The Wolf at the Door

I found it in a muddy hole in an old redwood grove. Who knew how long it had been down there. Its fur was matted and it was ghostly thin. It didn’t look much like a coyote at all, but something almost reptilian: a living fossil dug up near an old hiking trail in Henry Cowell Redwood State Park. I pulled it gently from the hole and carried it back to my car, where it laid quietly in the backseat the entire drive back into the city. I looked back in the rearview mirror a few times, and thought I caught it staring out of the window and up at the moon. At last, when I parked the car, I carried it silently up the steps and into the crooked Victorian. 

“What trouble you must’ve gotten yourself into,” I said as I drew the bath. I had swaddled it in a towel and laid it on the bath mat. “We’ll get you cleaned up.”  And I did. I gave it a bath in the clawfoot tub. The silence between us was amplified by the groaning of the pipes. The white porcelain amplified the black water. Every so often, the coyote would pull its head away from me to face the small window above the toilet. 

After the bath, I dried it off and brushed out its fur, paying close attention to its pain. Once it was clean, I dressed the wound on its hip and laid it down to sleep on a crushed velvet chaise lounge in the fainting room.  Built-in shelves filled with books lined the walls. The books spilled off onto the floor where they piled up like paper stalagmites, towering up to the ceiling, blocking the windows and vents. In so many ways this room was like a cave, but in so many ways these books made it home. 

“This is the safest room in the house,” I said.  “You’re so lucky I found you.”

* * *

The following morning, the coyote was gone. When I opened the doors to the fainting room, a man was lying in its place, naked on the chaise. My immediate reaction was to flee, but then I saw the bandage on his hip so I made him some breakfast and put on a pot of coffee. 

 “You must be hungry,” I said, waking him. 

 He turned and looked at me with deep silver eyes and, seeing the clothes in my hand, he took them from me. With little assistance, he dressed himself. 

 I helped him walk to the kitchen and helped him in his seat. Then, the two of us ate in silence. He picked up the coffee mug with his fists and blinked wildly as he slowly brought the steaming cup to his face. He took a loud slurp and then winced at its bitterness. 

 “Here,” I said. “try this.” I stirred some milk and sugar into his mug. He looked at it, then up at me and then back down, as if I had performed some act of sorcery in front of him. 

 I inched it forward in front of him like I may have put a saucer of cream in front of a kitten. 

 Apprehensively, he lifted the mug with his fists and took another sip. This time, his eyes widened and he licked his lips fervently. He took another long dram. 

“Careful,” I said. “You’ll burn yourself.” 

He continued to drink. 

 “Here,” I said. I got up and took his hands in mine. “Like this.”   I opened his hands so that his palms held the cup as if he was catching a large moth. His hands were cold beneath mine but, together, we felt the warmth inside the cup. 

As the evening waned, we took to the living room and sat by the fire. I made us some tea and I read a book. He looked at me curiously from the threshold of the doorway and I beckoned him to join me on the sofa. He slowly made his way over, his balance having improved greatly from that morning. It seemed he could put more weight on his right leg. 

“It’s a book,” I said. I flipped through it. “These are pages. Each page has these markings called letters, and when you put the letters in different orders they tell different stories.” I read to him for a little while but soon he was tired, so I helped him into the fainting room and bid him goodnight. It must have been a long and challenging day for him. 

* * *

I laid in bed unable to sleep. The moon was just above the rooftops outside my small bay window and it called out to be adored. Bright and full and silver. I’ve always felt a coldness from the moon--not of malice, but of loneliness, with not even an atmosphere to hold it close. All it had was the light of the sun as it walked away, and it shined it back down towards the earth, lamenting, love me, love me, love me. But I felt a weight from the moon then, and I caught myself shying away from it quite a few times. 

“It’s just the moon,” I said to myself, but I was not entirely sure I hadn’t already allowed it to become something else. 

* * *

I made a small breakfast. A French omelet with lox and capers, raspberries with cottage cheese, grapefruit juice and, of course, coffee. I stirred milk and sugar into his coffee and, as I placed the mug on the table, he entered the room. 

“Smells delicious,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, and sat down. 

We ate.

“Your English is impressive,” I said. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

“How did you learn so quickly?” I asked. 

“I helped myself to the books in my room.” 

My room, he said. It had a wonderful ring to it. 

“All of them?”

He nodded, and said, “I hope you don’t mind.” 

“Of course not,” I said. “They’re there to be read. I’m glad someone is making use of them.”

“Have you read them all?” 

“Most of them. Over the years. They’ve been good company in this old house. I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I could read that many in one sitting.” 

“I guess time is different for me.” 

“And who are you?” I asked.

“I’m whatever I need to be. When I read Salinger, I was Caulfield. When I read Oscar Wilde, I was Dorian Grey. When I was in the woods, I was a coyote. And while I’m here...” He let his sentence die there. 

“Have you ever been a man before?”

“I can’t say. My memory isn’t bound to linear limitation or circumstance. It’s a pool not a bank. I remember only what I need to remember.” 

“Where did you come from?” I asked, pouring more coffee. 

“I was born out of necessity,” he said. 

“Whose?” 

“I don’t need to know.” 

“Does that not matter?”

“I suppose not, as long as the need is met.”

“And what need is that?”

“That’s not for me to say. I am a map, not a guide.” 

“Well. I’m glad you’re here. I haven’t had many visitors. I can’t even remember the last time I set the table for two.” That wasn’t entirely true. I could remember the last time, and the time before that--I just preferred not to. 

He did not respond.

“Are you saying you need to be here?” I asked shyly. 

“I needed to be found, yes,” he said. “The necessity beyond that isn’t mine to know.” 

* * *

“Do you have a name?” I asked. The fire was dwindling so I placed another log on it. It had taken me a while to summon the courage to ask for his name. I feared there wouldn’t be a need to tell me. We were on opposite sides of the sofa. 

 “I’ve had several, but I don’t remember any of them.” 

 “What can I call you?”

 “Whatever you need to.” 

 The fire grew and soon we were cast in amber.

* * *

The moon seemed to listen outside my bay window. I had never noticed how clear a view I had of its arc. It rose and set right outside my window as if for me alone, as if I was all alone on this peninsula. And hadn't that been true in so many ways for so long? The moon listened, but what did it think? Did the moon sense the same coldness from me that I had felt from it? Did the moon pity me? I looked out at the moon as if it would confirm my intuition. It did not. It just hung lazily in the velvet night. 

I see you, it may have said, we are not so different, you and me. We go round and round. For what... for who...? 

I crept out of bed and down the long, tall hall, towards the fainting room. I rested my ear against the door. Total silence. Had I expected something else? I wasn’t sure. I marveled at what could be on the other side of the door. What form did the specimen I found in the forest take now? What did it become when it slept, when we are all at our most vulnerable? I imagined him not only reading the books on the shelves, but becoming them: being whatever was needed of him. His elusiveness and mystery were as alluring as his beauty. And he was beautiful. The beauty in him was beyond physical, it was the kind of beauty that moved. He was performance art. 

I placed my hand on the knob, wanting to go inside and lie with him on the chaise, to wrap my arm around him and let him know that he was safe and that he would remain safe. To be with him. To love him. To call him what I needed to call him. 

I decided to let him sleep. 

* * *

I grew fond of cooking for him and serving him. Whenever he ate, it was as if he was tasting everything for the first time. I would tuck a napkin under the collar of his shirt, place the plate in front of him, and he would eat with such pure unadulterated joy that it made me resentful. I thought maybe I lacked a certain capability to appreciate anything so simply and fully. 

He laughed at all of my jokes. He had never heard one before. 

I taught him how to tend the fire and we would talk while it burned. 

“What is it that you need?” I asked him one night. 

“I don’t need,” he said. “I am.” 

“If you fulfill every other need, who fulfills yours?” 

He looked at me, blinked, and then tended the fire. Afterwards, I would help him to bed on the chaise, leaving him to his solitude and his books. Then I would make the long, lonely walk to my room. 

* * *

“Are you real?” I asked him. 

“What is real?” he asked, poking the fire.

I didn’t know how to answer that. 

* * *

The hall seemed to get longer and longer each night. It became harder and harder to say goodbye and goodnight. And every night, there, at the hall’s end, gleaming brightly in the crooked bay window, the moon appeared. A voyeur, an un-welcomed spectator. 

“What do you want?” I asked it. “I’ve done nothing wrong.” 

The moon, of course, said nothing. 

I scoffed and shied away from it, turning over in the bed. 

But its luster filled the room with mythical blue light and it became inescapable. My bedroom door was open and light shone brightly on the door of the fainting room. What would he say if I asked him to follow me one night, to share my bed? Even if he slept at the foot, like a loyal but well loved pet could I reduce him to that? Was I such a slave to my own needs? 

Sirens rolled through the streets of the city, sounding like a pack of howling wolves. 

* * *

“You’re healing nicely,” I said one night as I changed the bandage on his hip. I must confess, I was not entirely forthcoming with him. He wasn’t healing nicely, he had healed nicely. Was that a lie or semantics? I felt manipulative and I felt ashamed. But was I not vindicated? Did he not say he was here to fill a need, and whose could it be besides my own? 

Admittedly, I was afraid. Afraid that when he was able, he would leave like the other men in my life had, leave me to my single table settings, and all those books that filled my head but not my heart. And hadn’t I waited long enough? Didn’t I deserve to sit on the couch while someone poked the fire, to love someone so simply and so fully? 

I peered out of the window and searched for the moon. It was not there. So I put a fresh bandage on his hip. 

* * *

The moon came to me in a dream. I was in a small, wooden rowboat on a still lake. The sky was full of stars. Stretched across it were eight moons, one for each of its phases. They bowed above me like a threshold. In the water, they bowed beneath me like a cradle. One by one, each moon was pulled into the water like white balloons tied to strings where they came together as one bright light in the front of the dinghy and spoke to me. When it was done, the light turned into the lure of a giant angler fish and swallowed the boat whole. 

* * *

So, one night, after I bid him goodnight in the fainting room, I closed the door behind me and locked it. I turned back and spoke to him through the door.

“The moon is looking for you,” I said flatly. “They want to take you from me. I don’t know how I know, but I do. I can feel it.”

“You know because you need to know.” 

“Why would they want to take you from me?”

He paused, and then said, “She is my mother.” His voice was muffled from behind the door.  I knelt and peered through the brass keyhole. I saw the chaise and the bookshelves, but nothing else. 

“Your mother?” I asked the empty room. 

“Yes,” he said. The voice came from behind me but, when I turned around, there was nothing there. I looked back into the fainting room.  It had lit up with moonlight. “She is calling me home.” 

“You are home,” I said. “I saved you.”

“I can never be saved, because I can never be in danger. I can only be what I need to be.” 

“You tricked me?” I clenched my fists. 

“If that's what is needed of me.” 

“How could you do that?” I asked. 

“I don’t concern myself with how.”

“You said you knew what I needed. You said I could call you whatever I needed to. Don’t you know what you are, what I need to call you? You are Mine.” I banged on the door of the fainting room. “You’re mine, you’re mine, you’re mine.” I was inconsolable. I was ferocious and helpless. I was a wolf at the door. 

At long last, I loosened my fists, and they fell limp and red at my sides. 

Neither of us spoke for a long time. 

Then I said, a little solemnly, “What are you, really?”

“Many things,” he said. “I am a conduit. I am a construct.” 

I looked through the keyhole again and saw only the many faces hidden in the moon.

“And right now,” he said, “I am a mirror.” 

Water began to pool out from underneath the door. It filled the apartment, climbing up the wainscoting of the hallway like the ocean in the sinking Titanic. In a moment's time, it was at my waist. 

And then, as if summoned, a small rowboat floated silently down the long hall. 

“Is this a dream?” I asked. 

It floated in front of me and I stepped inside. Ahead, the hallway stretched on and the boat floated effortlessly and seamlessly down the corridor. At last, it came upon the door of the fainting room which stood open, a trail of open books bobbing up and down in the water. A cushion from the chaise floated past. And there, in the corner… 

“No no no no no no no.” 

...a coyote. 

I used the oars to row to it. I pulled its limp body into the boat. He was cold and wet just like I had found him. Then, all at once, the walls fell away and we were floating alone in an ocean of nothingness, with no light from the moon. 

We drifted on the surface of my loneliness. The water lapped at the boat. I held him in my arms and wept. He was a mirror, and in it I saw my unwillingness to compromise. The “water” I had filled my life with, once considered to be a mote, had grown so immensely that I was now on an island of isolation, cast indifferently on the shore by my own stubbornness. I was not a slave to my needs but to my insecurities. I had denied my needs, drowned them, and reduced them to nothing more than a dead dog. 

The moon rose, a blood orange over the vast horizon.  As it climbed higher into the sky, it called the boat home. 

* * *

I carried his body up one of the many dark and hidden staircases of San Francisco to the Mount Sutro Open Space Reserve. The fog was glowing. The eucalyptus trees stood tall and still. I followed the moon to a small clearing at the end of a path. 

I knew because I needed to know. 

I laid him down, his body wrapped in a shroud I had sewn from the pages of the books from the fainting room and resisted the urge to open it. I didn’t want to know what else he needed to be. I wanted to remember only what I needed him to be: a companion, a stranger, a teacher. 

I dug a small hole with my hands. I knew it was crucial to feel the earth against my skin, to allow it to collect and then rest in the beds of my nails. It was ceremonial. The ground was an altar, the moon was an idol, the trees a clergy. I felt the weight of their stares as I laid him in the ground, whole and at peace. 

The moon did not follow me home.

ANTHONY RAYMOND (he/him) works as an organ donation coordinator in San Francisco where he lives with his husband, along with their cat and dog. His poetry has been featured in Poet’s Choice.

You Can't Grow Corn on the Moon

Nina smelled like cow shit. Her boots were caked in it up to the cuffs of her jeans. She could never smoke enough on the regulated fifteen-minute breaks to get the scent of it out of her nose, her mouth. All-permeating. She was sure she should have been used to it, but the chemical stench of the waste that passed through the intestines of the creatures and onto the floors of the slaughterhouse burned the lining of Nina’s nostrils until she was leaking snot into the rivulet of her upper lip. Every fucking day.

Ten years, and Nina still wasn’t used to the shit. Well, the shit and the screaming. No. Not screaming. Cows didn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, scream. They made a noise somewhere in the bottom of their fourth stomach that oozed out of their body like their bile. Nina adjusted her mask, adjusted the stun gun, and closed her eyes for a moment when the solid metal rod emerged from the barrel in her hands like a scorpion striking, shaking the skull and stunting any brain processes of the shitting thing in front of her. The animal stood paralyzed in the mechanical grip of the squeeze chute, spit streaming from its lips, froth dripping from its snout. There was a moment of stillness before the animal was shuttled down the line, and then slit open with unremarkable efficiency. Above her head a whistle blew, a shriek loud enough to be heard over the radio and constant chatter from the butchers’ stations. Nina’s job, perched in the stun box, was a solitary operation. She placed the tool in its designated hold and climbed down, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

“Hey, Nina!” Manuel approached with a wide grin, cap already off, his hands pale and sweaty from his latex gloves. His voice carried over the sound of his co-workers cleaning up their stations. “You going to the info session?”

“That one in Sul Ross tonight? What the hell would I do that for?” Nina took her mask off.

Behind them, climbing up into the stun box for the swing shift, Tom put his own mask on. “Innovations in Martian food sourcing.” He was quoting the pamphlets left strewn around the break room the week before. His accent, which Nina knew was Midwestern but not specific to any state, made the slogans from the Martian Habitation Foundation propaganda sound the way Nina was sure it was intended to: like a farmer in a TV commercial. “It’s the future.” Tom was squaring up to receive the next cow, intently focused on its eyes.

“The hell it is.” Nina looked away. It was against her principles these days to watch an execution without getting paid for it. “That’s the same shit they been saying since they got folks on the moon.”

“How would you know? You’re old, but you’re not ancient.” Manuel rolled his eyes hugely as he held the exit door open, nodding at Nina to pass through with him. Nina obeyed, walked ahead, trying not to breathe through her nose.

There was a single locker room in the slaughterhouse. Instead of creating a new women’s space, the company had decided, several years ago in a petulant fit after the state finally started forcing the plant to recognize Nina’s new legal birth certificate, that the cheaper option was to add a toilet stall and declare the space “unisex.” It was decorated with grim posters reminding employees that sexual harassment was both bad for workplace morale and illegal, in that order. Nina and Manuel changed side-by-side, looking anywhere but at each other as their conversation continued.

“My mother’s father was one of the first moon farmers,” Nina said, pulling her sweat-stained shirt off before shoving it into the aluminum locker. “They said the same shit about the future of food whatever then, too.”

“They did pretty well up there for a while.” Manuel took his boots and socks off and slipped his wide, pale feet into sandals. “I mean, yeah, their soil viability predictions weren’t, you know, one-hundred-percent accurate to say the least, but they still got a water purifier up there. I read about it. It’s different, on Mars.”

“The hell it is.” Nina hung her apron on the hook in her locker. It was limp. It didn’t fight back. She could hear the screaming from the other side of the wall. Not screaming, not screaming, they’re goddam cows. Tom’s voice, muffled by the walls, a command to fire. The sound of a gunshot that made both Nina and Manuel jump for a moment. “Fuck.”

“That’s the worst part of this job.” Manuel grabbed his empty lunchbox. “When people fuck up the stunning.” His face, when Nina looked at him, was serious. “Apparently it’s easier on animals up there, you know. Because they don’t get the same oxygen tanks the people do. So it’s easier. Nobody has to have a gun.”

Wishful thinking if Nina had ever heard it. She remembered her grandfather’s corpse in the burial pod they sent him home in, how black the hands had been, how white the nails were, save for the dusty, grey dirt below them. Earth, Nina’s father had called it, look at the earth under his nails. But it wasn’t funny because a man was dead and it wasn’t really ironic, either, no matter how many times Nina’s father would later insist it was. Because he had died on the Moon, get it? The corpse’s face had been covered in a black bag sealed tight around the neck. The plum-dark pigmentation that occurred from sudden de-stabilization on the Moon was acceptable for extremities only. It was inappropriate to show the head of a man when it was such an ugly color, dark like the void that had suffocated him when the terradome had cracked and sucked the oxygen from the farmers in a single deep inhalation.

“I’m telling you,” Nina said, though she doubted Manuel was really listening. “It ain’t no different anywhere up there. Whatever you read is a lie.”

Manuel looked offended, like Nina had smacked him, and Nina did feel bad about it for a moment. It wasn’t a secret how much Manuel had been reading. If anything, it was a fact that inspired both admiration, both real and grudging, amongst the butchers. Manuel’s exploits were well known: searching through history books at the public library, hitch-hiking to El Paso to talk to an old man who had been one of the Lunar Terraforming engineers. For a boy who hadn’t bothered to graduate from the only high-school in a twenty-six-mile radius, Manuel was notoriously determined to learn.

There was a short, cold laugh from the other side of the row of lockers, and then again as a man rounded the corner. Nina didn’t turn to face the source. She tucked her clean shirt into her jeans hastily and grabbed her hat, wishing she had sandals like Manuel so she could slip them on and make a quick exit.

“No difference anywhere? Our resident existentialist.”

Daniel Everly was standing in the doorway that separated the locker from the break room. His shirt, splattered with blood like a knock-off Pollack, was unbuttoned to his sternum revealing tightly wound muscles, thick veins, a prison tattoo. Also from prison: an inflated sense of his vocabulary. He’d read the dictionary, he claimed. But Nina suspected he had, in fact, read half the dictionary because around the time that Daniel got to words that started with “m” he lost his touch and was reduced to the same flatland insults as his co-workers.

“You know what you just said doesn’t make sense, jackass.” Nina tied her boots tight, watching him from the corner of her eye. Daniel had been around for five years, had known about her for just as long and never made much of it, but Nina still got the impression he was maybe waiting to hatecrime her. He wouldn’t need a reason. He was an offal sorter, he got his hands in guts and enjoyed it and Nina had known enough of those sorts of men in her life.

Manuel moved, subtly but directly, between them. “You going to the info session, Dan?” He was grinning, the smile of a 19-year-old set on going to space, the smile of a man intentionally creating distance.

“Of course I am. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Daniel lit a cigarette. His hands, like Manuel’s, were pale and cracked. Hours of sweating in plastic left the butchers with red, flaking skin. “Better than this shit, huh?” He exhaled smoke into the air around them.

“There are better ways to leave a job than to go to Mars and do the same work you’ve been doin’ here.” Nina pulled her hat down, prepared to make an exit. “I hear they’re looking for wind farmers up north.”

Daniel laughed. “As though I’d want to go live in a work camp and hook up wires with the androids in Montana.” He said the name of the state like he’d bitten into something sour. Like the arrogant son-of-a-bitch wasn’t from Idaho.

“Hey, you got a car, right, Dan?” Manuel had followed Nina, but paused in the doorway, weighing the benefits getting a ride from his co-worker. “Take me to Sul Ross for the Mars presentation?”

“Only if Nina agrees to come.” Daniel extinguished his cigarette on the floor, grinding his heel against the concrete, fixing Nina with a smile that said ‘crush this kid’s dreams, bitch’ and knowing that her refusal wasn’t going to happen. “Getting out once in a while is good for old men, right?”

Nina ignored the insult, small enough that she could reasonably pretend not to have noticed. “Fine.” What was the difference, really? It had been a long time since she’d spoken to the recruiters. At just past forty, Nina had defied the odds about life expectancy both for deep-space travel and trans women. Whoever had recruited her when she was nineteen wouldn’t remember, would have retired, or would have died. She followed Manuel to Daniel’s truck, sat in the back, and watched the harvest plant disappear behind the bend, blend into the dry brown arms of the Davis Mountains.

“Don’t worry,” Daniel said, his eyes appearing in the rear-view mirror, hoping to catch Nina’s. “I’ll drive ya’ll back, too. I’m not gonna leave you stranded before work.”

“Yeah?” Nina accepted a cigarette from Manuel as Daniel drove them out of the mountains and on to TX-118. “That’s big of you.”

“I’m not heartless.” He looked at her for a moment longer before returning his sight to the road. Whatever he wanted, Nina wasn’t sure she was feeling up to giving it to him.

The auditorium at Sul Ross sat on the highest hill in the valley between the mountains. When Nina had been young, the lights from the university’s football stadium had flooded the roads, brightening the surrounding three blocks around the university compound. But there were restrictions about that, now. Rations of electricity, water, cooling, all went to the slaughterhouse and the hospital. Even the hotel rooms on E Ave East, and the lots full of cars with out-of-state and Mexican license plates were dark, though Nina could see human shapes in some of the windows. Like ghosts. Nina quickly looked away, and Daniel pulled his truck into the parking lot of the Dollar General. “I’m not fucking with paying an entry ticket to park for a free event.”

“Yeah, they ought to be paying us.” Manuel laughed, but there was a seriousness and nervousness in his face that Nina knew. In his mind, he must have already been in a rocket, waiting for the impact of passing through the atmosphere, waiting for the mask over his face that would place him in a dreamless sleep until arrival on Mars.

The Mars Inc. recruiter looked nearly identical to the one Nina had met twenty years ago. In a dark red uniform, holding his bright white hat to his chest while explaining the benefits and very minor risks of a space mission, framed by an oversized picture of a reinforced terradome behind him on a PowerPoint, the recruiter may as well have stepped out of a poster from any time in the past fifty years. Even before the Sovereign Colonies Initiative reached Mars, before they had purified the planet, they dressed in colors suited to their ambitions. Nina wanted to respect them for it. But, hidden in the darkness, she could see the way the recruitment assistants looked at Manuel, sitting in the front row. Like coyotes in heat circling a lured-out dog.

“Hey, what the hell’s your problem anyway?” Daniel stood next to Nina in the back of the auditorium, both pressed against the wall, smoking despite the signs that strictly commanded them not to in both English and Spanish.

Nina looked away from the recruiters. “I thought you knew. You’ve been plenty fucking nosy about me.” She didn’t look at him when she said it, not ready to turn her accusation into a fight. Instead, she watched the slide wipes in the PowerPoint and tried not to read the words. “I was on Mars when I was younger. They clear your debts, you know. They always have.”

“You’re not a well-kept secret, little lady.” Daniel crossed his arms, cigarette hanging from his lips like he was an old-fashioned cowboy.

“I never tried to be a secret.” That’s a lie, of course, but she gave up trying to be a secret years ago. It would have meant leaving Alpine, fighting some other state court to recognize her documents, hiding. What was the point? She would have been trans wherever she went, why bother trying to wrap it up like it wasn’t a whole thing?

A man in the audience turned back to look at them, glaring, a middle finger pressed against his lips for a moment before hissing, “Shut the fuck up.”

“You shut the fuck up,” Daniel replied, pretense of an indoor voice dropped.

“Jesus…” Nina covered her face with her hat and dropped her cigarette on the floor, stomping it out with the heel of her shit-crusted boot. “Let’s just go outside.”

The summer air was warm on their faces, a breeze sucking any moisture away down to the border. Daniel pulled himself into the bed of his truck, nestling up to the back. “Shit, I think I’m gonna go with Manuel, Nina. Adventure. Change of scenery.” He emphasized the words like he was trying to believe in them. “New job, you know.”

Nina sat on the edge of the flatbed, her feet dangling over the side, knocking against the tire in a dull, repetitive rhythm, the kind she tried to get into at work. “You’ll never go outside again. It’s too dangerous, up there.”

“Am I gonna find some armed and enraged natives?” Daniel asked, laughing hugely, until he saw that Nina wasn’t so much as half-smiling. “Come on. I didn’t think the stories were true.”

“About Martians? Nah.” Nina lay back on the metal and looked up at the stars, tracing the constellations with her fingertips. There were no Martians. There were no space slugs. There were no diseases that turned a man’s skin to stone. There were no beautiful alien women waiting like a promised afterlife. There was only an ocean of emptiness on all sides, threatening to drown out the life of everything around it. Nina struggled to find the words to explain this in a way that would matter to Daniel. “There’s no hope out there, though. The ground’s poison. Go for weeks without good rations.”

Because it had been the hunger that was overwhelming. The hunger and the darkness. No amount of artificial sunlight could repair the situation. The soldiers and their charges had withered under the force of it. Reports of cannibalism from the first mission had been grotesque. Reports of madness from the second mission had been horrific. Reports of suicide from the third mission had been disheartening. But the fourth time would be the charm. That’s what the men in dark red uniforms had told security-recruit Nina, barely nineteen and fresh in the service, anyway. And Nina, never the best at math, had believed the odds were good. Better than what they were going to be if she stayed on Earth, anyway. Nina, never the best at math, could still count to five: the number of colonists she had been forced to put down. The number of colonists screaming at the blackness, sick from toxins in the soil that had infected the wheat, miserable, disoriented, in pain and so afraid.

You are making a difference, making the planet safe and habitable, the recruiters had said to Nina. You are the first line of defense and offense in this expedition. And to the colonists, You will have the chance to live an authentic and meaningful life in a new, exciting place. And that was what appealed to her most. The idea that there was a place she could go to live authentically. Like she couldn’t have done that on Earth.

Daniel popped his knuckles and shrugged, the dismissal of a man young enough to believe in the best and old enough to temper that confidence with rationalizations, “It’s been, what, twenty years since you were there?”

“Twenty-three.” Nineteen had been a good age to go adventuring, a good age to be in debt and afraid. A good age to start a new life. A good age to have aspirations worth crushing.

There was a lingering moment of silence, the hot breeze tinged with the smell of road-repair plastics. “You were up there when people got the mad-Martian rot, weren’t you?”

