move at first. She struggles and struggles.
When they come apart at last, it is like finally unsealing an impossible jar after pulling for so long. They fly all the way open. It feels as though her lids have slung back and are glued down to her forehead and cheeks.
She turns her head round quickly.
And immediately regrets it.
It is as if her neck has cracked yet again. She hisses harshly, but her eyes remain just as wide.
Besides that, her nose has squished against a hard wall. It is cold and smells of wood.
She slowly rotates her head one way and back. Her enclosure is a four-walled case, the top uncovered.
Above, a head of brownish hair creeps over the case’s edge. Followed by upended eyebrows and swimming, soulful eyes.
“Oh, my God.” The woman bends directly over her and Sofi can see a droplet threatening to drip from her pupil. “Oh, my God.”
Everything hits Sofi at once.
She remembers the cell.
* * *
Sofi sobbed as she heard the footsteps rushing for her darkened chamber. She put down her worn, torn book of witch tales and braced herself.
They had kept her here, one meal a day, ever since she was the size of her stuffed chimera doll.
Sofi had been dreading this day. They all had. Their twenty-second birthdays would all go this way. They were to be extinguished to make room for new captives.
But she had been ready.
She could make herself immune to it.
Fantastical chimera didn’t exist here, but other magic did. This kind just needed sacrifice.
The spells section of the book at her feet had led her to the guard at the back of the building. All she’d needed was a bite.
And she had gotten it.
And several more, as insurance.
She had made herself immune to her impending doom.
And she had loved it.
Once woman has had her fill
Man’s demise shall grant her will
To forget this dimension beyond its drapes
In an afterlife her own mind shapes
She turned to her left. To her decade-long cellmate, Ruby. “It’s time. It’s time,” she whispered.
She looked briefly around the room. At the rug in the center, where they would sit and lie as Sofi told Ruby about mystical creatures and the mythical lands; the lands of vampires and wizards and polongs and chimeras. Where Ruby would serve her roasted meat from the trays that were slid underneath the door; Ruby would secretly start a fire and recook the cold substance.
She glanced toward the corner where the stone floor had been ground smooth as marble under Sofi’s spinning and twirling toes. She would ball up the tips of her feet in socks when she practiced. Many a time had Ruby helped her balance.
Sofi didn’t know what exactly would happen after this. But she couldn’t wait. Couldn’t wait to leave.
She noticed Ruby shaking. Her eyes wide, nearly watering.
She didn’t want to see Ruby’s eyes water ever again. She couldn’t wait.
They busted through the door. They strangled Sofi. She choked. Wrist bones digging into her throat.
She eyed Ruby and smiled. “Go on.”
Ruby’s eyes swelled even wider. A gruff man’s voice sounded from beyond the door. Sofi could recognize that voice anywhere. Hatred redder than anything she had ever felt filled her heart each time she heard it.
“Father…” Ruby’s voice was still shaky.
Ruby’s father made his way to his daughter. “You will come with me.”
Sofi’s vision neared fading to black as arms suffocated her. She did her best to maintain eye contact with Ruby.
All her cellmate needed to do was take a bite now.
Take a bite out of whomever, Sofi didn’t care. The spell would activate. And their last breath would be shared at midnight, a gateway to freedom.
But as Sofi’s eyes closed, she heard six words booming. And she saw Ruby’s blurry figure stiff and still standing.
“You are released into the palace.”
* * *
Sofi stares at Ruby. Polong.
She is not Polong anymore.
And Sofi is no longer in a small Subang apartment on a hilltop.
She has painfully sat up. And she has had a minute to remember. She swallows.
“You didn’t do it.” Her voice is so scratchy, claws could be scraping at rough granite. She hacks up a load of saliva and it falls between her legs. It is besides the fact that she has practically spat the sentence out to Ruby.
“I’m so sorry.”
If Sofi were a chimera, she would have billows of smoke escaping her ears and nose.
Sofi had gone to an afterlife where she could be free. And she had been. But she had also been…alone. Again.
“You didn’t…you didn’t…” Sofi now looks down at her hands. Red, thick veins can be seen beneath her dark skin. When she closes her fists, rotted flakes fall into her lap.
“You’re here.” Two palms grab at the sides of her cheeks. They are scorching hot. “You’re here.”
“I’m…I’m...” The scratchy, monster-like voice comes back; an involuntary snarl.
She is here. She is back.
How is she back? How has she gotten here?
She isn’t back in her prison cell, exactly. But even if she isn’t in the place where they locked up every crescent-marked woman, she is still somewhere within the palace’s holds. She may very well be right next to Ruby’s father’s room.
Traitor.
She had gone through it all with Ruby. Everything. And Ruby had left her for their own imprisoners. She was just like the palace wives.
Ruby now brushes Sofi’s straggly, hay-like hair from her face and pushes her thumbs into Sofi’s cheekbones. “I did it. I followed the book. I got to where you were.”
Sofi looks at Ruby. Ruby has always been this way. Headstrong. Determined.
“Except when you betrayed us,” she scratched, continuing her thoughts aloud.
“Sofi,” Ruby whispers. Sofi’s heart nearly shatters at this. It has been so long since she last heard Ruby utter the syllables. “Polongs. Polongs are slaves.”
Sofi’s eyelids, which are in the process of flittering away chunks of crust, stop in place.
“Polongs were secretly slaves to the wizards.” Ruby rolls a piece of stick-like hair behind Sofi’s ear. “Their small size…the wizards did it to control them.”
Sofi stares at Ruby for a long time.
“They changed them back to their normal size and fooled them into thinking it was freedom. But they really only did it to control them at a closer proximity.” Ruby’s voice is barely a sound.
Sofi extends her tongue and catches flakes from her dry, chalk-dust lips. She swallows again.
“Death freed me,” she says.
Ruby rubs her thumb back and forth. “We will take back our life. Here. Not in the spellbound dimension. I…I thought I might just stay with you there. But as it turns out, you wouldn’t remember me. I had to bring you back.”
If Sofi has breath, it just about leaves her as she realizes something. “You…you did the spell to get to me…and the one to bring me back. All while being alive.”
Ruby nods, her lips spreading into something almost sly. “Thirty. Thirty bodies.”
Abrupt running can be heard from outside the room.
Aggressive knocks pummel upon the door.
“Get out and get down now. Creature of filth.”
Ruby looks Sofi deep in the eye and slowly licks her lips.
The door bangs open. A soldier stands in the barrier.
A hand runs across the back of Sofi’s head and a hot cheek is pressed briefly to her forehead.
Ruby turns and sneers at the soldier.
She looks back at Sofi.
“Eat, love.”
Teeth sink into a cheekbone, hand clamped over a mouth.
Ruby looks up, red running down her chin. Sofi has climbed out of the coffin.
Another soldier is running up behind Ruby.
Sofi leaps on him, depositing her canines into the chin.
Mm.
It’s so good.
They sit together, snacking. Polong presses a red-stained kiss to Chimera’s cheek.
Barakah Shakoor (she/he) is a graduating English Language and Linguistics major at the University of Malaya. She has co-edited The Kelayek Den, a middle-grade Malaysian folklore book to be published by University of Malaya Press. She writes fiction and poetry that represent her Black and Southeast Asian heritage, her most recent project being a queer college romance novel. You can find her on Instagram at akabarakah.