“Cyanotoxin poisoning,” Nina corrected him. That didn’t mean anything to her, technically. But that was what the newspapers had called it when they ran their headlines: Fourth Expedition Suffers Setbacks: Cyanotoxins Destabilize Crops to Fatal Effect.

“I hear nobody gets that anymore.” Daniel spoke quickly, but he couldn’t get his face to unstick from an anxious expression.

“Go to Mars, then, if you’re so sure.” Nina closed her eyes while the applause from the auditorium leaked into the parking lot. Would Manuel find what he needed up there? Nina doubted it. There wasn’t a thing that Mars could provide that Earth couldn’t. She moved her fingertips lazily in the air, tracing empty shapes, circling a distant, glowing planet and reaching beyond into the navy blue of the evening.

* * *

Manuel’s replacement was a woman named Sierra. She was sturdy and strong, strong enough to do her job at least – hooking the dead cows up to the racks that would send them down Daniel’s way, or what used to be Daniel’s way. Nina didn’t know who replaced Daniel. She doubted that they were a woman, whoever they were. Sierra’s hiring was a surprise, to say the least.

Sierra didn’t smile. She was silent at lunch, silent in the break room, and she didn’t smoke. She had dark eyes and watched Nina curiously, like the concept of her existence was a new idea.

For three months, Sierra had been working with her and said nothing, just stared, unblinking, a shadow who took lunches at the same time as Nina, who changed in the locker room right next to her, the corner of her eyes searching Nina’s body for some kind of sign.

They ate lunch together, mostly. Sierra’s was always the same: two peanut butter sandwiches and a fruit cup. She ate these while looking at Nina out of the corner of her eyes, face strained like she was holding in something secret that she needed to share. It was starting to drive Nina crazy, frankly. If Sierra was holding in an insult, she ought to just come out and say it. If Sierra was trans, too, which Nina tried never to assume, it would be better for both of them to be honest with each other.

 Finally, on a lunch break, Nina asked: “Is there something you need to know?”

“I just…” Sierra hesitated, stabbed at the fruit in the cup with the wooden spoon that accompanied it, “Were you Nick Wells? From the Fourth Expedition?”

Nina flinched, but at least Sierra was being direct. It wasn’t like it was impossible to learn her old name. The library in the town next to the slaughterhouse had two rooms and while what little history could be found there was confined to encyclopedias and periodicals about the Texas Revolution, it did have an archive of “Notable Citizens.” Sierra must have found the newspaper there, right next to the Texas Monthly magazine profiling the only politician to come out of the area in the history of the state. Nina knew what she looked like in that newspaper. She saw the picture more recently than she would have liked, when Manuel discovered it and began asking about space. She was happy to talk to him about it, then, because at least it wasn’t another boy asking her about “the surgery.” Would it have been better if he had been? Nina didn’t know, but she knew he probably wouldn’t be en route to Mars if he had been interested in surgery instead of rockets.  

Nina hated the headline. She hadn’t thought of the expeditions as adventure since they began. And her name shouldn’t have been put in quotes. Sure, it wasn’t legally her name, but it didn’t warrant the same kind of treatment that words like “cancer risk” and “new war on drugs” did. And then the paper had caused some alarm in the Northeast. An older trans woman, one of the ones who made all her money in AI, wanted to “correct the situation.” Offered Nina money, surgery, a place to live. She took some of it, left some of it, and now wrote a Christmas letter to a woman in New York every year. It was the postmaster’s favorite card to send, the card that went furthest away.

Sierra was blinking more rapidly, like a bot trying to process conflicting data. “I heard,” she said, her voice very quiet, “that the colonists turned on each other. Is that true?”

“No.” Nina kept her face straight as she lied. “It was the Martians. I don’t know what kinda papers you’ve been reading, but they only send the best up there. Not people who act like damn animals.”

“So there are Martians.” Sierra’s voice was high and tight, perhaps delighted though still unsmiling. “I knew it.”

“The boy who worked here before you, you know,” Nina stood and closed her lunchbox, “He’s out there now. On his way, probably. He’ll have to fight ‘em off. It ain’t done out there, no matter what they say.”

“What do they look like? The Martians? Did they get to you? Is that why you…”

Nina paused for a moment, trying to think what the hell a Martian would look like, what kind of thing would be able to survive independently on such a godforsaken wasteland. What kind of thing would enjoy that darkness, that eternal cover?  “Like coyotes,” she said, finally, “Like they got out in the ridges around town. They look like coyotes. They don’t kidnap people. They howl. They scream. They sound like ghosts.”

Without looking at Sierra, uninterested in a response, Nina returned to the locker room and closed her lunchbox in her locker. She punched in five minutes before her schedule told her to. The sound of the radio from the butchers’ section droned in her ears like wind off the Guadalupes. The weight of the bolt gun seemed immense and her hands too small, unable to keep a firm grasp. Maybe she would float away. Some of them did. The colonists. Some of them released themselves from the compounds and simply drifted into the void. The cow on the line had big, dark eyes, like black holes. Nina looked the cow straight on and it screamed, disoriented until the bolt stunned it stupid, unfeeling.

Outside, the sun was reaching beyond its highest point. The sound of an approaching truck set the cattle in their pens to bawling, stepping forward, pushing through their waste in anticipation and terror. Nina closed her eyes, imagined a constellation, the froth on the lips of a man screaming in confusion, a discolored corpse, a yawning emptiness. She took a deep breath. Everything still smelled like shit.

BRENDAN WILLIAMS-CHILDS (he/him) is a fiction writer from Wyoming. His work has appeared in Nat. Brut, Catapult, and in the Lambda-nominated "Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Trans Authors." You can see more of his work at williamschilds.com or on twitter @bwilliamschilds 

Someday My Prince Will Come

You’re muttering something when I wake up in your bed, the words leaking out from inside you with sticky strands of drool. You sleep with your mouth open; I think it’s cute. Your bleached, dyed hair stands up in crazy tufts of faded green and straw yellow. Your eyebrows are drawn together into one long, severe black line. A frown. 

I reach out and try to smooth it away with my hand. You roll away from me, pulling the stained, cartoon-print bedsheets with you. 

“No,” you say in your sleep-voice. “Don’t touch me. You can’t steal my bones. You fucking freak.”   

I sigh and try not to feel hurt. I am pretty successful. I know this is, as my previous partner Zee would have said, a “you” thing. It’s not really about what I am at all. You don’t even know what I am, not all of it. You don’t know what I was before I was human. No, it’s about what you’re afraid you are. 

Little slices from a razor blade streak through the beautiful constellations of acne on your shoulders. I inflicted some of them last night; you told me to do it. You wanted me to call you mean names while I did it, but that was hard. I don’t want to call you mean names. And I got distracted by the blood, how it welled up from the thin cuts in sticky beads. Like jewels, or lava.           

Fuck,” you growl. “I’m fucking lost. Ian. Where’s Ian? A witch is trying to steal my bones.”          

I have no idea who Ian is. I tentatively touch your shoulder, avoiding the cuts. I shake you a little. “Andy,” I whisper. “Andy, stop it. You’re dreaming.”          

It takes more shaking and whispering, but finally your long eyelashes flutter on your cheeks, then rise. Your open eyes are swimming pool blue and bloodshot at the corners. Your frown gets deeper.         

Boyd,” you say. “Boyd, you’re still here?”             

 “Of course I’m still here.” There’s an uncomfortably long pause, and I worry I’ve misread your tone. “You said I could stay,” I add. “You told me last night. I mean, I can leave now if you—”

“Nah.” You grunt as you sit up and swing your feet over the side of the bed. Your toes are long and hairy. I gaze at them with some envy. My feet look like a bird’s feet. Deformed. I never let anyone see them.               

“I’ll make coffee,” you say as you stand and stretch. “Want some?”               

 “No thanks. I’m hungry, though.”

 “I got cereal. Cocoa Puffs, Cheerios, or some kind of generic bran flakes shit.”              

 “Cheerios!” I get up myself and only wince a little as my legs take the full weight of my body. The pain will recede to a dull background hum I barely notice as the day moves on. “I can get them myself. You don’t have to.”              

“You’ve never even been in my kitchen before, Boyd.” A trace of amusement enters your voice. My whole body thrills.                   

“I bet I can figure it out,” I say, putting my hands on the fleshy part of your hips, nuzzling the downy back of your neck. You tense under my touch, but you don’t pull away. “I bet you a dollar.”                  

“I don’t think I’ll take that bet,” you say, and I’m already walking through the bedroom door, across the living room, and into your apartment’s kitchenette. I open the cabinet to the right of the sink, below the silverware drawer, and pull out a bright yellow box of cereal. It makes a dry rustling noise when I shake it triumphantly above my head. I grin at you. I am delighted with my primate’s capacity for grinning. I am delighted by the stubble on your upper lip and the cleft in your chin and the red bumps all over your shoulders and jawline and chest.                    

“Fuck, that’s exactly why I won’t make bets with you,” you tell me. Your half-smile is narrow and pointed. “You’re psychic or something, I swear to God. What the hell is your secret?” You lurch to the coffeemaker and start measuring out your daily dose of ground up caffeine beans from the dented can beside it.                         

“I’m not psychic. Just observant. Good at deductive reasoning.”                        

“Sure, a regular Columbo. Bet you are psychic, Boyd. You always have that damned glowy look about you, you know what I mean. Big, sparkly eyes. Floating around at your crap job like the customer service smile comes totally natural. Why are you so happy?”                    

I shrug as I pour an avalanche of Cheerios into one of your bowls.                    

“Seriously. It’s gotta be either supernatural powers or phenomenally good drugs. Hey, maybe you could hook me up. My SSRI don’t do shit but make it almost impossible for me to cum.”                     

“It didn’t seem that way last night.”                       

You laugh. You swat at me playfully from across the narrow, tiled space. I dodge.                    

“And I don’t do drugs,” I say.                    

“Not even coffee?”                     

“Not even coffee.” It’s bitter, and it makes my nerves feel like I’m flying too fast and too low above an angry river. “Not even antidepressants. Just T. Herbal and the other kind.”                       

You laugh again. “Goddamn it, Boyd.”

* * *

If you asked me the right question, I’d have to tell you this is the only thing I've wanted since the first time I saw one of us on the sidewalk, not passing, wearing a baseball cap back-wards and chains on his pants like he was a prisoner of something. I saw him smoke mentholated cigarettes at a bus stop while meticulously blacking out little squares in his shoelaces with a permanent marker. I remember the toxic smell of the cigarettes and the toxic smell of the permanent marker mingling inside my beak. (This is when I was all bird.) I held them there like I was savoring perfume.           

I wanted to be one of us, and I wanted to be with one of us. Not women. Not the other kind of men. Us.     

The boy at the bus stop was the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. I’d been content with my life before; he planted a yearning in my breast. It spread through all my feathers, all the hollows of my bones. Through the twisted bubblegum of my feet, which had fractured and healed crooked several times over the course of my brief life. (I was a pigeon, then.)            

The city looked new. I thought about how the breeze would feel on soft skin scattered with soft hair. I thought about what neon lights might be like to human eyes. I thought about having lips, and teeth. Opposable thumbs.    

 I found a bunch of crumbs outside a donut shop and swallowed most of them before bigger, meaner pigeons chased me away. I spread my wings and soared through the thick, oily city air until I was so high up the people and vehicles below me were just a bunch of anonymous moving dots. My feathers flashed in vivid colors only pigeons can see— I didn’t know yet that we all look grayish to humans.              

I went and I found the witch who lives at the top of the abandoned train station. 

She looks like a mass of twigs and mold, if you’re not looking carefully. Her joints are gnarled and swollen and her teeth are made of iron. She smiled when she saw me. Tried to grab me from the air.        

I darted out of her reach. “I’ve come to ask for help!” I shouted.            

Her laugh sent flakes of rust spewing across the dirty windowsill where she sat. “What will you give me if I help you, sky rat?”               

“Anything. Anything!” I flapped to keep aloft a safe distance away from the witch, just in case.                  

“Anything, eh? And what could a creature like you want so badly?”                   

I told her.                   

She laughed so hard I thought she’d tumble from her windowsill and break into pieces on the old train tracks. She told me to get lost before she ate me. She told me she wasn’t in the business of making freaks.                     

So I flew away, into a sky growing dark, and I sought out the witch who lives inside the river.         

It took me a while to find her because the river is always moving and the water isn’t clean at all. I was so obsessed with my search I barely ate for days. When I finally found her I was, at least, too thin to make a tempting meal for anyone.             

“River witch,” I called to her from the muddy bank. “Please come out. I’ll give you anything I can if you grant me my heart’s desire.”              

The witch rose slowly from the water. She was greenish-brown and rippling with foam. Her hair was very long, and I could see her skull through it. Her eyes shone like pennies at the bottom of a well. “Little pigeon,” she said, “I am not in the business of granting heart’s desires.”              

“I haven’t even told you what I want yet!” I protested, stamping my twisted feet in frustration though it hurt.               

She shook her head slowly and sadly. “You don’t have to, bird-child. I can see it burning inside you. It’s nothing I can give. Accept what you are— that’s my advice.”                

“I have,” I said. “I do. My heart’s desire is myself.”                 

“Then,” said the river witch in her soft voice, “you should seek out my sibling. The witch with no name and no home. I believe ey operates a hot dog cart outside of the public library during the summer arts festival. I can’t promise ey’ll help you. But ey might.”

I looked for the nameless, homeless witch everywhere. I didn’t find em…or, I didn’t think I did. It was so hard to tell. The only clue I had was what the river witch had told me. 

I kept my eyes peeled for hot dog carts, but the only ones I saw clearly weren’t witch-run. Their human proprietors chased me away with curses when I landed on their relish trays and tried to start a conversation.     

A week went by, and another, and more. Finally, the summer arts festival came around. As soon as I saw the streets filling up with stalls and tourists and stilt walkers and living statues, I went straight to the public library. Just outside its front walkway, there was a small hot dog cart with a red and white striped umbrella on top. Behind the cart stood a small person in a rumpled suit.         

I flew over and perched on the cart’s push-handle. My claws scrabbled against the worn metal. My heart fluttered warm in my chest. “Please, nameless witch,” I began.          

Ey turned to me with a face so unremarkably human that even while I was looking at it, I wouldn’t have been able to describe it. “Hey, birdie,” ey said in a voice like the sound lightbulbs make, “no need to be so formal. Around here, I’m just another hot dog man.”            

I opened my beak and started over. “Please, hot dog man. I want…”           

Ey smiled with teeth made of bone and shadow. “I already know what you want. My sisters wouldn’t help you, eh? They’re so stodgy.”            

“Will you? Help me. Can you?”            

Ey offered me a piece of stale hot dog bun. I pecked at it greedily.            

“Of course I can,” ey said. “Of course I will. Everyone should be allowed to choose what they want to be, the way I chose to be a hot dog vendor. But I must warn you, it comes at a price. Not that I’ll ask you to pay me, mind.”       

I must have looked very confused. Ey rolled eir eyes, took a deep breath, and continued.

“The price is in the self you lose. You won’t be able to fly anymore. You’ll never lay an egg. You’ll have to worry about clothes and jobs and housing and medicine.” Ey glanced at my feet. “You might not be able to walk well, or fast. Or it might hurt you to walk very far.”           

“You can turn me into a human boy, but you can’t fix my feet?” I tried not to sound disappointed.             

“Sorry, kid.” The hot dog man shrugged. “I’ve never been good at feet.”              

“It doesn’t matter.” I stood as straight as I could and looked em in the eye. “I’m ready. Do it now.”                

The hot dog man grunted, stretched eir arms out, cracked each of eir knuckles, and grabbed me firmly by the throat. Ey stripped my feathers off and stretched out my muscles. Ey added matter to my bones until I screamed from the weight of them. Ey bent and twisted my wings into hands and arms. Ey reached into the currents that flow behind the world and pulled at them until the shape of my life was entirely different.                    

I fell to the sidewalk and blacked out.

* * *

I woke in a studio apartment— my studio apartment, now. I remembered I had lived here for nearly a year, although I also remembered being a pigeon scant moments before.    

I remembered my days as a hatchling, and I remembered a whole human childhood and young adulthood that had never really happened. Or, had never happened before the hot dog man granted my wish. I supposed they had happened, now. I wondered whether the human parents and brother I remembered had been previously existing people whose family the hot dog man inserted me into, or whether ey’d created them from nothing, just for me.         

I peeled the bedsheet from my body and looked at it for a long time. I ran my new hands over the hair on my head, my belly, my legs. I touched my mammalian nipples. I touched the swollen thing between my thighs, and the wet hole behind it. A new voice came stumbling out from the red chasm behind my new teeth. Eyelashes fluttered on my soft, featherless cheeks.           

When I was done, a shiny rectangle buzzed at me from the floorboards beside the mattress where I lay. A phone.     

I picked it up and answered. It was a girl who said she’d been covering my shifts at the coffee place, asking me if I felt well enough to come in today.             

I remembered the job slowly. The memories floated into me one by one as I talked to the girl, stalling until I remembered her, too.             

“Sure thing, Stacey,” I said, standing on awkward, aching feet to dress myself and leave the apartment to be a person. To go to work.              

Where I met my co-workers, Stacey and the rest. Where I met Dorian, and Chris, and Zee. And, eventually, you.

* * *

Late morning light cascades over the kitchen tile in dusty triangles. I’m really enjoying this time with you. It’s my day off; later, maybe, we can go out together. To a movie, to walk by the river or through the twisting dirt pathways of the park. We could go to the club you said you liked, although of course I won’t drink anything. I like to dance, even if it makes my feet scream. Pain is part of being alive, I always remind myself. You have to love it as much as you love everything else.        

I pick at my Cheerios, pinching them up with my fingers to eat by ones and twos. You laugh at me. I do it partly because I want you to laugh. It’s going well until I hear the tinny techno sound of your phone going off in the bedroom. Your face goes bright with expectant hope, bright in a way that makes it suddenly clear you weren’t actually happy before.         

“Shit,” you say, already moving away from the kitchenette. “Hang tight, Boyd. I gotta get that.”            

I nod, even though you’ve turned your back to me. Your butt bounces as you run for the phone. Your coffee sits abandoned on top of the stove in a ceramic mug with WORLD’S BEST GRANDPA on it in Comic Sans. (You are not a grandpa, or even a parent.)            

I think of the razor blade last night, and I think of you talking in your sleep. I already know it won’t last, even before I hear your voice in the other room. (“Ian!!! Hi! Really? Oh, no, nothing much…”)              

This is the fastest I’ve ever known it.  

It took three months with Dorian, five weeks with Chris. Eleven months with Zee, and we’d probably still be together if she hadn’t realized she was asexual and also (sort of) a girl. I didn’t begrudge her the change; how could I? She detransitioned, converted to Buddhism, and moved across the country. Sometimes we still write each other letters. More and more, I think we both forget.               

I’m used to breakups by now. There are so many people in the world. So many boys like us to love. Men like us, I mentally amend, remembering how yesterday you kept telling me “boy” used for adults is infantilizing. I learn something new from everyone I fuck.       

It still hurts, every time, when I realize it won’t turn out the way I want it to, that I’m about to be alone again. A lonely awkward barista who doesn’t even like coffee. Former bird with a fake life.            

But, like, what am I gonna do, throw myself into the river and die about it? Find the hot dog vendor and ask to be a pigeon again? No way. Not getting everything you want doesn’t mean it was wrong to want it. Doesn’t mean what you’re left with isn’t still good.           

I wipe a few snotty tears off my face as you dash back into the room, flushed and grinning, your hair sticking out in all directions.           

“Hey, Boyd! Uh…a really good friend of mine is coming over soon. We haven’t seen each other in weeks, there was this whole fight, and…well, I don’t wanna kick you out or anything, but like, you know, if you could—”           

I respect that you’re trying to sound apologetic. “Sure,” I say. “I’ll get my stuff. Don’t worry about it.” 

We’ll see each other at the coffee place, around town, and so on. We’ll be friendly to each other when we do. We probably won’t meet up on purpose ever again.            

“Thanks for understanding! You’re a real one.” Your grin grows wider. It’s heart-annihilating. You’re so cute. You’ve never looked happier with me.               

I go back to the bedroom. I find my pants and jacket and shoes on the floor. I put them on. I’m already wearing socks. I always wear socks. They’re the color of a summer sky and very soft.                

“Goodbye, Andy,” I say as I let myself out the door.                 

“Bye,” you say. I hear the sound of you sucking coffee into your mouth. I wait a second, but you don’t have anything else to tell me.                  

My feet hurt going down the stairs, so I focus on them. I decide not to wonder who Ian is, what makes him so much better than me. The human heart and its ways are mysterious.                  

I see a tall cis man with arms covered by tattoos in the foyer of your apartment building. Maybe he’s Ian. He looks through me like I’m made of air. He’s tall and muscular, wearing a thin tank top to show himself off, but I don’t think he’s as young as us. There are lines on his forehead, like you’ll have in ten or twelve years.                  

I walk outside and into a day so perfectly temperate it feels like nothing at all. The sounds of people and traffic swirl around on the breeze with bits of trash. There’s a man about our age, also cis, walking on the same sidewalk as me in the opposite direction. This one’s shorter, though still taller than you or I, a little plump, with an earring and over-gelled hair. He’s carrying a jelly jar filled with cut roses. Carefully, with both hands. Maybe he’s going to your apartment building. Maybe he’s going to your apartment. Maybe this is Ian.                   

I smile at maybe-Ian. His eyes skip off me and he makes a disturbed face. I can’t decide whether the face makes it more likely he is Ian, or that he isn’t. We both continue on our separate ways.                  

I reach the crosswalk and press the button. I shift impatiently on my throbbing feet. I miss flying in a wistful sort of way, without real regret. There’s another man across the street from me. I have no idea how old this one is, although I think he’s pretty young. I think he’s cis, but I can’t be sure. He looks about my height, and he’s much thinner than I am at present. Prominent Adam’s apple. Huge eyes. Hipster clothes that don’t quite fit him, and a hipster mustache. He shifts from foot to foot too, like he’s my reflection. Maybe I was wrong about the other two guys. Maybe I’m looking at Ian now.                 

The light beeps and changes color. The man across the street smiles at me. I smile back at him. I have no animosity towards any of the Ians. I hope you get what you want.                 

I decide to stop speculating on possible Ians, for real this time. There’s a hot dog cart on the corner near the library, but its umbrella is striped blue and yellow. The smell of slightly charred meat and sharp mustard makes my stomach growl.                    

A privilege of being human: I can have a hot dog any time I want one and am able to afford it.                   

Today I can’t afford it. Still, I have the smell. I have the feeling of my heart cracking open inside me.

Allegory of the Man

Brady hadn’t been hiking in three years. That is, before Giselda called him up on a Thursday evening in July. 

“Oh, come on, you know you want to,” she begged in that playful tone used by best friends. 

“I don’t know if I even have my boots anymore,” Brady persisted, even though he very well knew they were crammed in a box under his bed. “And I grew out of all my hiking clothes!” That part, at least, was true. On T, his legs and shoulders had thickened his body directly into a new wardrobe.

 “I’m sure you’ll make do with whatever you have. It’s just six miles. Not too steep. Not very rocky either,” Giselda continued, as if Brady had expressed interest and not misgivings. 

    “I don’t—” 

    “I’ll pick you up at 6:30 sharp on Saturday. Sound good?” 

    “Um,” Brady began to answer, but the other end of the line had already gone cold. 

* * *

By 6:45, Brady still hadn’t seen any sign of Giselda’s car. Just as he reached to check his phone again, the screen lit up with a text. Something had come up with Giselda’s job and she needed to stay home and work. Nevermind that it was early on a weekend morning; this startup tech company didn’t seem to understand the concept of a day off. Brady sighed and rubbed his cheeks with both hands. He was just about to put his feet up on the couch—maybe he could catch up on some sleep debt yet!—when three more texts came through: “You should still go though!” Then a photo. “I want to hear how it is!” When he clicked on it, the picture revealed itself as a trail map. 

    From his spot on the couch, Brady could see his beat-up 1999 Honda hatchback parked in the driveway. He had just put gas in it the other day. By his booted feet sat a faded Jansport backpack filled with a water bottle and two peanut butter sandwiches. There wouldn’t soon be a morning when he’d be more prepared to go hiking. Brady walked to his room in search of his car keys.

* * *

The oddity started in the parking area, which Brady reached after driving for nearly two hours. Despite the surprising size of the paved lot, only a smattering of spots remained empty. Once parked, Brady found an old bottle of sunscreen in his glove compartment and began applying it to his pink-skinned face as he sat on the bumper of his car. As his hand worked the lotion around to the back of his neck, Brady admired the jagged ridgeline that towered above the road. 

“Excuse me?” At the sound of the voice beside him, Brady’s breath caught in his throat and his bottle of sunscreen clattered against the pavement. He quickly rubbed his face, hoping no rogue white streaks remained there. When he looked up, he saw a middle-aged white man who, unsurprisingly, looked dressed to hike. Sunglasses hid his eyes and a wide-brimmed hat shaded the rest of his expression. Brady continued to stifle his breath until he remembered his current embodiment. It had been years since anyone had assumed he was a woman, and there was no longer any need to prepare for an invasive proposition. But if not to comment on his body, why was the stranger approaching him? 

“Yes?” Despite his intentions, Brady heard his tone emerge more defensive than friendly. 

“I’m just wondering if you might know where I can find the Middle Ridge Trailhead?” the man asked, his shoulders squared toward Brady and his eyes still gazing who-knew-where. 

    “Umm, let me…” Brady opened his phone and looked at the picture Giselda had sent. It showed only the sliver of parking lot where the Yelling River Trail began. “No, sorry. It’s not on the map I have,” Brady said, locking his phone screen. 

    “Okay, thanks anyway,” the man shrugged. “I’ll keep looking.” He walked away, right past a trio of hike-ready women—their laughter boisterous and their faces various shades of brown. Apparently, he didn’t want a second opinion.

After rubbing the sunscreen into his arms, Brady tossed the bottle into the trunk and reached to close it. He froze when he saw what was inside: a pair of metallic-blue hiking poles. He had no idea where they’d come from, though it had been a while since he’d opened the back of his car. Apparently their owner hadn’t been missing them. Brady took one pole in each hand and tapped the tips lightly against the pavement. The handles rose to a perfect height next to his belly button. Smirking at his good luck, Brady locked the car and started toward the Yelling River Trailhead. 

* * *

Old-growth trees towered along both sides of the compact-dirt trail, and fungus-covered logs rested between thick beds of ferns. Though he only caught glances of the river through the thick foliage, Brady could certainly hear its fizzy roar. Even with the highway only minutes behind him, out here with his solitary section of trail, Brady felt like he had entered a different realm. 

* * *

Shaded from the sun, the path’s subtle incline did little to prevent Brady from making steady progress. Even when the trail entered a steep section, Brady deepened his breaths without losing momentum. He had reached the fourth switchback when he heard a pair talking in front of him. A couple of turns later, the other hikers came into view. “Hi there,” Brady greeted from a comfortable distance behind, not wanting to startle them. 

“Howdy,” a forty-something white woman replied as she shuffled off to the side of the trail to let Brady pass. Her hiking partner, another white woman who looked slightly younger, followed suit. Like Brady, they both held poles in their hands. Unlike Brady, though, they were outfitted in flashy hiking clothes.

“Thanks,” Brady nodded at them both then turned his attention back to the trail to avoid tripping over a section of exposed roots. 

“About how much further to the viewpoint?” the second woman asked once Brady was right in front of her. 

“Uh, let me…” Brady began as he leaned a pole against his belly and wiped sweat from his brow. “I think this trail goes about three miles each way, and we’ve probably made it,” he checked his watch and tried to remember what time he’d started hiking, “more than two miles? So, I suppose we should be getting close. A half mile left maybe?” 

“That’s pretty much what we were thinking,” the older-looking woman asserted, sounding sheepish about her companion asking for input. When Brady noticed the map in her hand, he better understood her frustration. 

“Thanks,” the younger woman replied before side-eyeing her partner. Brady took his cue and pressed on ahead. 

Only minutes later, though, he came upon another duo. He greeted them as he had the previous pair and braced for the possibility of more questions. 

The nearer hiker simply said “hello” when Brady passed. 

    At first, the second just smiled, but then she broke her silence to ask, “How’s the view at the top?” 

“Sorry?” Brady asked, looking back and forth between the two strangers, wondering if they somehow thought he had been coming down from the trail as he passed them from behind. 

“Oh, my bad. I…” She waved her hand in a circle in front of her face. Brady studied the pair as the woman searched for an explanation. She was white with a long brown ponytail emerging from her ballcap, and her partner had dark-brown skin with short kinky hair. They wore matching gray zip-off hiking pants, and drinking tubes snaked out from the water reservoirs inside their packs. Their hiking boots were made by a well-known brand, and they were dingy with use. Nothing about their appearances helped Brady understand why they thought he’d know more about the trail than they did. 

The woman finally continued, “You just—I assumed you were one of those locals who goes up this thing every year. I didn’t mean to—”  

“Well, we’ll see you up there,” the other hiker interjected, giving Brady permission to carry on. 

As he turned up the next switchback, Brady thought back to the years before his physical transition, when he’d spent his summers hiking on similar trails with his friends. He tried to recall any comparable interactions, but he had no memory of ever being asked for information at all. True, he’d been living one state away, but could a single political boundary really account for such a drastic difference? 

A few minutes up the trail, when Brady raised his hand to swat away the bug on his forehead, he was surprised to feel a layer of fabric stretched around the crown of his head. Pulling it off, Brady examined the tube of dark green material. It felt light and stretchy between his fingers. Had one of the other hikers given it to him? Could he have both accepted the gift and put it on without remembering? It seemed unlikely, but Brady couldn’t imagine any other explanation. Regardless of its origin, though, he was glad to have something to keep the sweat out of his eyes. 

Brady returned the headband to its original position and was about to continue hiking when he thought to check if anything else had mysteriously changed. He looked down at his still-bare arms, then noted the old brown socks slouching above his ankles. His boots remained in place, as well as his shorts, but as he brought a hand to his chest, he felt a smoothness that didn’t belong to the cotton t-shirt he remembered donning that morning. No, this light blue garment certainly had not come from his closet. 

Squishing his eyes shut, Brady considered turning around. Something about this trail was destabilizing his sense of reality. It would probably be best to backtrack before things got any weirder. But, as Brady had told the first pair, the viewpoint wasn’t much farther. And he had already come all this way. 

* * *

Once the trees gave away to an alpine meadow, Brady started to pass descending hikers. They smiled and encouraged him on, which he appreciated. With breakfast now a distant memory, he was eager to dig into his sandwiches. But, though Brady’s stomach grumbled, his legs still felt surprisingly powerful, especially considering he couldn’t remember the last time he’d walked uphill for hours at a time. 

The buzz of overlapping conversations told Brady that he had just about reached the viewpoint. He pushed himself up three final steep steps to arrive atop a small plateau. Around him, six small groups of people sat chatting and snacking, occasionally glancing up from their discussions to take in the view. And, shading his eyes with a flattened hand, Brady began to appreciate what a spectacular sight it was. A glaciated peak dominated the middle distance, and another similarly-massive mountain lurked in the hazy background. Green-toned ridgelines framed the scene, a few of their valleys still clinging to narrow snowfields. Turning around, Brady noticed the highway occasionally peeking out from between the trees. He could hardly believe he’d been down there just two hours before. 

“Hey!” Yet another stranger’s voice reached Brady’s ears just after he’d dropped his backpack and found a flat rock upon which to sit. He lifted his head to see a trio of fratty-looking young guys eyeing him. All three wore backwards ball caps and sloppily-modified t-shirts. The holes where the shirts’ sleeves used to be plunged low, exposing the taut flesh atop the men’s ribs. 

“What’s up?” Brady answered, subconsciously lowering his voice to match the asker’s register. 

“You know what that second mountain behind Tahoma is?” 

“Umm,” Brady searched his brain. “No, I don’t think so,” he admitted. 

“I guess we’ll just look it up when we get home,” his friend said. “No reception up here.” He held up his phone as if Brady might not have known what he meant. “Thanks anyway.” They quickly turned away and redirected their conversation to summer internships. 

Brady was about to reach behind him for his pack when a group of white women, all older than his mom, walked between him and the frat guys on their way back down the trail. “If you want to know, that mountain out there is called Klickitat,” the one in the back stopped to say. But the frat guys weren’t listening. She shrugged and met Brady’s eyes briefly before departing the scene. 

“Hey,” Brady attempted to project his voice to get the guys’ attention. Two of them immediately turned his way. “It’s Klickitat, by the way,” he pointed out at the view. 

“I told you, man,” one guy slapped his friend on the arm. “I fucking knew it!” 

“Yeah, well, at least I had a guess, unlike someone.” The speaker looked at the third friend, who just shook his head. 

Brady was about to interject that he was just relaying someone else’s information, but the group’s attention was already gone, and he decided to let himself slip back into silence. Anyway, he was desperate to eat his sandwiches. When Brady’s hand made contact with his bag, however, he could not find the zipper. He turned his head and recoiled. The pack beside him was not his own. It was much bigger and fancier, probably belonging to a backpacker. With a panic-inspired quickness, he stood and cast his gaze across the area. He lifted the strange pack. He rolled it over. There was no sign of his bag, or— a glance over each shoulder revealed— the owner of this one. 

Gingerly, Brady pulled open the zipper of one of the small pockets. Inside, he found a wallet that looked identical to his own. He unfolded it and found his ID as well as his credit and debit cards. With the rate of his pulse only accelerating, Brady’s fingers next latched onto his car keys. Someone had been trying to steal his stuff, though they hadn’t done a very good job, just leaving it right here for him to discover. No longer feeling concerned about raiding the thief’s pack, Brady unbuckled two straps to access the main compartment. At the top sat his two peanut butter sandwiches. The pieces of white bread were squished and soggy, though apparently still appetizing enough to be stolen. 

Huffing out an exasperated breath, Brady turned in a circle, looking for anyone he could reasonably accuse of playing this trick. The other hikers, however, were simply carrying on with their conversations. Not eager to be teased by the frat boys, Brady approached a young pair of brown-skinned women who had been there since he’d arrived. One of the women was passing the other the remnants of their lunch to be stowed away. 

“Hi there,” Brady greeted.

“Hey,” they both said as they turned toward him. With matching close-set eyes and narrow noses, they might have been sisters. 

“So, this is gonna sound weird,” he rubbed the back of his neck, “but I can’t find my backpack. It’s green and about this big.” He held his hands about a foot apart. “It’s the strangest thing… the one I found over there has some of my stuff in it, but it’s not mine. Did you… I don’t know, see anything?” 

The maybe-sisters looked at each other for a moment before the one on the left replied, “I’m pretty sure that’s the pack you came up here with.” She bit her lip, probably to keep herself from laughing at him. 

“Oh… okay,” Brady said, already turning away. 

Back at his spot, Brady bit into a sandwich as he rifled through the remaining contents of the pack: a sleeping pad and bag, a tarp-style tent, a few freeze-dried meals, two ziploc bags of instant oats, five fruit and nut bars, two squeeze-packs of peanut butter, a tiny stove with a butane canister and a pot, a water filter, a rust-orange down jacket, a first aid kit, a few toiletries, and a bag of neatly-rolled toilet paper. Nothing about the pack’s presence made sense, and yet Brady’s fingers, his eyes, and his ears all confirmed it was real.

To his dismay, by the time Brady had finished eating his sandwiches, the strange pack and its contents still sat at his feet. Apparently, it wasn’t just a hunger-spurred hallucination. He set to repacking everything he’d pulled out, and when he was done he noted that the original crowd had been entirely replaced by new arrivals. Whoever had swapped out his pack was gone, leaving Brady to decide what to do with it. He wasn’t thrilled about having to carry all the gear back to his car, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving it up here either, especially considering its contents must have been worth at least $500. 

Brady’s head was hung down in thought when someone again addressed him. “You doing the whole loop then?” A tall and thin white man who, with his squared jaw and lumbering stride might have been Brady’s long-lost uncle, hovered next to him. 

“Um?” Brady questioned before he noticed a map in his own hand. A moment’s study showed him the Yelling River Trail was just one section of a much larger oval. Notes penned in a familiar cursive indicated two planned places for camping. When Brady looked back up, the man was smiling and awaiting his answer. 

* * *

As many times as Brady had been hiking in his life, he had never backpacked. He had never filtered water from a stream, never set up a tarp-style tent, nor forded a knee-high river. And yet, he knew to avoid collecting water from silty glacial rivers in favor of clearer creeks. He knew exactly how to use his hiking pole to give the tent its height. He knew the necessity of leaning into the current to avoid being pushed downstream. Or, rather, Brady’s body understood each of these procedures and carried them out while his conscious mind looked on. This power was frightening, that is until time faded his awe into acceptance. 

* * *

On Monday morning Giselda was on her way to the trailhead. As Brady’s emergency contact, she was the person his boss had called when he unexpectedly failed to show up for work. Even before the call, Giselda had been worried. She hadn’t heard from Brady since early Saturday morning, and they typically exchanged at least a few texts each day. She was starting her car before she had even finished reassuring the boss that she’d get to the bottom of her friend’s absence. When Brady’s roommate answered the door, he informed Giselda that he hadn’t seen Brady around the house since Friday. Giselda swallowed her panic as she thanked him and rushed back to her car. 

Though the lot wasn’t as full as it might be on a weekend, Giselda saw it would take some time to search for Brady’s Honda. She walked up and down the rows, dreading the moment when she might find the car. At the end of her serpentine lap, Giselda breathed a bit easier. It appeared that Brady either hadn’t actually followed through with the hike, or had made it safely off the trail. Still, a pulse in her stomach protested the finality of her conclusion. Giselda decided to double-check the lot.  

At the start of her second pass, something caught Giselda’s eye: a familiar string of numbers and letters. She stepped closer. And closer. She rolled the letters over her tongue and out her lips, feeling and remembering their rhythm. Yes, she was sure it was Brady’s license plate. Though why in the world was it attached to a shiny new Subaru? Giselda was almost able to convince herself she was mistaken when she recognized the string of red and blue beads hanging from the rearview mirror. Tapping her open palm against her forehead, she paced in front of the strange car, frantically trying to figure out what to do. Was Brady really missing on the trail? Or should she admit to herself that she was losing her grasp on reality? Then again, did the two have to be mutually exclusive? 

She wasn’t sure how long she’d spent agonizing over her next step when she heard a familiar voice call out to her. “Giselda? Is that you?” Brady asked, stashing his hiking poles under an arm and holding his palms up and out in surprise. His face, clean-shaven when she’d last seen him on Thursday morning, was now covered by a thick blond beard, and sweat stains bloomed out across his shirt from under the straps of a bulky backpack. 

“Brady!? What happened?” She stepped toward him and reached to touch his shoulder. 

“What do you—” Brady’s voice stopped short when his friend’s hand landed on him. In the next instant, he collapsed onto the asphalt, his flimsy Jansport pack empty next to him, his face sunken with exhaustion and hunger. 

Dropping to her knees, Giselda repeated her friend’s name and rubbed his face, trying to keep him conscious. From her purse, she grabbed a bottle of water and dribbled a little into Brady’s mouth. He swallowed weakly. “Help!” Giselda raised her head to cry out. A couple of strangers turned their heads. In her periphery, Giselda saw Brady’s old car waiting for its driver.

ALIX PERRY (they/them) is a white queer and trans writer living on occupied Coast Salish land (greater Seattle). Their work is published or forthcoming in Rogue Agent, Papeachu Review, the Courage is a Gift anthology, and elsewhere. Their pen-named alter ego writes fiction for Scribd. More at alixperrywriting.com, on Instagram @enchantedkeloid, and at patreon.com/alixperrywriting. 

Breath

The bedchamber of the dying woman was hot and crowded. Five daughters, two son’s wives, a double handful of granddaughters and a couple of bewildered great-grandbabies all milled about the bed of the matriarch of their family. In a corner a bored fire priest droned the prayer of departure, his censer of burning incense adding to the overall fug. 

I waited by the door, absently fingering a frayed thread on my tunic. The crowd around the bed parted as the eldest daughter stood up and beckoned to me. I moved to the bed, drawing Dimity along with me. She was Master Herron’s newest apprentice, and this was her first deathbed.

The dying woman lay on her back, eyes closed. She was breathing unevenly, with long pauses between each breath. I opened my carrying case and removed a jar from the padded interior. Even in the dimly lit room the glyphs etched in silver on the glass sparkled. I stood with the jar in one hand, the lid in the other and watched her sunken chest rise and fall.

The rattling breaths came further and further apart. I waited, watching for the signs that would tell me the moment was right. And then, a gasping wheeze. I bent swiftly and held the jar to her mouth as she exhaled for the last time—and died. Capping the jar, I stepped away.

I paused in the doorway to discreetly pass a small purse to the eldest daughter. Behind us, the old woman’s descendants began to wail.

“It seems rather mercenary,” Dimity observed as we navigated the twisting dirt roads of the rough town that sprawled across the plain, outside the protection of the city walls. I shook my head.

“They’ll be able to afford a funeral worthy of their mother now, and can take some comfort that a part of her will live on to serve the Imperator,” I said.

I knew that it was just as likely the old woman’s essence would be used to quicken one of the mechanical singing birds that we made to enliven the parties of rich merchants, than for one of the Imperator’s famous clockwork soldiers, but I didn’t mention that. Some clockworkers selected the first essence jar available when the time came to activate their latest work. Master Herron, however, liked to take care matching an automaton with what he considered the most appropriate essence. His automatons certainly lasted years longer than any other, so there might be something to his methods.

“Did you see the spark leave her?” I said. This was why I’d brought Dimity with me. Master Herron preferred apprentices who had the rare ability to see the spark that enlivens all living things. That came easy to me. Master Herron had once observed that my ability was strong enough that if I’d been a man I might have been taken to become one of the Imperator’s black-clad mages. The thought made me shudder. 

“Yes,” Dimity said tentatively. I looked at her. She frowned.

“I saw something,” she said. “Master Herron says it gets easier with practice, but it gives me an awful headache.” She shrugged. “I don’t see why we need to collect essence for the automatatons anyway. My uncle says that in the desert lands they use blood to quicken their automatons. Wouldn’t that be easier?”

I rounded on her, suddenly furious. “Your uncle is a fool who’ll find himself staked out in front of the Traitor’s Gate if he doesn’t learn to keep his mouth shut! Blood magic is heresy, and forbidden by imperial edict. We’re clockworkers, not necromancers. You should know this.”

Dimity paled and stammered an apology. I ignored her and walked on ahead. I’d better have a word with Master Herron about her. The last thing we needed was the inquisitors taking an interest in his workshop. 

We joined the crowd waiting to pass back through the Eastern Gate into the city. Up ahead I recognised one of the guards on duty. Sula was back in the city. One glimpse through the crowd of her unruly mop of sun-streaked hair, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. 

We’d both been born Portside brats, but she was nearly three years older than me. The age difference might not mean so much now I was eighteen, but when you’re a child, three years is a gap wider than the Tiberian Straits. That didn’t stop me from following her and the other older girls around, watching them play at sword fighting with sticks. Sula could climb higher and jump farther than any of the boys and I longed to be like her. She wasn’t afraid of anything. When I first began to be able to see the life-giving spark inside people, in Sula I saw a blazing fire. 

The cart in front of us rolled forward and suddenly I was right in front of her. She stood tall and proud, her armour polished to a fine gleam. Her grandfather had been a sailor from some cold northern land, and she’d inherited his red-blonde hair and pale blue eyes. She smiled when she saw me.

“Well, look who it is. Oreste, right?” I could feel a sudden heat in my cheeks. I never thought she even knew my name. 

“Hello, Sula. I heard you’d gone into the Guard,” I managed to say.

“Yes, I’ve just been posted back to the city garrison. And what about you? You’re an apprentice clockworker now?”

“Journeyman. I've nearly finished my masterwork.” Sula noticed the queue building up behind us, and waved us through.

“Good to see you again, Oreste,” she said as I passed. I floated back to the workshop in a dream, barely aware of Dimity trailing sullenly behind.

* * *

We found Master Herron on a stepladder making a final adjustment to an Imperial clockwork soldier. 

“Just in time,” Master Herron said. “Dimity hasn’t seen a quickening yet, have you?” He smiled down from his ladder at the girl. “You do the honors, Oreste.” He clambered down from the stepladder.

I found the orison on a silver platter on the workbench, and examined it for flaws. The narrow strip of parchment contained a series of glyphs beseeching the gods to grant the automaton life and ensure it obeyed its master. I climbed the ladder and pressed on the automaton’s chest plate. A panel popped open, exposing a small cavity containing a piece of pale crystal the size of my thumb. I placed the orison inside, and then removed the capped essence jar from my bag. The old woman was going to get her chance at a second life.

“Dimity, could you pass me that pipe?” The girl handed me up a copper pipe with a tapering, sharpened end. I placed the wide end over the crystal, covering it entirely. With one smooth movement I shoved the sharp end of the pipe through the calfskin lid. The crystal hummed softly as the essence touched it. A shudder went through the soldier, then it slowly turned its head toward me, red glass eyes glowing behind the snarling silver mask.

“Excellent,” Master Herron said, and began putting the soldier through a series of movements to ensure all the joints were working smoothly.

He didn’t need my assistance, so I returned to my masterwork at the back of the workshop. She was standing now that I’d finished her legs, demurely draped in a sheet. The underlying metal armature was complete, and now I was installing the external covering. I was experimenting with a new process, using hardened ceramic sections for her skin instead of heavy metal plating. My hope was that she’d be able to move lightly, even gracefully, unlike the heavy clomping soldiers we usually made.

* * *

Master Herron allowed all his workers a free afternoon every Seventh Day. I always went back to Portside for dinner with my family. As I came down the hill, the forest of ship masts visible below me, a familiar voice hailed me from behind. Sula. I waited as she ran to join me.

“Going to visit your family, Oreste?”

I nodded, struck dumb again.

She smiled. “Me too. Well, it’s just my father now. My brother joined the navy.” She looked at my carrying case. “What’s that, then?”

“Essence jars,” I said, patting the case. “Master Herron insists I always carry them.”

Sula raised an eyebrow. “So if you see anyone looking a bit peaky, you’ll follow them home and suck the life out of them?”

“It’s not like that,” I said indignantly, before realising she was teasing me.

“But now that you mention it, you do look rather pale…” I reached in my case for a jar and she danced away nimbly, laughing.

We passed a high stone wall. Sula looked up at it and grinned.

“I remember when us girls used to raid the Sylvester’s apricot trees. They never caught us.” She paused, a shadow passing over her face.

“They’re all respectable ladies now. Hella went to the temple, and the rest are married with a couple of littlies clutching their skirts. Except for Scylla. She died birthing her first babe.” She shook herself and looked down at me. 

“You were always there too, Oreste. I remember your dark eyes peeping around the corner watching us. Like a little mouse.”

I found my voice. “My mother insisted I set a good example for my sisters. No running, or shouting. And definitely no orchard raids.”

We’d reached the street that led to my family’s house. She smiled at me. “I guess I did enough of that for the both of us.” She hesitated, her booted foot tracing a pattern in the dirt. 

“The fire temple is having a display of sky blossoms for the festival next Sixth Day. Would you like to watch them with me?”

It was a strange sight to see, bold Sula hesitant about anything. About me. I hastened to end her confusion.

“Yes, I’d like that. I won’t be able to get away from the workshop until after fourth bell though.”

She grinned. “Meet you at the dolphin fountain, little mouse.”

And then she was gone, dodging the carts to cross the street toward the alley where her father lived, leaving me standing there like a complete ninny. It’s a wonder I didn’t get run over.

I shook myself and carried on, wearing a grin so broad it felt like my face was stretched like the leather lid of an essence jar.

* * *

Sula was sitting beside the fountain when I arrived, cupping her hand under the water spouting from the bronze dolphin’s mouth. We bought fried honey-dough sticks from a vendor and went looking for a good place to watch the fireworks.

“Do you like being in the Guard?” I asked as we walked.

She shrugged. “It’s served its purpose. Once my contract is up, I’m going to sign up as a caravan guard and see the world.”

“You wouldn’t join the Imperial Army, then?”

She flicked her hair out of her eyes. “Not me. Too much pointless marching and being ordered about.”

She licked a stray drop of honey from her wrist. “And what about you? Do you like being a clockworker?”

I nodded. “I enjoy the work. Once my masterwork is finished, I’ll be a full guild member. I’ll keep half the price of anything I make, and when I’ve saved enough I can start my own workshop. Even better, I’ve no need to marry unless I want to.”

“And do you…want to?” She was watching me closely.

I grinned. “There’s no suitors beating on my door.”

Sula pursed her lips. “Don’t you ever think about living somewhere else?”

Leave Iskandar? All the world comes to our city, everyone says. I’d never considered going elsewhere, but Sula was watching me hopefully.

“You know,” I said slowly. “I’d like to see the mountains in Albia, where they grow the crystals that we use to power the automatons.”

“It’s a start,” she said with a laugh, and tucked her arm through mine. We went up the street without finding a gap in the crowd anywhere. I heard the drums signal the start of the procession.

“This is no good,” Sula said. “We won’t be able to see anything. Come on.”

She led me down a series of narrow alleys to where the hill grew too steep and rocky for anyone to build houses, then disappeared behind a thorn bush taller than me.

“Good, it’s still here. Come around the back, Oreste.” 

Gingerly, I flattened myself against the rock and crabbed sideways. To my surprise there was a tiny path up the hillside with steps gouged out of the chalky stone. It looked better suited to goats than people but Sula was already climbing. I followed more slowly. Halfway up the hill the track opened out onto a wide ledge. Sula was sitting there, long legs dangling over the edge. I flopped down next to her and took in the view. We could see the red lanterns of the procession wending its way down Temple Hill. Below us the setting sun painted the city gold, brightening the sails of the ships in the harbour and the red terracotta tiles of the roofs of the houses. Swallows swooped past us, calling to each other.

“You can see half the city from up here,” I said, delighted. 

Sula nodded. “I used to come here when I was a girl. I’d watch the ships sailing out and dream of sailing away with them, like my grandfather.” She produced a small wine flask and offered it to me. I swallowed a few mouthfuls and handed it back. Sula drank, and I watched her pale throat move as she swallowed.

We passed the wine back and forth for a while in a companionable silence. The warm stone at my back and the wine in my belly gave me a feeling of sleepy contentment. Sula was watching me. 

“You don’t relax around anyone very often, do you?” she said softly.

I shook my head. She reached out slowly, giving me time to pull away, and gently cupped my cheek. I leaned toward her until our lips met, just the lightest brush. She made a small noise in her throat and slid her hand around the back of my neck. Our lips met again and that sense I have of the spark that animates all living things flared up, tasting her. It was like being bathed in a fire that didn’t burn me. I let it flow over me and then breathed it back into her. Sula pulled back with a gasp. 

“Well,” she said, leaning back against the rock. “I suspected you had hidden depths.” Her smile had a wicked tilt to it this time. 

The sun slipped behind the hills, and over the harbour the first of the sky blossoms bloomed. Sula put an arm around me and we watched the sky painted with expanding globes of red and gold sparks. She offered me the wine again but I shook my head.

“I have to be up at dawn,” I said. 

She sighed. “Me too, little mouse. I’m on patrol in the West Quarter.” As the echoes of the final rockets faded away she stood up and brushed off her breeches, extending a hand to me. 

“We’d better get back down the path while we’re still sober.”

Sula insisted on escorting me back to the workshop. We stopped in the street outside.

“You’ll have to give me a tour some time,” she said, admiring the giant illuminated clock that adorned the front of the building. “See you next Seventh Day?”

I nodded. She checked the street was empty and bent down for a quick farewell kiss, before turning and walking briskly away.

I had a bed in the barracks-like building that housed the apprentices, but I wasn’t ready for sleep yet. I let myself into the workshop and lit a lantern, setting it down by my masterwork. I removed the sheet and stepped back to admire her. Tall and pale with a cap of auburn enamel for her hair, and milky sapphires for her eyes. Her porcelain lips were slightly parted, one eyebrow raised as though she’d just seen something amusing. For the first time, I allowed myself to really see how much my swordlady automaton resembled a certain person.

I wasn’t sure what Sula’s reaction would be to seeing herself in the form of an automaton, especially a naked one. I put the sheet back. I would get some clothes for her tomorrow. I’d planned to make her decorative armor and give her a sword but the funds allocated for my masterwork were running out.

* * *

The following morning I was deep in the innards of a clockwork peacock, trying to determine why its tail wouldn’t open when there was a commotion at the front of the building. I heard Master Herron greeting a customer but didn’t pay much attention. Dimity popped up at my elbow. 

“Oreste!” she hissed. “The Imperator’s here. He came to inspect the new soldiers himself!” I wiped the grease off my hands and followed her up to the mezzanine floor. We joined the apprentices looking over the railing as Master Herron put the newest clockwork soldier through its paces for our visitors.

I’d only seen the Imperator from a distance, waving to the crowd from a palace balcony. Up close, he was shorter than I’d expected. He was accompanied by a small entourage—a clerk with a wax tablet, a couple of bored nobles, and three imperial bodyguards. A man wearing a black silk tunic stood at the back of the group. As if sensing my gaze, he looked up, and I quickly looked away. People said imperial mages could read your thoughts. I tried hard to think of nothing.

“Excellent work,” the Imperator was saying to Master Herron. “Now, I should like a tour of your workshop.” Master Herron led him through the workshop, stopping at various works in progress—an array of the singing birds popular this season, a mechanical rose bush with blooms that opened on the hour, an animated head that recited stories. The group came to the corner where my masterwork stood.

“How intriguing,” the Imperator said. He tugged off the sheet, revealing the automaton. From our vantage point I had a clear view of his face. He ran his eyes over my swordlady’s exposed breasts and licked his lips and smiled. Master Herron had often remarked to his apprentices that the current Imperator was more enamoured of automatons than his father, but I don’t think he’d meant the fervid look our ruler was currently wearing.

“Master Herron, you have truly surpassed yourself here!” he said. Master Herron began to explain that this was a journeyman project, but the Imperator silenced him with a flick of his hand. 

“Have it sent along with the soldiers. I shall add it to my personal collection.” And with that he swept out of the building, his entourage bobbing after him like a brood of ducklings. I clattered down the stairs.

Master Herron read the look on my face and shook his head. 

“Get that automaton finished,” he said. “You’re excused from all other duties. They’re coming to pick up the latest batch of soldiers next First Day.”

“But—” I began to protest. Master Herron took my arm and led me to my corner. “I know I said you would be permitted to choose which customer would buy your masterwork, but this is the Imperator,” he said in a low voice. “Now get to work.” He turned and chased the rest of the apprentices back to their workbenches. I wrapped the sheet back around my masterwork. 

“He doesn’t deserve you,” I told her softly.

* * *

By Seventh Day morning, I had finished my masterwork. My automaton was fully dressed. Of course the clothes I’d found were not fine enough for royalty, but at least she wouldn’t be exposed to the gaze of every man in the city as she was taken to the palace. All that remained was to quicken her. I was stalling, trying to decide which of the essences in the storeroom was most suitable. Master Herron expected me to finish this evening, but first I was going to visit my family as usual.

Sula was waiting at the top of Portside Hill. Seeing her made my bad mood lift. When she asked how my week had gone, I pursed my lips, unsure what to say. 

“The Imperator is taking my masterwork,” was all I said in the end.

“That’s an honor, surely?” Sula said carefully. She looked around to see who was in earshot and leaned closer to me. “I mean, if you have any respect for the greasy little turd.”

“Sula!” I said.

She sniffed. “Our commander makes sure the female guards are never left alone with him when he comes to inspect the garrison.” She looked fierce all of a sudden. “He didn’t try anything with you, did he?”

“He never even saw me,” I said.

“Good,” Sula said. “Because if he so much as harmed a hair on your head, little mouse, then Imperator or not, he’d be answering to me for it.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be delighted or terrified at this treasonous talk, and settled for walking down the hill in silence. 

Halfway down, a group of children dashed across the street in front of us. The smallest one, barely past the toddler stage, tripped and fell flat on his face in the middle of the street. He scrunched up his nose and let out an anguished wail. With a clatter, a cart drawn by two horses came over the brow of the hill. The child lay in the middle of the street, bawling. Sula uttered an oath and dashed out in front of the cart to grab the boy. The driver did not appear to see her until the last minute. As Sula snatched up the child the lead horse knocked her down. Somehow she managed to twist and toss the boy to safety as she fell, and then the cart was on top of her. I was running before the cart had come to a halt.

A couple of men helped lift her out from under the cart. 

“Send for a doctor,” someone said from behind me, but I could see at once a doctor wasn’t going to do any good. I dropped to my knees and gently lifted her head to my lap. Her eyes were open, her chest heaving, gasping for air as her punctured lungs filled with blood. Her eyes swivelled to me desperately. That light that burned so bright inside her was dwindling fast. 

Like an automaton, my hands moved without conscious thought, taking a jar from my bag, holding it to her lips and catching her last breath as life left her body. Mechanically I replaced the lid, put the jar in my bag and eased her head down on the hard cobbles. 

“Her father lives down the end of Saffron Alley by the spice warehouses,” I said to no-one in particular, and walked away.

* * *

I don’t know how much time passed before I found myself staring at the back door of the workshop. I had a feeling I’d been standing there a while. Finally I let myself in and went straight to my swordlady. Not yours. She’s the Imperator’s automaton now, a small voice whispered to me. I reached up to brush the curve of her cheek, and stopped at the sight of my red-stained hand. I looked down and found my tunic spotted with Sula’s blood.

Before I could think about it, I stripped off my tunic and used my belt knife to cut a long ragged strip off the bottom. Master Herron kept the priest-blessed ink we used for the orisons in a locked cupboard, but I knew where he kept the key. I’d told Dimity that clockworkers are not necromancers. That doesn’t mean we don’t know how to construct forbidden orisons. It’s obvious once you’ve learned the glyphs. 

With careful precision, I painted three glyphs on the bloodstained rag. Live. Be Free. And Sula’s name. At the end of the line I added a final glyph, which we give to every automaton: the glyph for obedience. I slashed a line through the glyph, negating it. My swordlady would never be forced to obey anyone.

I placed the orison inside her chest cavity and for good measure wiped some of the tacky blood from my hand onto the crystal. Next came the jar, and the pipe. Sula’s last breath brushed the crystal with a barely audible sigh. Something inside me twisted painfully, as if my life was draining away as I closed the chest plate. No movement or hum of new life came from the automaton. I slumped down on the floor and buried my face in my hands.

A hard hand lifted me by the arm. 

“You’re a mess, little mouse. Let’s get you cleaned up.” She nudged me toward the big sink at the back of the workshop and worked the pump for me. The cold water on my face brought me to my senses. That face—it was Sula, but not Sula. Frozen in a permanent half-smile. An automaton, and yet—I looked closer. I couldn’t see the seams between the ceramic sections that comprised her face. And her hair—for a moment it seemed to move like real hair. I blinked, and it was vitreous enamel again. She noticed my scrutiny and gave an experimental twirl.

“Well, this feels odd.” I hadn’t given her a jawbone, or a tongue and yet somehow she was speaking. I stepped away from the sink and swayed abruptly, and she caught me. Somehow I read concern in those unmoving eyes.

“I think you need to lie down,” she said.

I woke to the sound of clanging metal and Master Herron shouting, telling someone to be more careful. I rolled over, disorientated. I was curled up under a canvas drop sheet. Hauling myself upright, I looked over to the corner where my masterwork had stood, but it was empty. The back door stood open. There was a cart there, stacked with recumbent automatons, straw packed around them. And atop the pile, wrapped in a cloth, a smaller bundle. Sticking out of it were two feet wearing the calfskin boots I’d bought for my swordlady. Human soldiers milled around the cart and then formed up behind it as it lurched away.

“No!” I shouted. “You can’t take her!” I charged at the cart only to be intercepted by a pair of soldiers.

“Here now, what’s all this then,” one of them said, grabbing me. I sagged between them, eyes fixed on the retreating cart.

Master Herron hurried over. “That’s my apprentice,” he said. “Here, I’ll take her.”

“Not so fast,” the first soldier said. “Interfering with imperial business is a crime.” They hauled me round between them and put me in a second cart next to the last two clockwork soldiers. Master Herron followed, trying to argue with them until one of them pointed out that he could be charged with interference too. He stepped back, hands raised. As the cart started moving I made a dive for the side, but the soldier next to me snatched a handful of my tunic and dragged me back.

“That’s enough out of you, girl,” he growled, and drew his dagger. Reversing it, he struck me on the temple with the pommel and I collapsed back into the cart.

* * *

I woke in an unfamiliar place, my head throbbing. This is getting to be a habit, I thought, slowly sitting up. Wherever I was, it was dark and cold and smelled very unpleasant. I felt my way to the nearest wall—stone—and then to a sturdy wooden door. There was a little light coming through a barred slit in the door from a torch on the wall outside. This must be the imperial dungeon. 

I curled up next to the door and leaned my aching head against the cool stone. After what seemed an eternity I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. There was a clunk as the door to my cell was unbarred. A familiar shape was silhouetted in the doorway.

“Oreste?”

“Sula?” I stepped out into the light, blinking. She’d added a soldier’s leather jerkin to her outfit, and a sword. She shoved a bundle at me.

“Here, I got you a cloak, to cover the bloodstains. Sorry I couldn’t find you a clean tunic, but it’s been a busy day.” She helped me wrap the cloak around my shoulders. My brain finally caught up.

“Where are the guards? What happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe what the Imperator wanted to do to me!” She cocked her head to one side and studied her hands, flexing the fingers.

“You made me well. I strangled him.” 

She looked up. “It’s like someone kicked over an anthill in the palace. Everyone’s running in circles looking for an assassin. I just stood in the corner every time anyone came by. Nobody looks twice at an automaton in the palace—they’re everywhere.”

She took me by the hand and started hauling me toward the stairs.

“Wait, where are we going?” She looked back at me, her face still frozen in that perpetual half-smile.

“I think it’s time we saw something of the world, little mouse. I don’t think we’ll be welcome around here, come morning.”

S.A. MCKENZIE (they/them) is a writer of offbeat and blackly humorous science fiction and fantasy stories featuring time travelling rabbits, carnivorous unicorns and man-eating subway trains, because someone has to speak up for these misunderstood creatures. Find them online at www.hedgehogcircus.com and on Twitter: @samckenzie2.

I am the Fury

My name is Marja. If I ever had a family name, I have long forgotten it now. It was the first thing the bear ate.

I still remember where I sat when they took me. The dock was bathed with ocean water, the air choking with briney mist. I was gutting my father’s fish. Little knife clenched in my puffy fingers, I watched the blade press into the fish’s resistant flesh, before slipping inside and spilling its bowels. Mother hated the job, and hated that I loved it. But it needed doing. She let me go. 

Father and Uncle would go out with their nets and harpoons on the boat that waves could swallow. They left me alone on the dock, sitting on a rotting crate, my bottom fitting perfectly into the space where the wood splintered and melted away.

The fish wife in the tavern liked to sing as she worked, drowning out her baby’s cries. 

Oman kemur lundi av bakka,

 titandi fóti, reisir upp nakka.

I sang along sometimes, when my nose went numb with cold, my lungs aching from the wet wind. I needed distraction.

Hvør ræður her fyri londum? 

Valdimenn og norðmenn.

Did I call them to me? Did I summon the Norsemen, with the murmured words of that lullaby? Perhaps they would have come anyway. Come and dragged me off the dock, silent as the siren dragging her victim into the depths, shoved a stinking rag into my mouth and knocked my head under the bow of their oiled boat. As they hauled me away, I cried for father, for uncle, for mother. 

I don’t remember their names anymore either. The bear ate those too. 

I retched, rocking about as they beat the water with their oars. All I could see was the leather straps of their boots, the empty bottles that once held mead, the scent of sweat, and whale fat, and salt. I closed my eyes, but still was assaulted by the terrible smell, the violent sounds. Anger began to boil in my stomach, bubbling like hot broth.

When we made it to shore, one of the Norsemen tossed me over his shoulder, climbing down the gangplank with terrifying force. Once on land, he tossed me down, and I slammed my palms into the hard planks of the dock, whimpering, though perhaps the rag devoured the sound before the men could hear it.

They spoke their language, one I barely understood, only from the mocking jokes and curses uttered by my family. They swarmed around me, the wolf pack around its prey. I kept my eyes closed.

“Let us speak so the wretch may understand us,” said one of the men, his Faroese stilted, spoken like he chewed wasting meat.

“Welcome to Garðarshólmur,” said another, “you are here to mother our children.”

“And coddle our cock.”

The laughs were like whips, lashing out and striking skin. 

“Take her to captain’s room. He will have his way with her.”

Some hulking arms took my elbows and dragged me upright, shoving me toward a small doorway that seemed to me then the passage straight to death. It was a tavern inn, just across the road at the end of the dock. Fishwives looked on, eyes flashing, and sailors cheered us on. How could they watch, and do nothing? I was not much younger than they, only just out of youth. Fury grew like a flame inside me. I resisted at first, daring my witnesses to say just a single word, but the man dragging me was so much larger than I, my struggles meant nothing. He knocked me forward into the inn, past tables and chairs, my eyes hardly able to take in the sight of it all, only catching glances of sword belts, melting candles, tankards, an apron. We stumbled up the stairs and I was pushed into a small room.

“Captain will suck your braids till all the colour is gone,” he said, laughing. “He prefers his women blonde.”

I stumbled back, turning about, relieved to see the room empty. The cot was made up messily, a trunk in the corner half open, the tin mirror on the wall hanging cockeyed. I did not want to sit on the bed, did not want to submit. He will have his way with her. I knew what that meant. I felt the violation already, the hands all over me, the fear rising up my throat with intent to stifle my tongue. I would not have it. I would not. Mother needed me home. So did Father. I could not stay here with these barbarians. These evil, violent men, with women who watched and did nothing.

On the table by the window was a knife, its hilt a carving of a bear. I snatched it up, tucked it into my boot. Then, my breaths coming quick, I began to rifle through the chest, ripping past old boots and wooden bowls. My hands finally felt on something coarse and heavy. 

Fingers grasping for purchase, I pulled it out: a heavy bearskin cloak. Still cold from sitting in the freezing pool of water in the footwell of the ship, I wrapped it around myself. 

It hardly smelled like a man. The aroma rising toward my nose was unmistakably that of a wild animal. 

I rose to my feet, a strange heat pulsating in my toes. I walked toward the mirror on the wall. Now the heat was rising toward my knees, up to my hips. I reached out to straighten the mirror, seeing my reflection on the plate. What was this rampant warmth, now flooding with increased fervor toward my torso, like a flame fed with fuel? 

I stared at my own brown eyes, hooded, watching as the cloak grew around me. My red braids disappearing under the overwhelming brown fur. My frown stretching, distorting. 

By the time I was transformed, I had not the ability to recognize myself anymore. I was a creature made of rage.

All I knew was that all-consuming anger. Sending spittle from my mouth. I crushed the bed, shattered the windows. I was unyielding. In my hulking form, I blundered down the stairs, smashing them with my feet, clawing the walls down to the stone foundations. Relentless.  Lurching my arms about, wielding that knife without reservation. I slaughtered them all, every man and woman in that forsaken tavern. I splintered the tables with my immense strength, set fire to the room with a candle and my wrath. Was I bear, was I woman?

I was both. 

I lumbered out into the road and released an almighty roar, one that rattled the very stones of Garðarshólmur, one that filled me up with even more strength. The Norsemen scattered around me. I was unstoppable. I stamped them out like flies. I destroyed the dock with my fists, crushed the deck of their ship into debris, the sail floating in the water like the corpse of the whale. 

When all in my wake was in ruin, I allowed myself to breathe, to slow. I removed the bearskin cloak and sucked in cold air, gazing up at the grey skies. My anger satisfied, I felt clean again. I didn’t realize then what the bear had taken from me. That the fury came at a price. 

I bent toward the soldier huddling in fear by the shattered dock. 

“Bring me home,” I said.

He peered up at me, fear in his eyes. “Girl,” he said, “you’ve destroyed our ship. If you wish to go home, you must go to our council and beg permission for another.”

“I will scour the countryside, take another.”

“You will bring war down upon your island,” he said, “you think the Faroe can face the battle-cry of the Norse?”

I backed away from him. This I did not want. I wanted safety. I wanted peace for my family. 

“What is your name, girl?” 

I glanced back at him. He sat a little straighter now. From his regal composure, it seemed he was the captain, who would do with me what he will. 

“Marja.”

“Your family name. The Althing looks kindly on some of you islanders.”

I blinked. My family name. I knew my family. My mother, my father. I could still see their faces in my mind. But I could not remember the name. My name. 

Gritting my teeth, I spat out, “it will not matter. We are nobody. You will take me to the Althing.”

“I will?” He stood slowly, as if realizing he was still the man. 

“I will allow you to dream on what may happen if you do not.” I turned from him. “And this cloak? It is mine now.”

He agreed. We took a sealskin sack of aged cheese and dried meat, he with a broadsword on his belt and I with the bearskin around my shoulders. It only overtook me when the hood was raised atop my head. We walked the cold lonely roads toward what the man called Lögberg, the place of meeting for the council. 

He told me his name was Einar. 

“This cannot be your name. I know what it means,” I said. We sat by a glacier stream to refill our water skins. “You do not fight alone. You use smaller men to fight for you and you tell your women to look away.”

Einar scoffed. “I captain a ship, Marja. You award me too much credit.” He looked at me for a long time. I imagined him sucking on the ends of my braids until all the colour was gone. “Perhaps your name should be Einar. If you were not a woman.”

“I can still fight alone,” I said.

He seemed to ignore my words, but stood, his figure a dark and bulky form against the milky light streaming through the clouds. “If I did not know it to be impossible, I would think you a berserkr.” 

I traced my fingers along the edge of the cape. “I think you know that it is not impossible.”

He glanced at me again, and I detected fear in his light eyes. It made that heat tingle in my core again. I thought it anger before. Perhaps it was power. 

We walked many long days and nights, through the struggling farmlands brushing the grey landscape with dull greens and yellows. Mountains carved a line along the horizon, and the ocean sent salty winds from the south. I did not despise this place. It had a strange beauty, a womanly essence, one I felt tangibly when Einar called it:

“Fjallkonan.”

“Who is she?” I asked.

“She is the lady of the mountain. The mountain that made this whole land.”

I smiled, gazing at the great peaks rising in the north. “She is magnificent.”

“That she is.”

I turned on him then. “And yet you believe that a woman cannot be a berserkr. You are weak.”

Einar laughed. “You have shown me that. But that is not why you are not a berserkr.”

“And why not then?”

“You did not drink the wine of the bear. That is what gives the warriors their power.”

“How do you care to explain my power?”

“You are a child,” he said, “your soul is vulnerable. Perhaps the Gods saw fit to toy with you.” 

That made me angry, so much so that I refused to speak to him for the rest of the day. We travelled in silence, accompanied only by the low rumble of thunder in the distance, the gentle growl of wind buffeting through the cliffs. It was almost like music, to my ears. 

I began to sing:

“Títlingur, lítil

 læna mær skip títt. 

lítið er skip mitt, 

lág eru bein míni, 

stíga borð á bátinum. 

Árar leikar í tolli.”

Einar tried to hum along, which furthered my annoyance.

“You cannot carry a tune,” I snapped.

“Why are you singing?” He asked.

“Because the earth is singing to me. It would be rude not to respond.”

Einar elbowed me lightly. “You islanders hear music everywhere.”

“And you hear it nowhere.”

He went quiet then. “No. Not quite. I hear it now.” He lowered his chin. “You sing beautifully.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I have made you sentimental.”

He sighed. “My brother used to sing like you.”

“Used to?”

He ignored my question, but spit in the rush grass beside the road. “I do not know much Faroese. Tell me, what do the words mean?”

I gazed ahead, at the winding path toward Þingvellir. “It means: Little bird, lend me your ship. My ship is small, my legs hang low, step on the boat. Oars play in the tholepin.”

He breathed out, almost like a sigh. No, there was too much pity there for it to be a sigh.

“You must miss your home,” he said. When he placed his hand on my shoulder, I flinched. “Had you not destroyed her, I would have lent you my ship. Little bird.” He was smiling fondly. It made my heart soften, to see this rough man be so gentle.

“I am not a little bird,” I said, smiling. I let his hand stay a moment longer before shaking it off. “I am a bear.”

We arrived at Þingvellir the day before the next meeting, as the council gathered every full moon. We camped beside the expanse of the river. From my blanket, I could see the wide reaches of the mountains around us, our bodies nestled into the valley like a babe in its mother’s arms. I missed my mother. The thought made me weep. Einar didn’t know how to comfort me, so he simply made a stew that night over a small fire, and let me eat alone, my weary feet in the river. 

The next morning was the gathering of Althing. Men from all the reaches of Garðarshólmur arrived, setting up camp around the smooth flowing water. I watched from our place, as they pitched their tents and split open their barrels of ale. There were women too, which brought me comfort, though my anger still simmered inside me. They worked around the men, setting fires, sweeping clean the tents. Einar left to go meet his friends, to garner me allies. Instead, whispers spread, rampant as a grassfire, till it reached my ears.

“A woman berserkr.”

I held the bearskin cloak tight around me. It was armour until the Althing decided to grant me freedom to return home. Just a ship. I would man it myself. If I had to. 

The day passed quickly with my anticipation. A few hours before dusk, the men gathered at the Lögberg, an outcropping of rock where the men sat in a circle, their wives at their sides. All men were welcome, and so Einar took his rightful place, with I behind him. Across the circle, I met the eyes of one of the wives, who had dark skin and gold beads sewed into her braids. She was a Celt, I realized, from her tartan skirt and plaited locks. Had they stolen her too? Snatched her off the shore of Éire? There was little way to know. 

When she smiled at me, I had to look away.

The men deliberated for hours on many subjects, local conflicts, small, meaningless quarrels. I felt my anger growing, my fingers twitching to lift my hood. These men knew nothing of my suffering, of the pain they caused. My vision shifted as if smoke passed in front of my eyes, from the flames of my rage. I longed to speak, but feared to lose their respect. Feared to lose my only way home.

Then, the men were laughing. I focused back in, to hear the cause of this merriment. 

“A woman? Preposterous.”

Now Einar was talking, standing and filling the space around him. “Marja is a berserkr, my friends. This I swear. She demolished my ship.”

“Einar, you speak lies!”

“I would not be here if she had not made me come. She requires a vessel to carry her home. If we do not comply, she will not hesitate to unleash her wrath upon us.”

“Now that is the word of truth!” I cried out, standing beside Einar. He flashed me a glare and elbowed me back.

“Quiet, woman!” One of the men bellowed. The Celtic wife met my eye, her brow creased. She shook her head. 

“You say she destroyed your ship! Where did she find the wine of the bear? You cannot have given it to her.”

“I did not,” Einar admitted. “She did not need it. All she needs is the skin of the bear over her brow and she is turned feral.”

Whispers rushed over the counselors. “Did not need it?” 

I crossed my arms, angry for their disbelief, for their dismissal. I knew what I could do to them now, the real, raw power inside me. Before I realized, a low growl had escaped my mouth.

“If she really is as powerful as you say, Einar,” a man said, “she could be an asset to us. For us all.”

It happened fast. Before I could do anything at all. I was distracted, watching the Celtic wife’s eyes widen in horror, as her husband and another man leapt forward. As Einar drew his broadsword. As the weapons clashed, as a blade was thrust into Einar’s throat. Cut down, in a matter of moments. Did I cry out? I could not notice. I grappled at the cloak, trying to draw it up, but then the men were upon me. I howled with anger, but they pinned me with their weight and ripped the cloak from my shoulders.

“This is my fury!” I screamed. “You cannot have it!”

“You are ours.”

They tied up my hands and dragged me from the Lögberg. I fought all the way, thrashing and biting, grief filling my lungs like the dead man’s blood. Einar was dead. They killed my only friend in this foul place. And now I was theirs. Tied like a hog sent for slaughter. They fastened me to a post in the center of their camp, kept there as a spectacle to laugh at, to ridicule. And that they did, all night, drunk on amusement and ale, using me in every way they could imagine. 

I am the bear. But they are the animals.

By morning, they had all gone for sleep, and I thought I must be the only one awake. I sagged against my bindings, my body brutalized, my mind on fire with hate. If only I didn’t need the skin to turn berserkr, I would tear the eyes from their heads, snap the sinews of their bodies like bits of thread. How dare they? I was not theirs. I could not be contained. 

In the hazy purple light of dawn, the Celt came to me. She tipped my chin up and poured cool water over my tortured lips, down my dry throat.

“My name is Keira,” she whispered into my ear. I could feel her breath parting my hair. “I will loosen your bindings.”

And so she did, lowering me till I could sit on the ground, holding the cup of water in my hands. 

“Why won’t you free me?” I asked, gazing into her dark eyes.

“Because they will chase you across the land and sea. It will become a hunt and they will not rest.” She knelt beside me, using a rag to wipe the blood from my cheek. “And you will not survive.”

“I will,” I growled, jerking away from her.

“They took your skin, berserkr.”

I glared at her. “You think I am nothing without it?”

“No.” She dropped her hands. “But they do.”

“You are his wife,” I spat. “You support him.”

She stood then, brushing the grass from her skirt. “Yes, I am married to Lord Kvalheim. But there is something you must learn.” She met my eye soundly. “There is a vast ocean between supporting, and surviving.”

Lord Kvalheim took me back with him to his stead, where his clan feasted every night on whale and mead. He lived along the Eastern coast, and made me walk behind his horse by a tether, Keira glancing back at me with concern as I stumbled and tripped, trying to stay upright. The lords of Althing decided they would pass me around, a hard earned reward for their exploits, a warrior to be reckoned with.

“We will don you your bearskin, you will win our battles,” Lord Kvalheim said, roaring with a laugh, “and then we will take it away. You may stay as my guest as long as you are tame.”

I kicked and I screamed. I would not go quiet. “I will not be tamed! This is my fury!”

At nights on our trips, Keira came to me, rebraiding my hair, whispering in low tones. “You must submit, Marja. Or you will be smothered.”

“I will not,” I spat. “I cannot.”

Keira glanced over at where her lumbering husband snored away by the fire. 

“If you submit today, you will be strong enough to fight tomorrow.”

Though I loathed it, I saw wisdom in her words. And so I grew quiet. I walked in silence. At night, I cried for my loss when no one would hear. For my family, who were growing ever distant in my mind, and for Einar, who had died to protect me. There was good in this world, and these men were keeping it from me. 

Except for Keira. She was a being of goodness that slipped closer without them ever knowing. 

At the Kvalheim homestead, I was welcomed like a warrior. It was strange to me, to see the people cheer, and watch in awe as I walked by. I was untied, allowed to stride tall beside my captor. But as we approached the banquet hall, Keira took my hand. 

“Do not trust their adoration,” she whispered, “it will turn to poison the moment you part your lips.”

Her hand was warm. I trusted her. I did not speak. I let the ladies dress me in gowns with foreign patterns and let the men tell tales of my ferociousness. I tried to live as Keira told me to, but it grew harder and harder. I did not belong in this place, with these people. A growing part of me desired to demolish them all. But they had my bearskin. They had rendered me powerless.

I spent the days walking the farms and grass-roofed cottages, wondering if I could run. But Keira’s words lingered. They would hunt me to the ends of the earth. For sport. I wanted my freedom. But I did not want to die.

Then, the time came for me to serve my purpose. Kvalheim was going to war with a neighboring clan, over some dispute. They would attack at dawn. Or rather, I would. 

“You do not have to do this,” Keira said, as she sat with me that evening. “You can let the anger go.”

“No,” I said. “It’s there, it is growing. It will be unleashed, and I will do terrible things.”

It was far worse than terrible. It was a living nightmare. And I relished in it. 

They kept me bound, and then threw the cloak over my head, rushing back to their defenses. They knew I could not tell my enemy from my friend when the bear took me over. Or perhaps they knew that they were all my enemy. 

The familiar lick of anger through my body was a welcome warmth, a comforting surge of emotion. I was free. I roared, I raged, I tore through the bodies before me. I soaked my skin with the blood of men until red was all that could be seen. I bellowed to the skies. Until a hooked arrow drew the cloak from my head and I was recaptured, a prisoner once more, helpless. I still felt the tingling warmth inside me, but resistance was futile. 

They stole my anger and used it, which only fed the flames inside me. It was never ending, the crime, and I saw no way to stop it. The more they hurt me, the more they had to steal. I grew hopeless, letting my fury be taken, be used against others. I let myself be dressed as a doll, flirted with like a lady, beaten like a dog when the bear begged my freedom. And each time I became berserkr, the bear ate something else. My mother’s name. My father’s. My childhood dog. My will to ever go back. My will to go on. 

The only one I woke for was Keira. The woman who touched my hair like it was precious, who spoke in soft tones. Who stayed by me, even when I returned the colour of death. I was glad,when Kvalheim decided he did not want to share me. When he kept me there. He did not know that as he hoarded me close, he was losing something else. Though I doubted he ever truly had her. 

“Where are you taking me?” 

Keira was guiding me down a small path, following a stream that cut a soft divot into the grass.

“Hush and follow.” She guided me up a small cliff, which overlooked a lush valley and a lake. The air was sweet with honeysuckle. “You see that meadow, yonder? That is where I long to be. My heart has called for it ever since they brought me here.”

I looked out, taking in the grass, the silver water. “Why?”

“Because it is untouched. It is the sacred land of a goddess. But why should I care? I know no Norse gods. I am from Éire.” She took my hand. “We could make a new life there.”

“But it would not be safe. We would have to fight for it, with all of our beings.”

“I could do that.” The skin of her hand was soft. I traced my thumb over her knuckles. “I have been waiting for something to fight for all my life. I lost sight of it. But you’ve shown me that survival is not freedom.” She looked at me, her eyes full of tears and hope. “We could be free.”

But an escape was quickly out of question, for Keira was with a child. The knowledge made me red with frustration, a new kind of anger. After many weeks of watching Kvalheim stroke her growing belly and kiss her in front of all his men in the feast hall, I realized what it was. It was jealousy. Envy. Rage that he should have her and I should not. This rage made the bear inside me grow fierce. At my next battle, I was even more brutal than before. I cut heads from bodies without even looking. 

I knew my anger would not help me. I had to earn her love with gentleness, because Keira was a creature of gentleness. She was soft and hopeful, everything I felt I could never be. But when she smiled my way, it felt possible, somehow. It felt within my grasp. So I began to leave small bouquets of wildflowers around her chambers, in small cups by the window sill, beside her seat where she stitched with her maids. I watched as she picked them up and smelled them, her lips curling into a knowing smile, her warm eyes flashing toward me. That eased the jealousy. 

At night, I would sometimes leave a spoon of honey at her bedside, in hopes it would bring her sweet dreams. Every morning, the spoon was clean, so I knew she was tasting it. And I hoped, adoring it. I learned the truth when she called me in one night. 

“Marja,” she called from her door. I slept with the other warriors on cots in the banquet hall. “Come to me.”

I rose, picking my way around the sleeping bodies. Was she angry with me? Was I too forward? She was a married woman, carrying her husband’s child. She would have every right to banish me on the spot. 

She stood waiting by her bed, holding the wooden spoon of honey, her eyes just as golden in the candle light. 

“Come closer,” she said. I obeyed, bowing my head. “You bring me this honey every night.” It was not a question.

“Yes,” I said. 

“And you never taste it yourself.”

My heart began to race at her words. I looked up to see her stepping right before me. She raised the spoon to her mouth, drinking till her lips were glistening. Then, she pulled my face down to hers and kissed me. It was the nectar of the Gods. For the first time in years, my heart opened, and I forgot what the bitter cut of anger felt like. 

After our coupling, I began to know happiness more than I ever knew rage. We would spend all our days together. I cared for her when she grew so heavy with the child she found simple tasks difficult. When the time came for the birth, I held her hand as she screamed and convulsed. It made me angry, at first, that Khalheim’s seed should cause her such anguish, but that changed after I saw that wee babe in Keira’s arms. She held it like the most gentle, wonderful thing in the world, and as I looked on, I realized I could not help but love this creation of Keira. The babe, Sigurður, was her essence.

She passed him into my arms, after the midwives left to clean their linens at the well.

“Will you be his father, Marja?”

I nearly wept. “Yes.”

The child changed me. It was ours, our little boy, and there was a new weakness in my heart. One I welcomed openly. One that would break me. He was a joyous thing, eyes dark as river water, a smile so innocent, even men softened at the sight of it. A perfect child. Kvalheim’s heir perhaps, but Keira’s child, and mine. 

This weakness first felt like strength. Kvalheim went to war with his northern neighbors once more, this time because they had slaughtered their own little boy, because he had been born strange, with too few fingers, and no eyes at all. Keira called him a poor changeling child, but to kill him was barbaric. The faeries would have their revenge, she insisted. But it was not the faeries who made it first. It was Kvalheim, after the enemy chieftain accused him of cursing their child, of killing their child. 

Kvalheim would not have this. It was a slight, a cruel injustice to claim his clan were child-killers. And so we went to war. I was enraged that these people should be heartless. It was a righteous cause, to defeat these men. It was justice.  

The dawn of the battle, Kvalheim brought more berserkrs. They donned their fur capes and eyed me suspiciously, under the pewter skies. It was spitting rain, like the Gods were shaming our coming rage. But I stopped believing in Gods a long time ago.

One of the berserkrs tried to pass me a cup of the wine of the bear, but I refused.

“I do not need it.”

He scoffed and went to sit with his brethren. When they threw back their potions, they grew concerningly ill. I watched in horror and no small amount of disgust as they began to writhe about, yellow foam spilling from their mouths, their eyes swivelling back into their heads. But when they fought, they were ruthless. I followed after them, donning my hood, my anger filling me up with unbearable heat. 

And so we fought. 

Knives like claws, ripping through flesh, ending lives in a bloody instant. Howls of vengeance, pain, death, rife in the air, a single cacophonous din in the silence of those barren fields. It filled me up, like a breath of cold, sharp wind, spinning out my wrath into a squall – I terrorized the heath, those enemy warriors nothing to me, nothing, nothing…

After we killed their men, the other berserkrs grew strangely subdued, some even falling to the ground asleep. It seemed their anger had dissipated and left them weary. Mine never did that. It endured until I had no need for it. I took down my hood, realizing that for the first time, Kvalheim’s men were not there to take it from me. In fact, as I gazed about me with clarity in my eyes, I saw that the number of men we had just fought was oddly small, less than thirty. I stared around, then toward the tent of the far end of the field, where a woman was standing, her hands on her hips. I approached, until I could see her smile.

“Why do you smile? You have lost.” I spat the words, my confusion making me angry once more. 

“We haven’t,” she said simply. 

A strange sensation grew in me. Fear?

“Where are the rest of your men?”

“By now? I should think storming your keep, and taking Kvalheim’s heir. It is only right. You curse our child, then we must take yours.”

I began to shake. Sigurður. My baby. My poor child. He was in danger. 

I raged back toward Kvalheim’s keep, my mind absorbed by terror and fury. The enemy had ravaged the land, burned our houses to the ground. They had invaded the great hall. I ran with God-like speed. But before I could go any farther in the door, I was slammed against the ground, dragon’s breath snuffed from my throat. I struggled, roaring like a bear, but there were too many of them, too much weight. They tore the cape from my shoulders, reducing me back to my womanly form. 

They were fools. They thought me no threat this way. They backed away, letting me rise, small, insignificant, shrinking in that green gown. I looked up, red hair blowing back as a gust of air billowed in the ajar doors of the mess hall 

The bear is not the fury.

I am the fury. 

I could see it from there, a man holding Sigurður, too tight, he was wailing. Keira on the floor, blood in her eyes, screaming. There was no time to think, only fire to breathe. I flew at him, larger than a bear, larger than any creature of this world. I was untamed. He lurched back, but my hands sought his throat. I killed him there where he stood, snapping his life in two, catching Sigurður before he fell to the flagstones. Placing him down into Keira’s arms, where I knew he would be safe though she could not see him, I turned to the oncoming wave. 

These men were nothing against my rage. They were after my child. I did not even have to cut their throats. I simply bellowed, as deep and loud as thunder shaking the skies, until they cowered in fear, falling to their knees. 

“Leave now!” I roared. “And I will spare you.”

The men fled, the rumble of a hundred feet, and then silence. I turned to my beloved and our child, lifting them both in my arms, now I was as strong as a God.

“I will protect you,” I said. “Where is Kvalheim?”

“He is dead,” Keira said, whimpering, still in pain. 

I carried her safely to her bed. I wiped the blood from her eyes. “You’re safe now.”

“Are you?”

I lay down next to her and sang:

Little bird, lend me your ship

My ship is small, 

my legs hang low, 

step on the boat. 

Oars play in the tholepin.

Moments passed. Minutes. Days? Keira turned to face me.

“The oars play in the tholepin,” she said. She placed her hand on my cheek. “I will take you home.” 

“You are my home,” I said.

“Why, you think I shall not come with you? It is my boat, after all.” She kissed Sigurður’s head, and then my parted lips. “Little bird.”

ALICE HATHAWAY (she/her) is a lesbian author from Massachusetts earning her BA in English and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London. She has work previously appearing in The Year After Magazine and has a passion for novels and short stories featuring queer and body diverse women. Find her on Twitter @tthegardengirl.

The Girl and the Wolf

Red Riding Hood is a silly story about a girl who gets lost in the woods and is eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, I tell you.

Not if someone saves her first, you reply, our lips close enough to kiss. 

Years later, this is always how I remember it. 

*              *              *

The air is sweet and golden. Mummy in her white dress, shimmering like a faery in the rain-scented grass. Daddy is setting up a monopoly board, while the little radio hums a tune. I’m licking my fingers clean. I’ve just finished my cheese sandwich and a glass of cranberry juice. 

A red butterfly flutters in the bushes, gossamer and dream-like. 

I reach out to catch it.

Look, I whisper gleefully, tugging at Daddy’s shirt.

He doesn’t notice me at all. Neither does Mummy. They are bickering about something, but I cannot hear the words. Flies buzz near my ears and the summer world tilts dangerously to one side. 

I feel sleepy and tired, like the last page of a book ready to be turned and closed forever. I edge away, closer to the woods, hoping for Mummy to turn and look for one last time. For a while, I crouch in the thicket, watching them argue loudly. It could be a scene from a silent film.

A faint cry breaks the wind, shattering glass. 

And suddenly, I am running through the sunlit woods, stumbling over nettle and dead branches. There is a dark wolfish shadow at my heels, the iron smell of blood, and a trail of blue and angry scars.

*              *              *

School is full of whispers.

The lavatory walls have my name misspelled, a slew of curses scrawled beneath. I return from PE to find my bag often wet with something that isn’t water or pages ripped from my textbooks. The other girls shuffle past, mouths curled in a sneer, a savage gleam in their eyes.

But sometimes, they invite me to join them. Beneath rickety desks, dog-eared pocket dictionaries and magazines with pictures of men and women doing things lie open on our laps. Our tongues fumble over new words and sensations, as we take turns passing them around. Some girls lock themselves up in toilet cubicles together. 

I wonder if there’s something wrong with me, for not wanting that. 

Once they play a game, where we place our arms against each other, comparing the shades of our dusky skins. The fairest one wins and is chosen to play Cinderella in the annual school play. I try auditioning for the chorus, but my voice is too hoarse so I become a step-sister instead: a dark, glittery fixture with a painted scowl.

*              *              *

One day, I come home and find a letter from my classmates in my bag, scribbled with the expletives my parents usually hurl at each other. I take them to Mummy so that she’d let me skip school for once, but her room is empty. She’d just packed her bags and left without a goodbye. 

It surprises me that people can do that. 

Daddy has holed himself in his study, drinking and howling to a lawyer on the phone. Sighing, I begin my algebra homework, tears silently trailing down my cheeks. A postcard falls out from my math textbook; it has a painting of a picnic. 

Your name is on the other side, enclosed in a pink felt-tip pen heart, with a note: I know you think everyone hates you, but that’s not true. Here’s something to cheer you up. 

I know your face. It is kinder than the other girls’, framed by locks of dark hair. We’ve exchanged silent glances in chapel and we were paired as lab partners once. Last year, your mum baked a strawberry cake and you shared it with everyone, even me, but we’d never really spoken. It had been a delicious, syrupy cake.

My fingers brush over the postcard. The painted family has fairer skin, flushed faces. They look so happy and  dream-like in that yellow-green backdrop. 

But you know nothing about my family.

You don’t yet know how this innocent picture reminds me of that picnic, the day it all fell apart. Images swim up, torn and faded: a stamped Monopoly board, paper plates stained with red juice, broken glass, a white ribbon fluttering in the breeze, a trail of ants and flies, darkness and blood between my legs, the wolf. 

I cannot piece them together, so I carry these splinters of my past in my heart, rustling like ghosts.  Later I will share these images with you. You will look aghast and fold me in your arms, scatter the fragments on the dusty floor, looking for a way to mend them.

That night, I fall asleep looking at your postcard and dream of running through the woods again, searching for a path to the past.

*              *              *

The other girls whisper stories about us, but we don’t care.

During class, we pass doodles and chits filled with dirty jokes. We stay back after school, laughing carelessly on the rusty swings. At the library, we read the same books together. Sitting so close, our knees often brush but we take no notice. 

The first time I bunk a class, it’s with you and we sneak up on the terrace to eat plums, our lips and cheeks stained purple. I want to tell you stories but you’d rather play-act them. I don’t mind because I get to be Cinderella, finally, albeit in my school uniform. 

We discuss endings, a lot. 

You think Cinderella didn’t want to marry Prince Charming, that the wolf and Red Riding Hood could have been friends, that Sleeping Beauty was better off asleep than wake up with babies she doesn’t remember having. I especially agree with the last bit. I’d like to be a beautiful princess too, with roses in my hair, encased in a glass casket, wrapped in vines and ivy, forever dreaming.

But that saddens you. 

Don’t you ever want to wake up in a better future?

No, I want to wake up in the past, a happier past.

How could you ever change the past? 

You sound genuinely curious but I’m too scared and embarrassed to tell you that I think the answer is love. 

It sounds so silly in my head.

I know it’s my fault, for imagining love like a reward. It is why people are so desperate to fall in love, I think, over and over. Because one drop of that strange elixir can change everything, even the past. The pain that twists and turns beneath our skin could fade, like a picture washed out and painted over. Cinderella’s lonely nights by the fireplace, in the ashes are all worth it for that one midnight dance, for that glistening glass slipper that fits. 

I don’t know the words to tell you this. 

Did I want to be alone in a bathroom with you? 

Do I dream of you touching me in places that feel strange to me? 

Do I secretly wish for you to call me something other than a best friend?

No, I don’t think I ever did. 

But I will not say no if you kiss me, if your lips chastely brush mine or ghost over my cheeks or the curve of my neck. 

Instead you lean closer, smelling faintly of plums and mint, and whisper in my ears. 

Well, we’re going to build a time machine, but first we need to get out of school. 

I think love is a spool of thread that unwinds backwards; a mossy forest path that I can follow all the way to a different, happier past. 

*              *              *

The day the term ends, I invite you to my home, to celebrate our freedom.

My dad greets you at the doorway, promises to get Chinese for dinner. He talks to you for a bit, asks about your family. You say that your mum died of cancer last year and your dad’s planning to send you away to an all-girls’ boarding school.

I pause at the doorway, shocked still. 

You had never told me about your family. I had never asked.

In the evening, we climb onto the terrace and dangle our legs over the edge, overlooking the constellated city, talking about our favorite stories. But our conversation is strained, as though something dead and invisible looms between us. 

I rest my head on your shoulders. 

I thought we’d run away after school.

I wanted that, too. To escape. 

Your mother… you never told me.

I don’t like remembering it. If I don’t remember, maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe that’s the only way to change the past: to forget it.

That’s something I’ve never been able to do. 

I don’t ever want to forget you.

You wrap your arms around me, as stars slowly bloom in the night sky. There are tears upon my cheeks and I do not know who they belong to.

We’re still crying softly when we slowly make our way downstairs. It is dark and Daddy has mistakenly turned off the lights. I miss my footing. That inky blackness swims before me again like the wolf in the forest but, in the next moment, you’re there.  You pull me back, a wolfish grin upon your face.

Mind your step, silly!

*              *              *

Before you leave, you promise to keep in touch, whisper that we’ve still got a time machine to build. You hug me tight. 

I’m the first to let go. 

I cry a lot afterwards, hugging your old postcard to my bosom. Perhaps somewhere in the future, we’ve already built the machine and now we’re meeting each other in the past.

I remember the picnic, a sunlit world where Mummy and Daddy and I are playing Monopoly together.  Then, I’m running through the woods, a wolf at my heels, and I turn and meet you for the first time. 

ARCHITA MITTRA (she/her) is a writer and artist, with a love for all things vintage, whimsy, and darkly fantastical. She recently completed her Master's in English Literature from Jadavpur University and lives in Kolkata (India) with her family and rabbits. Her work has been published in Strange Horizons, Three Crows, Hexagon, Mithila Review, and elsewhere. She also reads tarot cards, loves blueberry milkshakes, has more hobbies than she can count, and is still waiting for the Doctor to show up with the TARDIS. You can find her on Instagram and Twitter @architamittra and check out her blog at architamittra.wordpress.com. 

Yamwine & Nectar

Above, the festival weekend named Equivox. The city celebrates its voices on the longest day of the year. Children run, so their streamers of black and red will fly. Thin lengths of fabric tied around fingers: never forget. Yarns sewn to shirts dancingthat dance in the wind like an afterthought. Colored beads surrounding fringes of leather, hanging from jackets of Nameate hide. 

Some adults wear chiffons that trap the air when they run and billow when the winds blows. But those of means wear chains. Not like mine. Pretty chains of intricate linkage – some gold and some silver – between a solid ring necklace and solid ring bracelets. They do not run. They don’t have to.

The scent of slow-roasted minotaur wafts from earthen ovens with black garlic and saffron, turnips and beetroot infused with tarragon and garnished with shishito. Oxtail stew bubbles and burbles above the fire lizards. Tamarind-kissed nabovgo sizzles on skewers against the grill, and its succulence swims in the air like these space whales before they’re caught.

Of course, there are yams. Ever-roasting yams make for a yam-scented city. Or roasted and placed in cold cache. Or roasted and put into stills for yamwine. Yamwine for which the city is known. Yamwine which that calls visitors and procurers to the city all year long, not just at Equivox.  

For their masters, street urchins sell jars of lightning, desert wind, or summer rain: wares for which there’s always a demand. Some refuse to line an adult’s pockets from the labor of children. Most favor this exploitation of children over the other options.

In the square, six families sit in teams upon the dais, waiting for the annual impundulu eating contest to begin. One of the psychedelic effects of consuming impundulu in large quantities remains, unfortunately, self-cannibalism. And since all cannibalism is forbidden within the city, a cadre of healers and constables stand by to treat and restrain the victors and runners-up. 

The Mayor, Keyamu, greets each head of house by their given names while he wends his way to the woman who’s known for the best escolar crudo on the delta. A quartet of pre-teens follows him, and he purchases for each a parcel of this woman’s work. They eat with wooden sporks and murmur their thanks. To the youth but loud enough for the crudo lady to hear, “Only strong bodies can be of service to our fair city.” He presses platinum discs into her hand. 

Parents charge after children. Children propel themselves down the lanes between stalls to fly their fabrics. Stalls where artisans whittle sculpture from wood blocks and mediums predict every future but their own. In one of those stalls, I notice something amiss. Someone amiss?

A stranger?

The Stranger? I’ve never felt him in the city before. Never felt anyone like him in my city before. His skin drinks the light, dark like mine, dark like the cell. He wears no streamers, no chains. He speaks to the Ceramicist in the sweetest tones, leaning on the table between them. The Ceramicist also leans on the table, whisking his locs over broad shoulders. When they laugh, I feel a twinge of envy.

So rapt is my attention, the opening cell door takes me by surprise. Mayor Keyamu carries lamplight, and my head lolls away from the little flame’s capacity to light up the dark in my cell. Beneath the ground and behind stairs, light cannot find me easily and it never stays long enough for pupils to dilate.

“On Equivox, we celebrate the freedom to speak. This is where freedom begins. The Daemon of the Forest stalked the forefathers, directly above this spot. The demon they bound. Our city they built. And it is your duty. Nay, your privilege to contribute to the Binding.” 

Mayor Keyamu stands just inside the door, athame in hand. He cuts into their palms and their candle wicks kiss the Mayor’s lamplight. Each youth finds their wall and re-trace the painting in blood. They come to touch up the only art I see in a year.

“I don’t understand. Can’t we just go back to the festival? Groove Congress performs tonight.” This girl wheezes while she wrings her palm to extract more pigment. 

“You may return to it, Abigo, when you’ve done your civic duty,” the Mayor says.

“It looks like a boy,” a toad-voiced boy says, sneaking glances at me while blood-painting. He tiptoes over my chains, careful not to touch me or them. 

“Whatever it is, it’s very dirty,” the short-haired girl says.

“Perciva!” the Mayor shouts, his words cacophe against the hard surfaces of my room. “Respect the Binding of the Daemon!”

“It is dirty!” Perciva says. “And it smells! And why is there a horse’s bit in its mouth?”

“It looks like a boy,” the croak-voiced boy says again. I can feel his breath on my skin as he examines me from behind. When my hand shifts, the chains ring and he gasps. 

The Mayor laughs. “Zorai, are you finished? Good,” the Mayor says. “Daemons take on many forms to vex us. But come, let us end this moroseness and indulge in yamwine and nectar.”

“Aren’t we too young for yamwine?” Perciva asks as they mill out, closing their bleeding hands around the flame and closing the Binding ritual.

“But you’re never too young to watch the Mayor drink yamwine,” the Mayor’s voice and their footsteps grow distant. 

Sweet relief from inane voice and callow questioning and reminders. 

The sun is high on the first day of Equivox! The movement competition begins! Dutty wine and p-poppin’ and steppin’ and footwork and crump start and gyrate for hours. Motion plays against jodecidal choruses and timbalandic polyrhythm. Bodies tut and wack to every syncopation and subdivision of the beat. The joy of song vibrates through the air and reverberates onto bodies.

Across town, musicians take the stage and night takes the day. The air is humid with electricity. Anxious bodies stare and while in wait for this collection of songs and players and singers to begin. The seashell recordings for the Groove Congress, on any other day, can be heard throughout the city. The audience is a force – the anticipation of alchemy, the desire to be changed, the hope to be surprised – that shines onto the stage. 

When the music starts, the crowd erupts like a geyser. Audiophiles shower the music-makers with appreciation for relief from wait. Not unlike ambrosia, feeding the demigods of sound.

In response, the staged collective tow the lines of practice and spontaneity. They sing, slide, strum, beat, jam, squall, harmonize, and break it down before building it back up for the people swaying and screaming at foot level. 

It’s a false worship. Not because the soulshine from the crowd couldn’t lift the Groove Congress to godhood. False because the sound godlings shine soul back onto the audience. No one rises to deification but each of them feels transformed, blessed by the other’s presence and adulation.

 That’s how I find him again. Concerts form a praise circuit and somehow he stands amid, observing not the performance, but the exchange in energy. Now I feel his every footfall like ice dripping down my vertebrae. As he dances, my body shivers and jerks against the restraints. Pressed together, the Ceramicist – his name is name Laem - and the Stranger undulate like a snake in the grass. Their bodies glisten with perspiration in the night’s heat. Every time the Stranger’s body evades, the Laem’s body fills the space. Their bodies are a back-and-forth, like their tongues joiningthat join the conversation as well. 

When the concert ends, the Stranger wraps his hand around the back of the Ceramicist’s neck, massaging. They ride the deluge of people into the open air. Laem laughs when the Stranger takes running leaps and circumnavigates random circles in the streets. I’m not sure what the Stranger is doing but part of me is certain.

The Stranger follows Laem to his home. They share yamwine and a blunt before sharing a bed. Under covers, they join into a familiar animal of writhing and limbs and sweat and moans and saliva.

And then sleep.

Or sleep for the poor, spent Laem who sprawls across his own bed as if no one else was there. He doesn’t feel the Stranger leave his domicile because the Stranger willed him not to wake. His power is such that no glass or crag on the ground could pierce his sole. So barefoot and nude, the Stranger walks down the lamplit road when he happens upon a couple whose youthful fervor ignores their advanced age. “Nice night for it,” he says, grinning. The couple waves unfazed and oblivious to the dangling bits.

And still, he leaps invisible hurdles and meanders around non-present cylinders. His steps quake my body and my brain itches. I can… sense… no, feel the trees that he avoids.

The tremors in me grow in intensity as I hear bare feet slap against the stone floor. Thundering down the hallway. Until they stop. 

The scent of fresh copper assaults my nose while something drags across the metal of my door, fast and methodical. Three knocks, then the door disappears. Like it never existed. My head does not lift to look, but I know it is him. 

His mouth gawps, I can hear it. When I turn to see him, he’s surreal in person. His face is beauty but that which makes up his soul – it’s a maelstrom of spirit and light – manages to be magnificent while turbulent. His iridescence does not hurt my eyes. It isn’t that kind of bright.

“The ones who walk away,…” he says, his honeyed baritone little more than a whisper in a long dead language. His wide eyes are still above an Adam’s apple that yoyos. “Until they walked my way, I thought you were murdered, your name taken as a trophyas trophy.” 

He stops talking – maybe he sees he’s talking at me. His lookhead ricochets around the room, seeing my surroundings for maybe the first time. “Get up.”

My mind races and all I can muster is, “I cannot,” in words I don’t remember learning muffled by the metal bar pulling at the sides of my mouth. 

“You can and you will,” the Stranger says before bowing his head in prayer, barely a whisper, and his hand touches a vevé on the wall opposite me. All four vevés on all four surfaces glow a bright blue. Simultaneously, an unseen claw rakes them. My wrists lighten. The manacles fell from them and my ankles. The gag that felt like part of my face falls to the floor and my mouth aches at its absence. The wall cools my back while it holds me upright.

His nudity glides across the floor. His hooked index finger lifts my chin and he peers into my face, mournful. With two extended index fingers, he touches my forehead. The loa in him ignites the loa in me, the loa I forgot I had. My cell. The slums. The square. The amphitheater. The world. They all fade, unbuild, unpave, disestablish. And I see it.

The forest. The forest surroundingthat surrounds the clearing. The clearing surroundingthat surrounds the thicket. The thicket that the natives refused to forage o. Out of respect for the nature spirits livingthat lived within. The nature spirits about whom the natives warned the pilgrims. The pilgrims who picked fruit from the thicket. The nature spirit whothat departed when curiosity proved more piquant than interlopers. The bereft spirit that lashed out in anger of being defiled and left behind. The spirit lured by the pilgrims. The spirit punished. The spirit bound. 

The binding. 

The Binding.

When I open my eyes, he stands away from me. 

“Do you remember who you are?” Errant threads of me knit around his silken voice.

Shards of memory, connected to nothing at first, find their place in the whole. “Why are you here?” I ask. “Why do you give me this story?”

“I give you nothing. This story lives in you.” His outstretched hand rises in wait of mine. “Come.” I stare at it, titillated but afraid.

“Where?” I ask, wrapping my arms around myself, abruptly self-conscious of my nudity in contrast to his. “I belong here. I belong to the city.”

“You belonged here once. When this was your thicket, when you were its dryad,” he says, pity quivering his voice. My resolve falters at his tenderness. “But they built a city that prospers and breathes upon your back. This festival celebrates your capture – feeding you belief to grow you into a god but demanding your bones for infrastructure.”

He looks away. I don’t know if it’s to hide his hurt or to avoid seeing mine. 

When I’m not looking at him, I feel the effects of his loa. Touching his mind expanded mine and for the first time in however long I can smell the mildew and the excrement and the compacted funk of ages. 

“This is my home, Treili.” His name feels natural rolling off my tongue but foreign to my ears. The Stranger whirls his head around, too late to see the words fly from my mouth. Those insurmountable cheekbones rise for a second before temperance reasserts itself over his hope.

“This,” he says with raised hands and furrowed brow, “is your prison! It hinders your imagination more than your movement.” For a moment, his fury is bigger than his body. Then he quiets his voice and stills the firestorm within. “It’s been one thousand years, Omé. Remember little Aszra? She’s a goddess now, a war goddess no less. Clomeld blesses those who work with their hands, farmers, artisans, players. Mother rains on their crops and provides respite from the summer sun. You belong with your people,” he pleads. 

This news about family I only just remember makes memakes me makes me tired on a soul level. His words, like hail, chip away at me. At the way I see, and am seen. 

“Am I the god of cities?” I ask. 

Treili takes a breath before starting to speak but he stops to start again. “I’m a god of merriment. Portents are not my favor. But as sure as denying wine will not get you drunk, you will not know what awaits you until you’ve gone.”

I regard his hand, outstretched again. 

I reach for him. 

He supports my weight and I step forward, falling into him. My hands find his shoulders, my arms pinned between our chests as his arms encircle me, his heart beats against my ear. When he pulls me farther into his embrace, I melt into him. 

In my ear, he whispers, “Come.” Stretching my arm across his shoulders and wrapping his arm around my waist, Treili supports me, and we walk out of the blackened room that’s no longer my life. Up the stairs from my cage. And out of the edifice that chained my mind. 

My eyes squint beneath the sun I’ve not seen in so long, it might as well be the first time. 

“When did the sun rise?”

His eyebrows rise and scrunch at the center. “Their experience of time does not have to be our experience of time, Beloved. What we are cannot be contained within their small minds.”

For years, I sensed it through a canopy of leaves, the dappling light blinded my eyes. But as I acclimate to the surface, I see the city – my city, with my eyes, for the first time – and it is brilliant. Brown children play It in the square, and impundulu make sport of dropping putrid bombs onto grounded bodies. Salt-encrusted yams roast next to fire lizards. A rootworker mixes a loa-enriching elixir.

My face itches and a beard plumes beneath my scratching fingers. My bones ache to a length that makes shouldering me more challenging for Treili. I am not who I was or who I think myself to be. I am who he envisions, and he sees me in all my possibility. 

I have the strength to walk under my own power. And it turns out I’m taller than Treili. Instead he laces his fingers between mine. 

The citizens. Some go about their business because they don’t care about two naked strangers. Others stop and stare: Can they see the Daemon Below lives under this beard? And others just know.

The Mayor, dressed in overconfidence, trots into our trajectory, fussing and clucking like a coop of chickens. Treili takes my wrist and arcs our palms across the Mayor’s face. I feel his loa move parallel to mine, flexing my muscles. For a second, I smell the fermented idenka on his breath before he meets the ground for a nap. 

The Mayor lies in fetal inebriation and we step unceremoniously over him. We walk around the ghosts of the trees that made up my thicket, trees long slaughtered. We leap over dried up riverbeds I’m only beginning to mourn. 

Grand-méres wail the fall of the city. I remember their immature faces and wonder why the octogenarians care about my departure. They were unconcerned about my stay. 

Young warriors pelt us with rocks and spears. But the projectiles clatter against some unseen barrier before tumbling to the ground. 

Sadness crawls across my heart, wondering what will become of the city. Treili senses that and projects his thoughts into my mind. “This city is more of you than you are of it.” And he’s right. Of course, he’s right. I spent a millennium nursing it. But now…. “The city will stand as long as you do. Though it may be a little less prosperous.”

This thought inspires a smile. The city and I were part of each other for such a long time. “Why did you come for me?” I ask. 

Treili thinks at me, “The ones who walked away–” “

“No,” I say with my voice. “Why now?”

“I’ve searched the world for a meadow to match this particular shade of green or greener.” He lifts his hand in mine and presses the back of my palm to his lips. “And I found them, Omé. Danced in them. Rolled in them. Slept in them. But if I compare all shades to yours, why am I wasting time with what could be when I could have what is and always will be?”

I lean into him, the fullness of his lips crush against mine. He tastes of yamwine and nectar.

LP KINDRED (he/him) is a Chicagoan-Angeleno who writes Speculative Fiction that features Black and/or Queer Lives. When not writing he can be found singing, eating good food, pretending to be fancy, watching bad TV, and lifting heavy objects. He is or will be alum of Hurston-Wright, Voices Of Our Nation, and Clarion Foundation workshops. His fiction is or will be featured in Fiyah Literary Magazine, LeVar Burton Reads, Speculative City, and now Prismatica Magazine. LP is also a founding member of #GhostClass and Voodoonauts. Find him on Twitter @LPKindred.

Find Yourself a Good Jewish Boy

Did I just shit myself? 

It’s sort of warmer and moister down there than usual, and, in my current state, it’s a bit hard to tell what’s solid and what’s not. I’m in a mid-range hotel room somewhere near Baker Street station, with slightly out-of-date furnishings and typically English windows that seem to amplify the noise from the street rather than block it. He’s got me shoved up against a wall, and behind an invisible cloud of whiskey, lingering cherry vape liquid, and the barely perceptible metallic tinge of blood, his sharp white fangs are aiming right for my neck. I’m about to get eaten out at entirely the wrong end. 

Why do I always pull the crazy ones? 

He looked hot in his black shirt and jeans, nursing a plastic glass in one of London’s depressingly generic gay pubs. Ok, maybe he was just interesting, and his look of apathy was ever so slightly different from the usual bovine expressions of the slew of drunks and emotionless twats that usually hang out at Compton’s. Also, I was horny, and lonely, and the idea of going home with Mr. Suburban Budapest 2011 was more appealing than inducing chronic arthritis in my fingers from a night of scrolling through Grindr. 

How was I supposed to know I’d end up with Vlad the Impaler’s queer cousin? 

As he leaned in, I couldn’t help but notice his perfect, nearly-poreless skin. Was this the gayest way to die? Trapped in a sexless hook-up with someone draining all my emotional energy, all the while marveling at smooth skin and stainless teeth? He was moving as slow as molasses, evidently enjoying the rank smell of fear sweat making its way through my protective layer of cologne. Suddenly, he stopped and jerked forward, bringing his nose, rather than his fangs, close to my neck. He sniffed a couple of times and then shot back, a look mixing disgust and anger wrinkling up his alabaster visage. 

“Are you a Jew?” he fired at me, accusingly, only half a question.

Normally I would countenance with something vaguely witty, like “yes, did my hooknose accidently poke you in the eye?” to cover up my rage at a date’s anti-Semitism. In my current position, though, I croaked out a meagre “Yes” in a voice not all that dissimilar from the pimply teenager who works at Krusty Burger. 

“But I could have sworn I smelt pork on your breath when we met. I know I smelt pork, not… Jew!” he spat out at me, an accusation so bizarre I never thought I’d hear it, let alone defend my honour and pride against. 

“I like Pret’s Italian prosciutto sandwiches,” I squeaked. “I had one before the bar… I… I didn’t think my breath would smell from it.” 

My brain is reeling now. What the fuck should I have done to not end up here? Downed a bottle of Manishevitz? Padded my crotch with matzo balls? Who knew that it wasn’t garlic but gefilte fish and a couple of oily latkes that would keep Nosferatu at bay. 

“I mean, for fuck’s sake, this is such fucking deception. Why would you hide this? A game leg, a small dick, hell, even the clap, I could totally understand you hiding those things. I don’t tell anyone that I’ve only got one ball. It’s not like they can expect to order up a Ken doll from Grindr with everything according to product specs.”

Wait, what? 

“But that you’re a Jew? Buddy, that is fucking dirty. People need to know these things if they’re going to go home with you! I’m not a racist or anything, but, like, you know, it’s important to know…” he trails off, evidently coming down from the high of his first bout of rage. 

I am so confused. I start off thinking I’m going to get laid, then that I’m going to be eaten. Now I don’t know if I might be shamed on Twitter as the gay Harvey Keitel, the Jew perpetually pigeonholed as an Italian gangster, or if I might get the crap kicked out of me by the president of the Klan’s Transylvanian chapter. 

He sits down, hand on his forehead. Anger gives way to resignation, maybe even a little despair. 

“Where’s your family from? Poland? Germany?” he asks me, proving that every bout of casual sex doesn’t have to feel absolutely the same. 

“My dad’s from Belarus,” I answer, gradually gaining a bit of composure as the blood returns to my face, no longer quite as terrified of being in the general vicinity of my neck. “I was born in Canada, though. And my mom’s family came from… Transylvania?” My voice cracks up a few notes on that last word, and I can sense that it’s going to initiate round two of his apoplexy. 

“What? Transylvania? FFS. Are you kidding me? You actually descend from some Jews who probably sold me a faulty schnitzel hammer, and you’re staring at me like Bambi in the headlights, totally clueless why I might be angry about your teensy, tiny omission?!?”

Honestly, I don’t know what to say. I was ready for the ‘why won’t you bareback’ question, but not an inquisition about my family tree and the failings of my parents in passing on wisdom from the Old Country. “We weren’t big on… tradition.”

“Jesus, what were you, raised by wolves? Scrap that, wolves would have told you about me. Did you actually know nothing about vampires? Nothing about our… predilections? Nada when it comes to who we eat and who we toss?” Incredulity is giving way to just plain cruelty. 

“I guess I always assumed that vampires were just psychopaths explained differently. Y’know, like, sadists who used to drink blood and torture people and now just go into finance or recruitment…” He’s not amused. “Anyway, why would being a Jew make a difference? Wouldn’t you prefer us, since we don’t wear crosses?”

“Oh yeah, ‘cause a cross is really going to stop the undead,” he scoffs, falling further into sarcasm. Ah, so he is really gay, I think. “Do you think that some cheap, tacky hunk of plastic from Claire’s Accessories is going to stop me from ripping out someone’s jugular? A WWJD bracelet might be a boner killer, but when I’m feasting I only need my teeth to extend.” 

Who knew Dracula would be so crude? But crude I can handle, so I figure I can push a bit further. I’m probably going to leave this room in a bag, so I might as well try my luck with a bit more explanation. Maybe he’ll like my spunk (no pun intended) and let me leave alive, like this is 2022’s answer to the Apprentice. 

“So, then, what’s it with Jews? Why can’t you eat us – even those of us who aren’t, y’know, particularly good Jews?”

He gives me a look like I just asked why I can’t wear stonewashed denim to a white party. “Idiot. Fine, I’ll tell you what you should’ve known anyways. We only eat our own kind. Something to do with dietary restrictions or revenge or gluten content, I don’t know. The point is that I can only eat who you people call goyim. No Jews, and Roma are off limits too. Muslims are iffy, something about if they’re converts, where they converted, how long ago, etc. It’s too complicated, and there’s always a chubby Catholic around, so I don’t bother with Muslims.” 

“I see…” Never one to be cut out of a conversation, I try to insert myself ever so gently. “I thought…”

“Shut up! I’m not done talking! Of course, we can’t let this whole section of the population escape our control, so Jews and Roma were usually given a choice. You can either help out, or we kill you. Simples.”

I cringe a little at the word simples. Also, at the insinuation that I’m now going to have to make a choice. 

“Which brings me to our business at hand. I can either kill you or you can help me.”

“Like a familiar?” I ask, trying to drag this out, hoping that something will interrupt us so that just like when I’m asked where I want to eat, I don’t actually have to make a choice. 

“Not quite. A familiar is promised eternal life. You, chubsy, just get out of getting killed.”

I look down at my waist. Chubsy? I swim!

“Well, that sounds like quite a choice. I have no idea which one I’d rather choose…” I start, getting a bit sarcastic in tone. 

“Don’t get smarmy with me, Moishe.” Wow, Dracula’s starting to sound like a real dickhead. I mean, apart from the whole murdering people and drinking their blood, he’s also anti-Semitic. I bet he listens to Nickelback too. “Look, I don’t have anyone to help with my affairs. I didn’t want a breeder hanging around. You know how they are when it comes to questions about sex and apps and things. I don’t like to have to explain things too much, and I didn’t want some loser treating this like a Gothic version of Queer Eye.”

Jesus, does Vlad the Impaler watch Queer Eye? Is he going to renovate my flat, make me work through long-repressed emotional issues, and use cilantro in every fucking recipe? Does that actually repulse me more than being an accessory to murder? 

“So, then, I guess I accept. Do I, y’know, like, do anything? Swear by anything? Some sort of transcendental transfiguration thing that binds me to you?” I can smell the fear-sweat on me, and I am clearly in the upper registers of nervous-chatty. I think I’m over the threshold of survival, but I’m not sure, and I both want to get deep into it, without making him regret his offer. 

“FFS, for a Jew you sure do spout a lot of Catholic crap. Transfiguration? What, like sucking my dick? This isn’t church, dude. We just have a few things to sign, a little notarization, and an ankle bracelet. My cousin Petru did four years of Law Enforcement Studies at Missouri State – amazing stuff those American police forces have.”

I’m… relieved? I don’t really know. “Do I get to go on with my regular life? Like, go back to my day job, see friends, visit family, travel…” I’m probably pushing it with the last one, I know, but this is a negotiation, in a way, and I’m not giving up everything all at once. 

“Travel?” he snorts. “Good luck with that one! No, look, during daylight, you get a fair amount of time for your own stuff, within reason. No cavorting with vampire killers, no agreements with other vampires, no unionization. But in the evenings and overnight, your time is mine. I’ll have various odd jobs for you, and you’ll have to help out with clean up. You do my finances, book my travel, get rid of friends and relatives I don’t want to see, repair things around the house…you’ll basically be my Smithers.”

I don’t point out that this makes him Mr. Burns, but I’m happy to be slotting into something other than a body bag. 

“Oh, and you need to get yourself a good yarmulke. You don’t need to wear it all the time, but, y’know, when we have other vampires around, it’s important for them to know you’re off limits. Maybe cultivate a few more Jew-y characteristics.” 

“Like what? Counting my gelt, making matzo with leftover children’s blood, poisoning wells, covering up Epstein’s crimes?” I say, just catching the pissy tone in my voice. 

“Ugh, no, but it wouldn’t hurt if you would know how to make a good kugel. I can’t stand White people food. It makes their blood so bland and tasteless. And if you’re good with money, that’s always beneficial. I’m terrible with my finances. But otherwise, we vampires have the whole world domination thing down, we don’t need you to push any more Mel Gibson BS.”

“You are circumcized, right?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, the first note of temerity I’ve noticed in his voice all evening.

“Yes. No bar mitzvah, but definitely circumcized,” I chime in cheerfully, unsure if I’m supposed to let him inspect. 

“No bar mitzvah? What? You missed out on such a great time! Ach, when you whip the candies and they draw blood from the rabbi? Such a good time!” He seems almost nostalgic, and I wonder how many unsuspecting sheigetz husbands have gone missing from a fully-catered children’s party. 

My pulse has come down a bit, and the fear sweat smell is far from suffocating now. Plus, the pressure in my bladder means that I probably haven’t pissed myself, I’ve just sweat to the point where I might as well have.

“So, what next?” I ask. I’m sort of getting into this. I’ve definitely had worse hook ups before. Remember that guy who insisted on using whipped cream, then slipped on some and smashed his head? Or the one who pulled a muscle while putting on the world’s most awkward strip show? At least tonight won’t end with sardonic lesbian paramedics judging me and my life choices.

“Let’s go get something to eat before the sun comes up. I’ve got a blood pack somewhere in my knapsack, and, from the looks of it, this is the longest you’ve gone without eating anything, chubsy!”  

I scowl at him, but he takes no notice. 

“Damn, whodda thunk it, huh? I wanted to go to Salt Lake City for vacation. All those repressed Mormon boys, out for a suck and fuck on the sly, looking like trite porn and smelling of nothing. I coulda spent two weeks letting them suck on me before I sucked them dry.” I’m trying to figure out what’s sexual, what’s murderous, and what’s just plain prissy. “But nooo, my cousin Dan said I should go to London. So many cool drag clubs in East London. All that culture! All those boys from everywhere, horny for something exclusive and overpriced! But instead of getting my kicks, I end up with you, Shtisel. I suppose it’s not all bad.”

“Thanks a bunch,” I reply, wondering if I shouldn’t have chosen the quicker, possibly less painful option of immediate death. 

“It’s like my mother always said: you’re a no-good fuck up, Vlad! Find yourself a good Jewish boy, or you’ll burn up in the street one of these days, ya loser!”

MICHAEL ERDMAN (he/him). Find Yourself a Good Jewish Boy is Michael Erdman's first published short story. Although originally from Canada, he currently lives in London, United Kingdom with his partner Sam, where he works at the British Library as the Curator of Turkish and Turkic Collections. Michael splits his writing time between short fiction, academic works, and the scripting and illustration of graphic novels. Find him on Twitter @altaytoyughur.

A Funny Kind of Fairy Tale

You post a photograph of a white horse crossing your park path on a Sunday morning, as if nature itself gave birth to the beast who will never bite. His ears both pricked and pointed, like the elves who would have rode him, if this had been a dream. Your photograph turns teleportation device, takes me from soft seat in side garden of midway where kids kick footballs around small fields they do not yet have the imagination to leave and all the while traffic tears away the tracks of hooves that once echoed along this country lane, now just a curse on the commute from cramped city to concreted coast. 

In Helsinki we sinned once, under the enchantment of a white whiskey or a malted gin, at a thin table with cast-iron chairs in a stone basement where low lighting softened both our discomfort and the flavour of the horse we devoured while thinking it was a bear. Earlier, I’d told you I’d slay dragons for you while on an island where the wind roared with more rights than we did, barely balancing like bad acrobats on the cliffed coast of chaos we had yet to crash onto. You didn’t seem to understand what I meant or think it interesting enough to listen to and I wanted to slay the sentiment in half, there, on that land where a castle lay cursed in the clay and tourists came to contemplate what it took to survive once, upon a time of pirates and plagues and riches and religions and soldiers celebrated as heroes for saying they’d slay dragons daily for folk they didn’t even claim to love.

Teleportation trips through time and I catch myself at the starting point of a serious Sunday by a sea whose weighty cliffs clamour louder than before, as if in reaction to my arrival on horseback to free the parts of me the rocks left bruised since birth. The Dragon Slayer of Doolin I announce to a sleeping stream as we cantor along famine walls that have been worn down towards the shore.

As if perceiving thought, this fair horse, with highlights of all beginnings and endings threaded through his mane, brings me closer to this famine wall so I can run my broken skin over its shamed structure that still sighs with the held hope of each individual stone that wanted to be something more than a filler that was made fit into a form. Suddenly, I recall my own small beginnings and being pushed into an even smaller space, a box that someone older, supposedly wiser, had carved my name and identity into, long before I had even learned to crawl.

 A little bird sits next to me on this white beast that doesn’t bite. Black bird with specs of white, of light, lighter. It can all be lighter. Fragility can be a force. A single magpie can spark joy, a horse can have wings. We write our own fairytale in the end, whether stuck in the wall, or on an island, or in a castle, or in the kitchen, or under a cliff or in the air. I came to a coast, once, cast in the armour I’d been buried under, to enable the salt to rust me into a freedom.

You post a photo of a white horse crossing your park path and fact and fairytale entwine.

DAMIEN DONNELLY (he/him) returned to Ireland in 2019 after 23 years in Paris, London and Amsterdam, working in the fashion industry. His writing focuses on identity, sexuality and fragility. His daily interests revolve around falling over and learning how to get back up while baking cakes. His short stories have been featured in Second Chance from Original Writing, Body Horror from Gehenna & Hinnom, A Page from My Life from Harper Collins & poetry in Eyewear, The Runt Magazine, Black Bough, Coffin Bell, Barren Magazine & Fahmidan Journal. His debut poetry collection Eat the Storms was published by The Hedgehog Press. He hosts the weekly poetry podcast Eat The Storms. You can find him on Twitter @deuxiemepeau, Insta @damiboy, or on his website deuxiemepeaupoetry.com.

In the Pines

As a sick prank, one of your siblings superheated two red hot nickel balls with a blowtorch, then dropped them onto your back. You screamed and leapt up, but it was too late: you were marked for life.

That’s the stupidest guess I’ve ever heard, Stephen says. My older siblings would fantasize about that, but where the hell would any of them get metal balls or a blowtorch?

I had to try, Mars says.

It’s 11:30 AM. He and Stephen are laying on his floor-bound mattress in a tangle of warm limbs. Disdainful, cool autumn sunlight cuts through the windows to cover them in yellow sheets. The post coital glow is already vanishing. Stephen is growing tense, drawing his limbs in, pulling away from his own nudity. 

Mars wraps an arm around his slender waist to buy time. He kneads his fingers into the twin knots of scar tissue on Stephen’s shoulder blades. Both are the diameter of chocolate coins. They are mirror images: deep, circular scar pits that flank Stephen’s spine right above his shoulder blades.

Just tell me what happened, Mars says.

Stephen sighs. It is a near silent hiss. He props himself up on his elbow and turns. In the autumn light, all of the black curls that tumble into his face are moody. Sullen. His thick eyebrows are furrowing together. Mars drinks in the sight of his lithe body angled across the mattress, his impatient dark eyes, and the two wire-thin scars that split his face. He thirsts for an answer.

Take another guess, Stephen says.

You always make me guess, Mars says.

If you’re done, I’m getting dressed. Then it’ll be against the rules for you to guess anyway.

Fine. Mars tests the scars beneath his fingertips. They are spongy. Soft. He knows that the tinder pile of scars along Stephen’s lower back feel the same way. Scar tissue cushions each laceration in a meniscus of bubbly flesh. You had a birthmark removal surgery that went horribly, horribly wrong.

Good try, Stephen says. He pulls away from Mars’ hands. Mars bites his lip to keep from swearing in frustration. He watches Stephen’s chest—laced with lopsided scars that streak from Stephen’s back to below his breast—slide out of his grasp. They look like ribbons. He wonders if next time, he can thread his fingers between them and prevent Stephen from escaping.

We’ve been together two years, Mars says. Stephen dons some briefs. You’re still not going to tell me?

I’ll tell you, Stephen says, slinking back over to Mars’ side, swiping his thumb along Mars’ left eyebrow to neaten it, when your guess is right.

*              *              *

The Halloween party at Tanya’s promises to be full of alcohol, snacks, and crepe paper streamers. Mars doesn’t like that Tanya always reminds him of the fact that she exchanges postcards and phone calls with his sister more than he does, but Stephen is quick to point out that guilt is a poor excuse for avoiding an opportunity to get smashed.

Okay, Mars says. I’ll tell her we’re coming. But it’s a costume party. You’re going to dress up, right?

No, Stephen says.

Mars rolls his eyes. I’m not asking for a couple’s costume, he says. Unclench. What are you going to tell people when they ask what you are?

Nothing. I’ll say I came as myself.

Really? Mars stirs the instant coffee in his mug. He rearranges his costume jacket, then pops one last stud into the shoulder. You’re going to be that guy for a third year in a row?

I like odd numbers. I’ve been ‘that guy’ since long before I knew you, Stephen reminds him. He ghosts past their chipped apartment door, thumbing through their mail as he goes. Do you want me to tell them that costumes are childish instead? That real monsters don’t dress up?

Mars chokes. Hell, no.

Stephen grins in that thin, subtle way he does—the one that barely creases his mouth or touches his eyes—when he has prodded Mars for a response and received it. The razor-thin scar that stretches from his jaw to his cheekbone grins too. Mars marvels at the way it cuts through the dead center of Stephen’s lips, as if someone folded Stephen’s face in half to find that midpoint before slashing through it with a box cutter.

I didn’t think so, Stephen says.

He is kind enough to throw all of the mail away without telling Mars that his sister sent nothing, even after they glimpsed her in downtown Tuckerton last week when she should not have been home.

*              *              *

You were attacked by a pair of savage lampreys when your brother took you to the Great Lakes. You barely escaped. 

My brother is younger than me, Mars. Stephen zips his paper bag jeans. He didn’t exist until I was six years old.

Okay, so it was another brother. Mars smooches one of Stephen’s scars. You have like, what, twelve siblings?

I did, yes. Stephen nudges Mars away from him. He yanks a slate grey turtleneck on. I’m amazed that we were probably referring to the same brother out of those twelve.

I’m not, Mars says. Out of all those siblings, you only ever talk about one of them. I can’t blame you for that. The others I met always struck me as cruel.

Night cloaks the world outside of their apartment. A pine-scented candle burns low on a bathroom counter, the gutted shell of a cranberry candle mourning next to it. Stephen’s hair is damp from showering. Mars is already dressed in his Halloween costume: a biker outfit that bristles with studs, spikes, chains, and folds of faux black leather. The light is low.

We all play favorites, Stephen says. The two black sheep of the family have to stick together. But your lamprey theory is still wrong. None of my siblings would have taken me anywhere. My family never left the state. We barely left our house. Not that my hyper-religious mother could stop all of us from going into town.

That explains a lot about you. Nothing I didn’t already know.

Like what? Stephen makes eye contact with Mars through the mirror. Their faces are a collection of candlelight orange shapes. That I’m a little unhinged?

That you’re awkward, Mars says, taking Stephen’s hand, and a little lonely. Plus, you’re a gemini.

Stephen laughs, soft. He laces their fingers.

Let’s go to the party before we get distracted.

*              *              *

Tanya’s place outside Tuckerton is on the edge of the forest. It’s a white-washed house sheltered by pines and mediocre hospitality. When Stephen and Mars get there, cars clutter the driveway. Twenty-somethings in costumes hang over the porch railings and chatter over pulsing music. Black and orange string lights deck the porch.

I want to be tipsy before I talk to Tanya. Or drunk, Mars says.

Don’t do that to yourself, Stephen says. You don’t have a choice in that matter anyway.

Mars pouts. Why not?

Stephen points.

Tanya glides out of the crowd, grinning, a plastic cup in hand. A wire halo floats over her river of blonde hair. A piece of fluff on her angel wings bobs in the party’s currents as she lifts a hand, yelling Mars! You’re here!

Tanya! Mars gestures, shifting planes of liar’s leather and spikes. It’s good to see you!

Volume compensates for familiarity. Mars cannot hear his own thoughts when he spews small talk. Tanya’s ankles wobble, weakened by alcohol. When she turns to wave at another friend, her angel wings bounce. One slides down her back. Stephen’s face distorts with displeasure. The scar that cleaves one of his eyebrows pinches. Stephen keeps his gaze on the wings until Tanya turns back around. His expression smooths to flat placidity.

Dude, why don’t you ever dress up? Tanya says.

Stephen shrugs. It’s not my thing. I’m not a fan of Halloween.

I know. Tanya fiddles with her sheet robe. I get it. Hey, if you or your other half want punch, it’s on the kitchen counter.

I would love that, Mars says. We’ll be right back.

He drags Stephen to the kitchen, threading through throngs of acquaintances and not-quite-friends who bid them hello. The punch bowl is a crystalline skull overflowing with dry ice smoke and scents of sherbert and liquor. Mars shovels dipper-fulls of the elixir into a plastic cup. Stephen leans against the counter.

You were giving Tanya the eye, Mars says.

Her wings are badly placed.

Mars chugs a fourth of his drink before filling his cup again. So, you suddenly care about costumes now?

No. Stephen squeezes Mars’ wrist. Tenderness fortifies his grip. Don’t drink too much too early.

I won’t.

Mars leaves Stephen to socialize with the spirits drifting around him. He finds Tanya on the porch, flirting with a pirate. It is an agonizing fifteen seconds of detached nothing before Tanya notices him, beckoning over. The pirate departs to play beer pong with a squadron of frat boy crayons. Tanya and Mars rest against the porch railing and watch tides of partygoers flow by, crashing together in waves of conversation, ebbing apart due to unseen fissures.

I don’t see you much anymore, Tanya says. Is work kicking your ass? It’s definitely kicking mine.

God, absolutely. Mars groans. I hate working retail. It’s the worst.

Tanya snorts. It always is. You and I love picking dead-end jobs, huh? Her holographic nails flutter over a hole burnt in her robe. At least one of us is succeeding. Congratulations to your sister on getting that fellowship. 

What?

Mars’ hand clamps around his cup. It dents beneath his grip. Tanya’s infinity of bleached hair curves against her face when she looks at him. Judgement and broken light reflect from her white costume.

You didn’t know? she says.

No, Mars says, I knew. I knew. But he thinks of his sister gliding through town without calling him first, and all the outdated photographs and stale texts piled between them. Is it ghosting if it is mutual? Loving someone is not the same as knowing them. Mars buries his face in his cup to replace the burn in his face with a burn in his throat.

Of course, Tanya says. There’s no reason for her to tell me before you.

She pats her robe for cigarettes and avoids his eyes and Mars drinks until the emotional stitches in his tongue come loose and all the costumes at the party churn into a quilt of cheap scares and cringes. Meaningless words flow between him and Tanya. Mars recognizes people, but he does not recognize all of the couples. The friend constellations are different. Everyone is friendly but far away. Tanya breaks Mars’ thoughts with a laugh.

You were super awkward around _____ earlier. Tanya hops onto the railing. One of her criss-crossed sandal ribbons is coming undone. Stephen is rubbing off on you.

Around who? Mars fumbles his drink. The pirate?

You don’t remember _____? Mars! Tanya covers her mouth. We all bunked together in summer camp in third grade. You two fighting over who was really my best friend cracked me up. He’s the guy who used to tease Stephen before any of us knew each other.

Mars grimaces. Countless memories of camp and friendship bracelets tether them, yet the sole person from those years that has drifted closer is his boyfriend. He recalls the underfed boy in thrifted sneakers who clung to everyone and insisted on an odd string of homeschool rituals before everything. No one had ever seen Stephen or his scars before. Stephen refused to talk about them. It sent the other children into a frenzy.

So many of us were mean to Stephen, Mars says.

He remembers his sister sliding in an idea with a tray of sandwiches for him and Tanya: why not invite Stephen over? Pineys needed friends too. She insisted that Stephen’s scars resulted from birth defects. She told both of them to cease gossiping about it.

We were all kids. Kids are horrible. Tanya rearranges her bra. I’m glad we’re all on good terms now. You do have to admit that all of the Leeds family drama was addictive for a bunch of third graders. Have you ever met that brother he talks about?

Not yet, Mars says. I want to. His botany hobby sounds cool. He seems like a funny guy too, judging by all the pranks Stephen has talked about. Still, I think he’s unwell. Stephen says he’s told him about me. But… he doesn’t talk to anyone but Stephen. I don’t want to push either of them.

_____ didn’t think his brother existed, Tanya says, because we never saw them together. I didn’t think he existed either. Now I’m sure he’s just sad and mentally ill, like the rest of that family. Stephen really deserves better. 

No one sees Mars with his sister anymore either. Which one of them no longer exists? It might be him. Mars pictures his sister’s labmates passing sympathetic murmurs about him behind their latex gloves. To them, he is a shallow concept that must be pitied.

Before Mars can annihilate himself with a tipsy comment, Stephen manifests. He emerges from the crowd with popcorn crumbs on his face. A half-drunk flush is there too. Mars places a hand on the railing, close to his arm. Stephen’s sweater scrapes his knuckles. Relief sutures his mouth shut.

Tanya clicks her sandals together. It looks like the cool kid is here.

The cool kid would love a cigarette, Stephen says.

Me too, dude.

Tanya fishes around her robe again. Stephen is stretching, assessing Mars, when a drunken shout bursts from the crowd.

Hey! It’s a giddy Jason Vorhees, dripping with fake blood and beer. That’s a cool costume! Just wanted to let you know.

Thanks. Mars runs a palm over his jacket. I studded it myself.

Not you, Vorhees says. He waves at Stephen. Who are you supposed to be? Those scars are sick.

Mars’ heart stops. He sees a cigarette still in Tanya’s shocked grip. After a crack of humiliation Stephen’s face is blank; unmoved. Anger tears through Mars’ worry that he is supposed to know this person.

Fuck off, Mars says. You—

He didn’t know. Stephen steals the cigarette from Tanya’s slack hold. He places it in his lips; takes the filter between his sharp teeth. His scars trail to the cigarette. He is all hard edges. Vorhees looks confused. Stephen looks to Mars.

We should go, he says.

*              *              *

They are too drunk to drive. That does not stop them from aping it. Mars and Stephen share the cigarette in the truck. They inch their vehicle along the road, slow, swerving, squinting into the vastness of their headlights, until they find a break in the trees to park. Pine needles whisper above as they stumble out of the truck. Even now, Stephen moves like a snake, like quicksilver being poured onto fragile ground it must test.

The gibbous moon is heavy.

Fuck that guy, Mars says, again. He crams the truck keys into his pocket. The road next to them is a desolate, sand-lined strip that arcs around the forest. Seriously.

Stephen sidles up next to Mars. He put his foot in his mouth, but he was trying to be nice. I know you’re not mad about that.

I’m one-fourth mad about that and half mad at Tanya for apologizing instead of doing anything, Mars says. She didn’t even correct him.

A barn owl cries in the trees. Moonlight spins dim connections between sand patches and undergrowth. The pitch pines—full of shadows, full of their own zephyrs and voices—are the night more than the sky is. Acorn caps crunch beneath Stephen’s feet.

That leaves another fourth of anger, he says.

Don’t make me think about fractions right now. Mars rubs his eyes. What is it with you and math?

I’m tied up in numbers, Stephen says. Answer me. Where’s the last piece of that anger at?

Again, the owl cries, its raspy hiss echoing around them. Mars crosses his arms. He looks down and mumbles a reply he himself does not hear. Stephen creeps close. He slips past the coat and presses a hungry palm against Mars’ breast. Mars inhales.

Don’t be mad at yourself, Stephen says. Let’s go for a walk.

We’re drunk, Mars says.

Stephen tugs on his hand. His face is fuller than the moon. The scars on his face glimmer. For the umpteenth time, Mars wonders where they’re from. Did Stephen fall onto a bundle of knives? Did a limping Mountain Lion rip him from his bed at night? Did an axe-wielding killer chase him until he fell down a piney embankment?

I grew up here, Stephen says. I know this place. Let’s go.

They enter the pine barrens.

*              *              *

One of the ancient radiators in your house got really, really hot, and when you were a kid, you tripped and fell against it. It burned your back so badly in two places that you never recovered. The scars grew with you.

You’re not even looking at my scars right now, Stephen says, bemused. This is against our rules. He lets Mars rest his chin on his collar for a moment before pulling away. But that guess is closer than the others.

Wait, really? Mars stumbles to move faster. Stephen lopes over the sandy trail in front of them. When they started dating, they walked for miles and miles around towns and trails, aimless, talking about anything and everything. Work has made that hard nowadays. Mars’ heart throbs with nostalgia, but it is difficult to keep up with Stephen.

Cauterization is a controlled type of burn.

Mars starts. Pebbles clatter against his boots. What kind of wound were they cauterizing? What happened?

No more hints, Stephen says.

Mars bends, scoops up a pinecone, and hurls it. He hears it crash through into the brush fifteen feet away. He cannot see it. The main road is far behind them now. Crooked wooden trail markers point into the depths. A river is running somewhere but they cannot see it. Night ensnares everything. The scent of sap gums up Mars’ nose. 

The summer crickets have muted themselves. Mars grew up hearing them, but he does not know if he would recognize them now either.

I’m tired of this shit, he says.

Of what? Walking or our game?

Stephen is pieces of a human body shimmering through the murk. An abstract thing.

Yes, but no, Mars says. I’m tired of everything. He jams his hands into his pockets. I never stopped seeing anyone at the party, or stopped talking to them, but it feels like I don’t know them now. They say things when I see them at work and I just don’t get it. None of us are backing away from each other, but we’re just—standing on two sides of a fault line as the earth splits and watching a canyon open up. I don’t relate to anyone here anymore. Maybe that’s why my sister left, and why we don’t talk. She doesn’t relate to me anymore either. Jesus. I hate it. 

His sister is off at grad school pipetting samples and popping bottles over a fellowship. Mars pictures her depositing unwanted memories of raising him into one gel block after another. Sharing happiness with him must feel more like surrendering herself. He slows. Stephen slows too. 

I want to leave this place, Mars says.

What’s stopping you?

You.

Stephen’s laugh is ugly. It is a nocturnal call of its own. His pupils hold a ray of moonlight for too long. He looks into the forest with contempt. Burnt branches pass underfoot with the shadows.

If you can get out of here, he says, you should. I’m tired of this place too. But like I’ve said before, I can’t leave.

Because of your brother.

Yeah. The others don’t care about me. But my brother would hate me leaving, Stephen says. We're estranged, but it would devastate him if I left. It's the principle of the thing. It means finally admitting we've grown apart. Like if we don't talk about the candles going out, it's not happening. You get that, right?

Uh-huh, Mars says.

We rarely talk anymore, but he needs someone. Stephen runs his hand through his hair. I know he's self-isolating. He’s paranoid. I'm the only one of our living siblings who acknowledges him. He never gets the love he wants. If I leave, he'll disappear into himself, and then that’s on my conscience. As if it’s my damn fault.

They step foot onto burnt ground. There is a break in the trees. Sand and ash spiral outward before them. The field is black. Sharp tree stumps litter its expanse, broken and split. Pillows of slumbering cinder caress their roots.

Stephen, Mars says. Maybe your relationship with your brother isn't healthy. You shouldn’t feel responsible for him.

No shit. Stephen sighs. No. It’s fine. I’m fine. I love my brother. But he’s needy. He has a temper. He’s a lot to handle sometimes. Stephen rubs the bridge of his nose, looking away from Mars. ...last week, he told me he wanted to meet you. I don’t know if you’re ready for that.

Mars reaches out to grip Stephen’s shoulder before he melds with the pine shadows and drifts away. Wind shakes the trees far behind them. Stephen’s arm is hard but comforting; his gaze is wary but laden with love. Mars tries not to ponder if his sister has found anyone. She would not tell him. She barely knows about Stephen.

I would love that, Mars says, whenever he’s ready. Stephen, let me help you. All three of us can figure something out together. I won’t leave either of you here. I promise. 

Promises often turn to nooses. I don’t want you to resent me for trapping you here. Stephen’s hand ghosts over Mars’. Trepidation restrains his touch. I don’t want you to resent my brother for that either.

You’re not trapping me here. This is my choice.

Is it?

It is. Mars runs his thumb along Stephen’s collarbone. I won’t resent either of you. You’re not a curse, Stephen.

Surprise floods Stephen’s face. Gratitude follows guilt. He covers Mars’ hand before kissing him, breath honed with liquor and that serpentine taste Mars can never place. Drunken desperation parts their mouths. Before Mars can delve into their contact, Stephen disengages. He keeps hold of Mars’ hand. 

I want to show you something, he says.

*              *              *

The cabin is depressed, dilapidated, and crisped. Its hard angles bow while its walls crumble. It beholds the razed field in front of it, knowing that ash is its future. Unlike the pitch pines, it will put forth no new sprouts, even if the mushrooms feast on its corpse. Mars hangs back from the doorframe. Looking at this place makes him feel a ruler crack across his knuckles.

Stephen leans in. He braces his hands on the doorframe, exhaling. An invisible weight crushes his back. Here, he is reigned in.

You grew up here, Mars says, disbelief still fogging his brain. I knew you said that your house was small, and your mom was a traditional fanatic of some sort, but I didn’t know it was—how did all fourteen of you live here?

Not all of us lived here, Stephen says, even if most of us did. It was tight. I can say that much.

Mars looks over his shoulder into the cabin. Moonlight creeps through the window, illuminating the interior. No one has stayed here for years. Broken bottles carpet the floor. Graffiti sprawls over the walls. A scorched Bible jacket withers on the floor. Everything is stagnant. A soot-choked chimney pierces the ceiling to the right. It is an open, gaping hole, a door to nowhere. Its cobbles are bleak scales. A giant poker hangs on the fireplace. Mars shifts his gaze to the nearest wall. 

Scars cut the wood deeply. They are random, thin slashes that pepper the space around the chimney. Stephen’s breathing is even with effort. He is staring straight ahead, ignoring the right side of the house. Mars does not dare touch him to reassure him.

What happened to the walls? he says.

Stephen’s gaze strays to the scarred wood. He avoids looking at the poker.

My brother. Stephen’s hands are clamped around the doorframe.

In Mars’ mind, the roads of scar tissue along Stephen’s torso align with the scarred walls. They form a magic eye image painted with suffering. A void fills Mars before rage and horror follows it, stealing his voice. 

Are the scars on Stephen’s face from hurled silverware? Did hands smaller than his pick up a switch and beat his lower back raw? The poker on the wall possibly found a past home on Stephen’s shoulders. Nothing makes sense but the horror of it all. Stephen’s brother was a baby when Stephen received his scars. He could not have done this. 

Mars wonders if Stephen’s mother or now absent older siblings did this instead. If they did, Stephen is not accusing them of such. Mars’ teeth sheer into his lip. He considers the best way forward. Stephen needs him.

Let’s get out of here, Mars says, finally. This cabin isn’t stable.

No. It isn’t. Stephen releases the doorframe. Splinters stick up from the indents where he gripped it. He turns his back on the cabin.

Under the gibbous moon, they admire the field and forest, choosing which black plane to approach.

*              *              *

Stephen.

What?

Stephen’s whisper is hot against his ear. Mars gathers the courage to speak. Their hands join. Stephen’s head rests on Mars’ collar. The music the forest makes possesses no rhythm and leaves no trace beyond the chill bumps on their skin, but they are waltzing in the field to it as the last of their drunkenness leaves them.

 Plumes of ash waft around their sneakers. Their figures are the color of the exposed wood and charred bark of the many trees around them. Mars knows he is about to ruin their aimless pirouetting. 

I have another guess about your scars, Mars says. Not your shoulder ones. All the rest.

Do you, now?

Stephen’s nails drag against his scalp. The hard undersides to his jacket studs press into his skin beneath the weight of Stephen draped across him. Mars lets them spin another languid circle together.

You said your brother has a temper, he says. He pretends the timeline makes sense. How much of one?

That’s not a guess. Teeth graze Mars’ neck. He’s hotheaded. It was much worse when he was younger. He’s matured.

Did he hurt you?

The truth lies within here somewhere. Stephen withdraws to look Mars in the face. He cards Mars’ hair between his fingers. Stephen’s pupils are thin; focused. Mars cannot swallow. He does not know if it is spiked punch or moonlight toying with his perception, but it is still Stephen’s face looking at him. Mars knows this studious expression well.

It was an accident, Stephen says. He was scared. He was isolated and confused; he didn’t know his strength. He was a literal child who has learned to be gentle since then. I’ve forgiven him.

Those scars don’t look accidental. Most children don’t hurt their siblings like that, Mars says. He sees a map of Stephen’s scars every time he blinks.

Most children don’t have a mother that calls them unholy, Stephen says.

Oh.

Mars squeezes his eyes shut. Stephen draws him close, slowly. It is a movement that kills questions. There is wind in the distance, but it does not sound like wind. It is buffets of it. Wind pressed beneath leathery wings.

My mother thought I was unholy too, Stephen whispers. 

*              *              *

The distant shriek is piercing. Lonesome. It tears the fine clouds apart without touching them. When Mars hears it, he is back in summer camp, a child huddled beneath a patchy blanket post a round of campfire stories.

Jesus, Mars says. Was that a mountain lion?

I don’t think so, Stephen replies, unmoved.

His tranquility sets Mars on edge. This is bad. They are in the middle of the field. Stephen is tucked beneath Mars’ arm. The cabin watches them from the sidelines, occasionally spitting bats from its orifices. All of the tree stumps are stakes pointing skyward. They accuse the heavens of an unknown crime. Mars’ costume has him sweating.

We should go, Mars says.

Stephen locks his arm around Mars’ waist. His fingertips are cool dots that prick Mars’ lower belly. He’s not going to hurt us. Mars, he says, I need you to listen to me. Our game is ending.

Now isn’t the time, Stephen! I don’t care about our game right now!

There is another shriek. It is closer. It is a sonic knife tip being dragged up Mars’ back. Mars jumps. He sets out, stride quick, but Stephen digs his feet in. For being so skinny, he is strong. A frustrated noise rips from Mars’ lungs.

Stephen! I’m serious!

So am I!

Around them, the pitch pines and oaks murmur. Mars hears the wingbeats now. The forest behind the cabin bends under them. They are soft thunder. Mars’ blood is hot and his face is frigid. Pinecones scatter as he and Stephen grapple, ending up intertwined. Stephen cups Mars’ face, trembling. Their foreheads almost touch, their mouths almost brush. Stephen’s pupils are slits.

Mars, he says. Mars. Do you trust me?

Fuck, Stephen!

Answer me.

The pines are birthing a shadow. It lifts above the horizon, an abstract mix of vast triangles and lines. It resembles a broken tree.

Yes! I trust you! Is that what you want to hear? Mars finds himself quivering too.

Then listen to me. Stephen kisses the edge of his mouth. His shaky hands rove to Mars’ lapels. Don’t run. He’s not going to hurt you. I promise. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.

What are you talking about?!

A scream splits the sky. It is the sound of a pig being skinned alive, or a cat being eviscerated. Mars is frozen: immobile as his blood sublimates with fear. Stephen, calm, looks up. Mars does too. When the immense shadow crosses the moon, he screams.

Don’t run! Stephen grabs at him.

We have to go! We have to go! Mars yanks on his boyfriend’s arm. The shadow is turning. It releases another scream. Stephen stumbles but does not sprint. Mars curses. Involuntary tears streak down his face.

What the hell is that? he says.

My brother.

No lie shows in Stephen’s face. His curls shroud the scar on his brow. Heartbreak and confidence keep his back straight. He is one desolate pinprick in this moonlit charcoal expanse among many. This is his home. Mars wants to vanish.

You’re insane. Mars backs away, prying Stephen’s grip from his jacket. Stephen’s face is pained.

We can’t all be sixth children born on sixes, Stephen says, as wretched as that is. Some of us have to be the thirteenth. Mars shakes his head, stumbling back. Ash stretches between them. A root catches Mars’ boot. The world spins. He sprawls on the ground, trembling. Dirt sticks to his palms as he crawls backwards.

The shadow descends, unfurling an unholy menagerie of shapes. A whip tail. A long face. Crescent hooves. Four-inch claws that tip knobbly, lithe arms. Thickets of scales. Horse legs. Moon-catching, intelligent eyes—the twin pair to Stephen’s—fixate on Mars as the shadow lands, and when it bows behind Stephen, stretching its wings, they are briefly Stephen’s too.

Please, Mars. Stephen is raspy. Desperate. I love you. I’ve told him so much about you. Don’t leave. He just wants to meet you.

Mars’ larynx is sand. He wipes his face, staggering to his feet. Stephen’s brother makes a discordant selection of distressed noises. Stephen hugs him, muttering into his goat-like ear. Their embrace lasts ages. The more Mars looks at the brother, the more chimeric he appears. All of Mars’ guesses about Stephen’s scars—his musings on surgery, on molten metal, on Mountain Lions, on murder—die at the feet of this towering demon. Mother Leeds seared away Stephen’s wings, but that matters so little now. The youngest Leeds eclipses her. Mars stiffens when Stephen pulls away from his brother and looks him dead in the eye.

Are you going to introduce yourself? Stephen says.

It is the first time Mars has heard a wobble in his voice. It is fear, but fear of mundane loss. Mars knows it. There is something recognizable here, in this field of emptiness. The Leeds brothers wait, the younger sibling skeptical, the older petrified. They stand together the same way Mars and his sister did for the first photograph in ages: unsure. Attempting reunion.

Stephen extends his hand. In a lab somewhere, Mars’ sister is marveling at her own fields of agarose gel, making notes on barren tissue that will grow no more. Here, in the barrens themselves, second chances and saplings spring from destruction.

Mars glacially, hesitantly, takes a step forward.

Samir Sirk Morató (they/them) is a scientist and an artist. They would love to camp in the Pine Barrens one day. Some of Samir’s work can be found in The Hellebore Issue #5, Color Bloq’s RED collection, and The Sandy River Review 2020 edition. Their Twitter is @bolivibird; their instagram is @spicycloaca.

A Lover's Guide to Vampire Slaying

1.        Before handling the body, tie a head of garlic to the lining of your coat. This is for protection: even her smell cannot touch you.

2.        Dig a hole nine feet deep into good, solid ground. Nine is the number of days it will take for her soul to reach heaven. Pray she does not linger. Assuming she is not especially late or (heaven forbid) too early, she will wake the night after she is buried. Ideally, she will spend a night cracking open the wood of her coffin, and eight nights crawling her way up through the dirt. Also ideally, she will have at least a foot of ground left to go before her will runs out. Proper burial is the first line of defense.

3.        In the days leading up to her burial, make a net to place in the coffin. Make sure it is made up of strong, convoluted knots. When she wakes she will have to stop and untangle each one before she can move on.

4.        Bury her with an iron hook around her throat. When she wakes she will start forward, reaching for the net or, if mourning made you negligent, straight for the lid of the coffin. Struggle enough and the iron will strangle her. Even better: one wrong move and the hook’s spike will skewer her throat.

5.        After nine days have passed, dig her back up again. Bring a wooden stake. Make sure it is very sharp, and preferably made of white oak. Bring a crowd of people—it is always harder to face monsters on your own. Spectators provide an incentive to not bend, to not cry.

6.        In the event that she is dripping blood. That it is spilling from her mouth to pool in the bottom of the coffin. That it is staining the wood red. That she is bloated with it, her belly pregnant with rot, if the stitches that once sewed her mouth closed have burst and she is open, her body nothing but a gaping wound leaking and saturated with—

7.        In the event that she is dripping blood, thus making her vampirism clear for all to see, strike once with your stake into the center of her belly. Only strike once: another blow will only bring her back again.

8.        Do not be alarmed if she screams.

9.        Do not be alarmed if her screams follow you, if they echo in your ears. If when you try to fall asleep at night the only thing behind your eyelids is the cursed husk that once was her body. It is an unfortunate truth that vampire slaying is sometimes followed by nightmares, nightmares made all the more terrible by kinder memories: how soft that now bloated flesh once felt, how salty-sweet it tasted, the shiver of those unnaturally long nails tracing goose bumps into your skin when they were freshly manicured and not crusted with blood. How those teeth—they weren’t always so sharp—sunk into your neck. It is an unfortunate truth that killing monsters sometimes comes with hard lessons. You may learn what it is to see a lover deflate so completely, crumple into herself after one simple strike, her neck already mangled and her hands tangled in rope. You may learn that all beauty rots, once it’s put into the ground. You may learn that garlic doesn’t always stop the smell.

Bankston Creech (she/they) is from Alabama but studies in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. She's interested in fantasy, horror, history, and lives for the intersection of all three. You can find them on twitter talking about queer monsters at @femmedirt.

Let the Right One Out

On a lonely suburban street in England, a grey Mercedes pulled into a driveway in front of a cottage. The driver, a caucasian man clad in black robes with a white collar, slid the car into park. He looked right to his passenger, a middle-aged latina woman in a habit. “Father,” she remarked, “are you quite sure that we should be here? You yourself told me once that ninety-nine out of every hundred possessions are just rumor and hysteria. If we aren’t needed, we could do more harm than good.”

“You’re right,” the priest said, “but this case has all the hallmarks of a true demonic attack. Strange shadows, sleeplessness, voices…” The priest’s hand slipped around the cross that hung always at his neck. He mouthed the beginning of the Our Father, words ingrained so deep in his brain he didn’t need to focus on the effort. “Come on. We shouldn’t waste the daylight.”

Together, the pair exited their car and walked up the short driveway to the home in front of them. It was plain to the point of austerity, just one floor of whitewashed bricks with a roof of black shingles. There wasn’t even a garage; the residents’ car languished in the driveway next to the priest’s mercedes. The door, like the rest of the structure, was featureless except for a carved effigy of Jesus Christ on the cross that hung upside-down from its center.

“Oh, my,” the priest whispered. He grasped the nun’s shoulder for support. “They were right. It’s here. We’re too late.”

“Not yet we’re not,” the nun said. “Not if we can exorcise the demonic spirit before it crushes the original soul of its host. Come on! There’s no time for despair now.” She rang the doorbell, and a furtive woman greeted them. She looked horrible. Her skin was pale, not just pink but pallid from the exhaustion that showed in the bags under her eyes.

“Are you here about the possession? Are you Father Emmanuel?” she asked once she recognized her guests’ clothing. “Come on in.” The woman led them inside the home to a dimly-lit den where her husband already sat on a sofa. She joined him. The priest and the nun took places across from them on two chairs.

The entire house was only dimly illuminated. Scented candles made a valiant effort, but they were proving a poor substitute for electric lighting as the sun set outside. “The lights went out four days ago,” the husband explained when he saw the guests glancing around. “We’ve tried new bulbs, flashlights, and electric lanterns. Nothing works if it’s electronic.”

Emmanuel wasn’t surprised. He could feel the malevolence in this place, a greasy hatred that clung to the walls like spiderwebs, unspoken yet never unknown. He sighed. “You were right to call us. There is something unnatural in your home. For it to be so powerful, it must have been here for a very long time, feeding and growing.”

“What is it, Father Emmanuel?” the man asked.

“There are beings that do not belong in this world,” Emmanuel said. “Corrupted reflections of human traits granted autonomy. Many people call them demons. Me, I prefer to think of them as malignant patterns. They spread, and they cause pain.” At this, the mother started to tear up.

“What does it want with our son?” she moaned.

“These patterns, they cannot exist without human complicity. They need us, in a sick way, or at least they need a certain version of us. When a corrupt pattern finds someone rendered weak by emotional turmoil, it slips inside their mind so it can feed on their strife to grow strong. It tries to claim ownership of them. That’s where the word possession comes from – the twisted notion that one entity can lay claim to another. As it grows, it warps the host in its own image until the possession is complete. The host’s own identity is lost, and they become unrecognizable. But we won’t let that happen here. I won’t lie to you two: this is a very dangerous situation. A lot could go wrong. That’s why it’s important that you tell Sister Bernadette and I everything about what’s happening, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Do you understand?”

The couple nodded. “It started a couple months ago,” the mother began. “Andy was always so happy, so normal, and then all of a sudden he wasn’t. He changed. He started rebelling. He would stay out late, and he would get really squirrely whenever one of us talked to him, but that’s not all. He did things that young men just don’t do.”

“What sorts of things?” Bernadette prompted. Her carefully neutral face betrayed nothing of her thoughts.

“Well, he would wear strange clothes, not men’s clothes, and he would put on–” she took a deep breath – “he would put on makeup like a girl, and he would paint his nails,” she sobbed. “I even see him wearing a bra sometimes! It’s just not normal, Father Emmanuel!”

“I swear that we will do everything we can to help your child,” Emmanuel said, “no matter what it takes.” Neither of the parents seemed to notice the gender-neutral turn of phrase that he employed. “I know that this must be hard for you. Some of your child’s behaviors may conflict with your own views. I just have a few more questions. Does it seem like they’re fighting something? Do they struggle with these behaviors as you do, vacillating from resistance to acceptance?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right,” the father commented. “It’s like Andy is trying to push out whatever demon is in his mind, and he can’t manage it. But maybe you can.”

“Show us to the child’s room,” Bernadette said, “and whatever happens, do not interfere. The exorcism is a delicate ritual. If anything disrupts it, there is a chance that it will simply make the situation worse.”

“You will have whatever you need,” the man agreed. “Follow me.” The parents led them down a grim hallway to a door. There was a child’s drawing on it, messy, that depicted three stick figures standing in front of a gray house: Mommy, Daddy and Andy. A single black line bifurcated that last name.

“Exorcisms can be… disturbing for outsiders to witness, so I would recommend that you remain outside if you feel comfortable doing so. I will see you both after our business is done,” Emmanuel Cruce assured them. “Sister Bernadette will keep you company.” 

The parents’ nervous whispers followed him inside as he closed the door behind him. “Are you sure about this? I looked him up, and I don’t think he’s a real priest at all. They talk about him online. He’s a quack.”

“Shut up, he’ll hear you. If he can help our son, nothing else matters.”

Emmanuel was indeed not a ‘real priest,’ although he was a man devoted to the Primordial Truths that Christians called God. This was quite fortunate, because most real priests would be terribly, perhaps lethally unprepared to face a demon.

The child that the parents had called ‘Andy’ was sitting on a bed next to a lavish nightstand. Their skin, much like that of their mother, was pale to an unhealthy extent, and their eyes were red from crying. They wore bland, featureless, unisex pajamas. “You’re here to fix me,” they said. “I heard Mom and Dad talking about you.

“Do you need fixing?” Emmanuel queried.

They didn’t answer.

“Do you mind if I examine your possessions? I don’t wish to invade your privacy.”

“Go ahead,” they murmured miserably. “Mom and Dad already know everything. There’s no way for me to hide it anymore.”

Emmanuel began a careful search of the child’s room. Most of the possessions were pedestrian in nature, and yet a few seemed to confirm his initial suspicion that there was a supernatural element to their affliction as well as a mundane one. Mixed in with the men’s clothes were women’s attire, tops, shorts, and even a few skirts. The underwear drawer in particular bore host to a significant quantity of lingerie, with both bras and panties well-represented. Next, Emmanuel moved to the nightstand, which was laden with makeup. There were several shades of lipstick, an eyeshadow palette, gel eyeliners, blush, and a mineral foundation, along with a small bottle of black nail polish. While the exorcist conducted his search, the child looked on in abject revulsion, although Cruce couldn’t exactly say whether they were disgusted with him or themselves. Possibly both. Probably both.

There was a small journal on the bed next to the child. The cover had once been host to a number of intricate drawings, but now it was stained with tears that had smudged them to the point of ignominy. A pattern began to emerge as Cruce flipped through the pages:

It comes at night. It walks in my skin, it speaks with my voice, but it isn’t me. I can’t control it. It makes me do things that I don’t want to want to do, things I know that I shouldn’t want. It moves me like a puppet on strings. I tell myself I hate it, but really I don’t.

The worst part of it all isn’t that I can’t stop myself. It’s that I don’t want to. I like it. It makes me feel good. I know that it’s wrong, and I still want it. Why am I broken inside?

I can’t go to sleep. It speaks to me in my dreams. It whispers what could be, what I could be. It’s dangerous to listen, but it’s so beautiful.

Even if I stop, I can’t go back. I’m too far gone, too broken. I’ve seen too much. I’ve done too much to ever go back to being a normal boy. I didn’t ask for any of this.

There were two sets of writing in the journal. At first, the differences were so subtle that Cruce couldn’t pick up on them. The first style was all erratic lines and jumbled diction, like the writer’s mind was falling apart and spilling out onto the page without any greater thought, and the second was elegant and gothic, a darkly beautiful font that promised forbidden revelations to any who dared plumb the inky depths of its writers’ mind. It was this second style which exposed more of the truths of what was happening:

I am not Andy. I am not a boy. I am not a boy. I am not a boy. I am not a boy I am not a boy am not a boy am not a boy not boy not boy not boy not boy notboynotboynotboynotboy…

My name is Crow Johnson (This particular sentence was accompanied by a beautiful charcoal rendition of black feathered wings that swept out from the words to trail off of the page).

I want to be called they. I don’t want to be a boy or a girl (These words were crossed out with hateful red ink, and in their place, non-binary? was scrawled, accompanied by a hopeful question mark).

I don’t know what I am. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I just know that I’m not Andy, and I’m not a boy.

Emmanuel sat down on the bed next to Crow. He positioned himself where he was about two feet away from them. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked. He received no response from the figure on the bed other than muffled crying. “Crow?” he prompted again.

Crow looked up at him with dead eyes. “How did you know – nevermind. It’s not my name. It’s the demon’s name. That’s why you’re here. I’m not stupid. I know what’s happening to me.” The lie was heartbreakingly obvious to anyone who deigned to listen for it.

“Do you really?” Emmanuel questioned.

“No!” Crow shrieked. “I have no idea what’s happening to me! I have no idea, who I am, and I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. I can’t tell what’s me and what’s not anymore. It’s like I don’t know if I’m dreaming or awake. I’m so confused.” Emmanuel let them continue without interruption. Sometimes that was best. “What feels real? What feels like you?”

“The demon’s dream feels real,” Crow said. “Andy feels like the dream. But that’s because I’m possessed, isn’t it? That’s because the demon wants to make me not be a boy.”

“Maybe,” Cruce said, “or maybe not.” He gazed at the shadow on the wall behind the teenager. It opened its jaws, too wide, to smile at him. “Demons feed on suffering, on self-destruction. So tell me, if you feel, deep down in your heart, a sense of peace and happiness when you leave a male identity behind… why would a demon want that?”

“Because I’m not a boy,” Crow said. There were tears forming in their eyes, and they shot forward and wrapped their arms around Cruce.

“It’s okay, Crow,” Emmanuel whispered. “I’ve got you. Just let it out. Just let it all out.”

The teenager in his arms squeezed him with tightly, and then they tilted back their head, opened up their mouth wider than any human being could and screamed. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” It was a sound of agony, despair, exhaustion, fear, and hope that no one, human or otherwise, could ever hope to contain. It was horrible, and it was necessary. The child had to be allowed to express their pain in order to cast out the demon. More importantly, they had to be allowed to express their pain to heal. Nevertheless, Emmanuel Cruce wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel his heart crumble when the child’s tears started to dampen his vestments.

Then Crow stepped away from him. “I know what I have to do now,” they mumbled. The child unhinged their jaw again, an impossibly broad crocodile grin. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” Their entire body shook like it was coming apart before Emmanuel’s eyes. “AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!” The demon boiled out of their throat. It was an ugly, wormy thing made of gray smoke that hung in the air between them.

“No,” it hissed. “Fear yourself. Hide yourself. Lie to yourself. Shatter your own mind in self-denial. Be me, forever and ever and ever, until you can’t be you anymore.”

“You won’t hurt Crow Johnson ever again,” Emmanuel hissed. “In the name of all that is good and just, by the spirit of the Primordial Truths, I cast you out. Haunt this child no longer!” The cross around his neck blazed with cold silver light. The demon screamed just as loudly as the child had. It writhed in a desperate attempt to break away from the radiance that scorched its very essence, but it couldn’t get free. It could only burn. The demon disintegrated into fading mist that left Emmanuel and Crow alone in the room.

“Will it come back?” they finally asked.

“No, it’s gone,” the exorcist said. “You have a long road of healing and growth in front of you, and it will be hard and ugly sometimes, but you will get through it, and you will get better. I promise you that.”

“How can you know?” Crow demanded. “How can you possibly be so certain?”

“I have faith,” he smiled. “I have faith in the Primordial Truths, and I have faith in you. Now, I’m going to step outside. Why don’t you do your makeup, dress how you want to dress, and we’ll have a talk with your parents about using the right name and pronouns. I think they really do care about you and want you to be happy, but if I’m wrong, if they’re malicious instead of ill-informed, Bernadette and I will take you somewhere safe. ”

Crow nodded. “Good. I’ll meet you out there.” Emmanuel opened the door and walked back into the hallway, where Bernadette was waiting with Crow’s parents.

“You’re back! We worried when we heard screaming fit to wake the Devil. Did you fix our son?” the father asked. “Is he a normal boy again?”

Now came the hard part, the ugly part. Cruce wished that he didn’t have to do it, but if he didn’t, then no one would. Exorcisms could dispose of demons, but there was no magic to mend a family back together. No sense putting it off any longer, he supposed. “I exorcised the demon from your child’s mind, but they are not your son. They are non-binary. Their name is Crow Johnson.”

“I. I-I don’t understand,” the mother stuttered.

“Your child has been possessed for years, maybe more than a decade,” Cruce said. “They were never a boy; the demon forced them to pretend to be one. Those ‘changes’ you saw? That wasn’t a demon. That was your kid, your real kid, trying to break out of the demon’s hold.”

“No,” the father growled. “You’re full of shit. That’s impossible. We would’ve noticed.”

“Wouldn’t you have? I told you before that demons feed on emotional turmoil. They take advantage of the pain in a person’s soul to worm their way in through the cracks that suffering leaves. Your child, alone, afraid, depressed, was the perfect prey. By pushing them to suppress their identity because it was what they thought you would want, the demon got more and more essence to feed on, and they got weaker and weaker.”

“Would he –” the mother stopped, correcting herself, before she continued: “– would they – have died?”

Bernadette shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. They’ve lasted this long, although I’m not sure you could call what they’ve been doing living.”

“I don’t know if I believe in this transgender stuff,” the father said. “The doctors said our baby was a boy, and he always acted like one up until a few weeks ago. Now you’re telling me he’s always been something different?”

“Don’t you get it?” the mother sobbed. “It doesn’t matter what the doctors said, or what either of us think. We’ve been hurting our baby! We’ve been hurting… them!”

“Mom? Dad? I’m sorry.” Crow stepped out of their room. They were wearing a shiny red women’s top with a black skirt, and they’d done a smokey eye with matching red lipstick. “I know you don’t want me to do this, but I just can’t help it. If I don’t do it, then the monster comes back.”

Their mother rushed over and wrapped her arms around them. “We’re so sorry, sweetie, we didn’t understand that we were hurting you.”

“Don’t ever apologize to anyone for being yourself,” their father said gruffly. “You’ll always be our… kid.”

Emmanuel saw the father struggle to find the right word before he spoke, and he saw the light of joy in Crow’s eyes when they heard him. For the first time since the exorcist had laid eyes on them, Crow actually looked happy. The two parents weren’t perfect, not by a long shot, but they loved their child, and they were actively trying to understand.

Bernadette elbowed him and looked into his eyes pointedly. The message was clear: leave them here?

Emmanuel nodded to her. Yes. He turned back to the parents, who were still focused on Crow. “I cast out the demon possessing them, but they are still traumatized and afraid. You will need to treat them with care, and they will need time and help to heal.”

“Thank you, Father Emmanuel,” the father said. “For exorcising our child, and for this. What do we owe the church for your services?”
“You’re welcome,” Emmanuel Cruce said, “and I feel that seeing a fine young person smiling again is reward enough. I look forward to seeing your family again, under happier circumstances.” The man who was not a priest and the woman who was not a nun exited the house, leaving behind the child who was not a boy.

“We need a new con,” Bernadette complained. “They knew you weren’t a priest from the moment you walked in. I’m still astonished that they let you in the room alone with their kid. Not many people will do that anymore.”

“I agree,” Cruce admitted. “What would you suggest? Counselor? Therapist? Holistic medicine specialist?”

“You could just advertise as an exorcist. People already know what you do.”

“I suppose so. Where is the next report?”

“Manchester. We’ll be driving through the night, so you’d better pray for a coffee shop along the way, Father…” The grey mercedes pulled out into the street, illuminated by the evening streetlamps.

M. J. Hunter (they/he/she) is a queer author from Connecticut who writes fantasy and sci-fi stories with LGBT characters. Jim Butcher, Terry Pratchett and Kevin Hearne are some of their favorite authors. Outside of reading and writing, they enjoy roleplaying games, programming, and hanging out with cats.

Merciful Light

They’re afraid of me. I know they’re afraid of me, because I hear the children on the wind as they scurry along the borders of my home and dare each other to cross into my darkness. The older ones are always the most confident, but never make it more than three steps past the first crooked boughs before turning tail and running home to mothers who warned them of the creature that lives beyond the trees. The elders of the village carve symbols and sigils of protection in corners of their homes and fences where they think people can’t see. I can, but it comforts them to think I don’t. I’ve felt every burning branch and leaf when a harvest rots, and they blame me instead of the sun, disease, storms, or their own careless keeping. They burn my woods because maybe if I’m gone they’ll make it through the winter. I know they’re afraid, because I can’t cross the tree line without being greeted by rocks to the head and curses spat at the ground I created. Funny, you’d think the curses would come from me. 

I know they’re all afraid. Except for her. 

*              *              *

It’s a rule of mine that I don’t talk to the people of the village, and they have a rule that they don’t talk to me. I remember the first villagers and their scattered cottages with shoddy walls and slapdash roofs, interrupting a landscape that had been empty of human life for the three decades since I put the first seed in the ground and began my home. Eager for company that could hold a conversation beyond chirps and growls, I rushed to greet them. I crossed the hill, squinting against the rays of light that swirled and chased me, trying to replace the shadows that clung stubbornly to my skin. A woman in a thick cloak stood over a small fire in between two cottages, poking around in the contents of a stewpot and far too busy to notice me. I raised a hand in greeting but my steps faltered at the shriek that came from another home further down the road. A child’s head peeked out over a windowsill and their terrified eyes took me in as they screamed for their mother. The woman at the stewpot shot up at the sound and locked eyes with me. Her face paled and she dropped the wooden spoon into the pot with a clatter followed by a soft gurgle as it disappeared into the pot’s contents. 

I’m not blind to how they see me. I’ve learned that hair that curls around you in a pitch-black embrace and spindly fingers too long for human standards can be unsettling. Equally unnerving are the thick horns that stretch behind you,  that have a proclivity for never keeping a consistent shape, that shift with each cloud  passing over the sun. At the time of the first villagers, however, I knew nothing more than the joy of meeting and learning from a new creature. They taught me my first lesson in the value of hiding, changing my plan of introduction for one of escape. They taught me with each hit of their stones and sticks, as I let the shadows of my forest pull me back into their cool comfort. They taught me by covering the eyes of their children as I fled. 

I stayed wrapped in the branches of my home for the decades following, unwilling to return and face those horrified screams again. I was needed in the woods and I welcomed the responsibility. I nurtured the seedlings that pushed through my footprints, and reassured the small creeks and pools that spun around clusters of trees and protruding but companionable boulders. My bed was the moss and my blanket the treetops, and I luxuriated in the light of the stars that cast a soft glow each night.

 On the day of the flames, I sat in the dirt, coaxing the grass to curl around my fingers in playful rings when I heard an unfamiliar crackle. The air changed, tinged with a hint of bitter ash. A rumble echoed through the air, and squirrels, rabbits, deer, and all the other animals that took shelter under my arms stormed past in a wave of terror that weighed heavy on my tongue. I hurried the grass back to its place safe beneath the ground and turned to see bright orange light licking up the sides of the trees that kept the village from my home. Whatever it touched it devoured. On that day, I learned that fire can hurt, can destroy. I felt each leaf, branch, and piece of bark as they succumbed to the oppressing heat that pushed ever onward into the heart of my home. 

I screamed. I screamed, and the flickering faces of the villagers standing at the tree line with torches and anger on their brows became uncertain. I screamed, and the creeks flooded their banks, rushing over my feet and pressing down in cold fury on the fire that grasped for more wood or leaves or anything to feed it as it vanished and sputtered out beneath the water. The creeks calmed when the blaze was gone and lapped gently at my feet as they receded back to the confinement of their banks. I watched the torches shrink to dots of light in the distance as the villagers ran back to their homes. They were gone within the week. 

With the next few groups of villagers it was the same story. I would reach out, hopeful that this time they would let me stay long enough to speak; but, each time, I was driven away. Eventually they would make a move against my home, once they connected the dots about me and mine. I stopped trying after the fifth arson attempt and instead stayed away, letting the rumors fly about the shape in the woods and how the sun never managed to punch through the barrier of gloom. I don’t blame them for being wary. They’ve been told since they were small to fear the unknown, it keeps them safe. I understand why trees perpetually bathed in moonlight could appear unsettling to the eyes of a child cowed by the threats of morality and death laid upon them by their parents.

However. I understand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t ache with each hushed word and sideways glance. 

*              *              *

She came to the village as the heat of summer started to shift into the cool breath of autumn. She brought one basket, a cart with a few covered belongings, and one cat that rode in the basket with its head peeking from the edge of the blanket that sheltered it from the sun. I barely acknowledged her when she walked past my home, used to ignoring the stares and foolhardy behavior of the villagers. Only when she had turned the corner past the border wall without looking once at the woods did I take notice of her. 

I was careful in the following weeks, watching for any sign that the stranger might inspire a new attempt on my home. Occasionally, telling a newcomer the tales of the dark woods stirred up centuries of resentment in the older villagers. . 

I reclined on the sturdiest limb of a tree close to the forest edge, and watched as she set herself up in the home of the baker and made fast friends with everyone she met. I saw villagers point towards my home and begin to tell her something with a grave expression, but she laughed it off every time before giving them a tight embrace and going about her business. 

Three weeks after her arrival, a group of young boys sauntered up to the edge of my home and demanded entry in loud voices that wobbled on the squeaks of puberty every few syllables. I don’t know why everyone always asks me for permission, I have never and would never close the woods to any comer. More than anyone I understand the need for escape. I watched from below the surface of a creek as they began the routine of nudging and shoving each other towards the trees and viciously shaming those of their cohort who wouldn’t come closer, all while not moving themselves. Tensions rose fast and—at a particularly barbed comment about his mother’s relation to a pig—one of the boys landed a solid punch in the eye of another. 

A woman’s voice shouted something unintelligible and the boys all whipped around to see the source of the scolding. The newcomer came down the hill and waved at them to disperse with a friendly but stern smile. She said something I couldn’t make out and the boys nodded before shuffling back to the village with hung heads, still occasionally jamming their elbows into the ribs of whoever was closest. I let out a soft sigh of relief as they left. If they had tripped or fallen they would have disturbed the small family of rabbits that lived in the grasses tucked along the tree line. That relief quickly turned sour when the woman kept walking towards the woods without a single falter in her confident gait.

I watched in mute astonishment as she bent down over the tree line, plucked a bright red flower from the ground, and moved back out into the light. She turned the flower in sturdy fingers, looked into the woods, waved with a satisfied grin, and went back to the village with the flower tucked into her fine braid. I was glad for the cool water around me then as I could feel a warm heat rushing to my cheeks and a strange anxiety running through my arms to my fingertips, buzzing. 

A few months after the flower, she had her first lunch next to my home. She’d wandered through before while looking for more flowers or just peering into the trees, but this was the first time she’d stopped and stayed. I couldn’t do anything aside from crouch in the trees and stare as she settled into a comfortable position and began reading from a small book. She occasionally took bites of her bread and a glistening red apple. When she was finished, she tucked the book back into her skirts, pushed a second apple into the shadows of the trees, and left. I didn’t touch the apple for a number of hours, some jaded part of me afraid it might be poisoned or some other trick. Finally, with some reassurance from a very bored beetle, I picked it up and took a cautious bite.

 I had never tasted an apple sweeter. 

She came back three days in a row, each time with the same routine. Each time I left the apple for hours after she left. Each one I ate was somehow sweeter than the last. She didn’t come on the fourth day or the fifth, and I accepted it with ease. Her visits had been nothing more than a brief stutter in the monotonous rhythm of antagonistic children and avoidant adults. What surprised me, however, was the sharp pang of loss that struck each time I came upon the spot under the tree she had claimed as hers.  

On the sixth day without a visit, an apple waited for me when morning came. I rolled it in my hands, careful not to smother it with the dirt that clung to parts of my palms. I took a bite and groaned happily at the burst of sweetness that filled my mouth and curled my lips up into a smile, crooked on a face so unused to the movement. Apples appeared in the same place every morning, the only evidence that she remembered the thing in the woods. 

On the eleventh day since she first sat down to eat at my doorstep, I felt more than heard the commotion of a crowd of people quickly approaching my home. I rushed to a better vantage point and watched as villagers hauled the woman down the hill. The men holding her by her arms let her go just before they reached flat ground. She stumbled and fell at the sudden loss of support. She pulled herself up and pushed back against the base of the tree—her tree—she had rolled next to and stared up into the face of the older man who led the crowd. 

“Do you, Mercy Bottard, accept the charges laid against you for conspiring with devils?” His voice was creaky with age and grated against my skin like sandpaper.

“No! This is ridiculous, all I’ve done was eat a meal!” Mercy balled her skirts up in a white-knuckle grip as she shook with emotion and welling tears of confusion. 

“Prudence Masters and Judith Timpy both testified to seeing you leave offerings to the--” he gestured with disgust towards my woods, “thing that occupies the dark. Are they mistaken?”

“No! I mean, yes, I did leave food here for the girl in the woods. But that’s all it was!”

“Now you accuse honorable members of this township of fraud and slander? I will hear none of this from a woman of your standing.” The curl of his lips on the word “standing” made clear just what he thought of her.Mercy opened her mouth to object but he silenced her with a slice of his hand through the air. “All who agree that this woman should face punishment for these charges, say ‘aye!’”

A chorus of “aye” came from the crowd. The whole village, it seemed, had come to witness this moment. 

“All who agree that this woman face the judgement of the river say ‘aye!’”

Another solid round of “ayes.” Mercy covered her mouth with a sob and my blood boiled, the wind picking up around me as I leaned forward, lip pulled up in a snarl. In the brief silence that followed, a young man stepped out from the crowd and nodded his head to Mercy before clearing his throat. I recognized him as the boy who had been punched for his comment about his friend’s mother so many moons ago. 

“Elder Driscott, I have no objection to the charges laid against this woman but I propose an alternative.” 

Murmurs ran through the crowd and Elder Driscott motioned for the young man to continue, his brow pinched.

“Drowning is quick, too easy for someone so loyal to the servants of evil you say reside here. I suggest that we instead leave her to the will of the very devils she communes with.” He made a sweeping gesture towards the woods. “Now that she has been exposed, they no longer have need of her. What punishment could we dole out that could compete with that from the hands of those she once served?”

Elder Driscott’s eyes lit up and he nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “There’s promise in you yet, Jonathan Hendell. All in favor?”

The crowd, again, gave a resounding affirmative. 

“Mercy Bottard, I condemn you to the favor of those who have corrupted you. Begone and remember what you once were, God willing. Only then will you be granted forgiveness.” At that, he clapped his hands and the men who were carrying her earlier hauled her back up to her feet. They shoved her roughly to the ground just beyond the tree line. 

She landed in the moss and damp earth with a thud and her blonde hair gleamed like silver in the moonlight. I itched to jump forward and put her back on her feet but I couldn’t risk it, not when the villagers were already so eager for blood. 

“Take comfort in knowing that your sacrifice has saved the children of this town from corruption,” Driscott said before leading the crowd back toward the village. Jonathan looked back and shook his head before blending into the people around him. 

Mercy spat some dirt from her mouth and lay where she had been dropped, idly toying with a small clover that poked up between her fingers. Her dress was torn and smudged, and her normally neat braid hung undone in long tangles that caught in the grass as they moved with each of her hitching breaths. I shifted my weight and a twig snapped under my foot. I froze. She did too. Then, with a deliberate slowness, she pulled herself up onto her feet and held her hands to her sides in a relaxed stance.

“I’m not here to hurt you.” Her voice was low and soothing as if she was approaching a frightened animal, not the devil of the dark woods.  I almost laughed at that. Of course not. She’d shown me kindness. Why on Earth would she change now, when she had been thrown to the wolves and the branches and I was the only thing she thought she could trust. No, that wasn’t why I kept to the darkness. I hid because the shadows hid all of me from her, horns and too long fingers included. Shadows bring protection and secrecy, and leaving them only brings rejection. I hadn’t forgotten the lessons her people showed me all those years ago, and I wasn’t sure I could abide the fear and pity I knew I would see in her eyes once I stepped out into the moonlight. Hidden, I could easily guide her through the woods to the other side where she could leave and find another town where she could rebuild her life. She didn’t need to be trapped in these woods; they weren’t her home. They weren’t part of her like they were me. I could help her leave while keeping her at a distance, the only way to keep her close without losing her. 

She took a step and leaned to try and see around the trunk of the tree. “Please, will you come out? I’ve wanted to talk to you since I saw your beautiful flowers and heard the pretty bells of your creeks running through the trees. I wanted to thank you for bringing me peace in those afternoons, when your oak gave me shelter from the sun.”

The buzzing in my fingers was back and I rubbed them against my arms to try and make it go away. The movement caught her eye and she took another step. 

“Please?” This time her voice was softer, an undercurrent of hurt coloring the word. 

I tensed. It almost sounded like she thought I was the one refusing her. I chewed on my lip and then, keeping my eyes firmly shut so as not to see the look in her eyes, I stepped out from behind the tree and into a pool of moonlight that filtered through the ever-rustling leaves above me. She took in a sharp breath and I winced, waiting for the sound of her footsteps pounding on the ground as she escaped back to whatever fate awaited her in the village. They never came. Instead, featherlight fingers brushed against my hand and I could feel her warmth pressing in through the chill of the night air. 

“Hello. Open your eyes for me?” I slowly opened them, blinking to bring her face into focus as she was suddenly much closer than before.  Absently, I noticed that soft freckles covered the bridge of her nose and the tops of her round cheeks. She had green eyes. Eyes that didn’t shift to the side after taking in all that I am. She brought her other hand up and hovered it next to one of the ridged horns that tucked close to my skull. “May I?”

I blinked twice as I processed her question and then nodded. The same light touch traced the shifting shape of them and curled a lock of black hair around her finger. I don’t think I’ve breathed before but I certainly haven’t since. I swallowed. The same smile she had when she took the first flower stole across her face and she pulled her hands back, tucking them into the folds of her skirt.

“How rude of me to get so close without introducing myself. I’m Mercy. May I ask your name?”

I hesitated, tongue loose around a name that I hadn’t uttered in centuries. 

Her grin widened. “Show me around these woods, would you? I hear I’ll be staying for a while.”

*              *              *

They fear me, this is a fact as true as time itself. Another fact, just as true but so much more important, is that she loves me.

Sarah Dutton (she/her) is a queer writer living in North Carolina who fantasizes about living anywhere else but knows the South will always be home. She's passionate about studying history, raiding used bookstores on the weekends, and embracing the occasional dark story that stumbles its way into her brain. She has previously been published in Rune Bear and you can find her on Twitter at @sarahduttonn.

Dolls Who Make Tragic Sounds

The reduced staff at Willowbee fell into an efficient routine with the arrival of their first guests.  Cornelia maintained the sleeping subjects – changing nightgowns, sponge bathing, fitting bedclothes and bows of her slumbering beauties.  Inert, most of the day, it was easy to think of her charges as inhuman and dolls.  Even with the whimpering and screams, the rote nature of their sounds lent an automated quality to it as if the dolls were equipped with an internal music box of tragic sounds untethered to any human feeling.

It was only when the two subjects stirred, seeking sustenance, accompaniment to the water closet, trembling limbs dependent, did Cornelia feel guilt.  For it was after these trips, these small steps towards sentience, she would pour the requisite ratio of laudanum to milk inside a porcelain wreathed teacup to return them to the nightmare world.  The Doctor taught her the dosage, the shade of pink it colored the milk against the mint green of the cup that would settle a subject into their disturbed sleep.  Cornelia certainly believed in the mission and in her beloved Bram -- the Doctor --, and would serve him without fail, but even he referenced the “necessary misery” of cortisol production. 

If Cornelia believed in the necessary part, she also accepted the truth that it was a misery.  Mabel and Madison, the names she proffered to her two new dolls, deserved not the misery she delivered to them like an innocent tea party, helped to their lips.  One couldn’t expect the Doctor to wander down from the lab to handle such menial tasks when he had the cure of a dread disease within his reach.  

The Doctor needed to make precise studies of the mice and handle their injections with professionalism in a time-sensitive manner.  At some point, he would graduate to a human host, diseased of the supra-renal capsules, upon which to experiment, but only after he had documented long-term success with the mice.  Bram, after all, wasn’t a recognized doctor by any medical association and barely even a man having reached his majority this year.  Yet, to the girl who had known him since she had come to this house as a scullery maid, the Doctor was a genius and a god who deigned to treat her as an equal.  

Since the very first day she had come to Willowbee, the Doctor, a child younger than herself, a noble, explained all of this to Cornelia at length. It was clear to the young servant that her opinion and comfort with each of these protocols was essential to the Doctor executing this plan.  She gave her word she would follow each procedure as if it were her own life that depended on it, and she meant to honor that.  Even looking at the sickly pallor of Madison, the brunette whose rosy cheeks faded within the first couple of days of her involuntary arrival at Willowbee, whose sparkling eyes brimmed with perpetual tears, she helped the small cup to the girl’s chattering teeth and even managed, “There, there, that’s right,” as the girl swallowed, then curled supine to her doll-like form on a bed, the same shade of rose her cheeks shone only days ago in freedom, and wept herself back to sleep.

Kristin Garth (she/her) is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna and more. She is the author of seventeen books of poetry including Pink Plastic House  (Maverick Duck Press), Crow Carriage (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press), The Meadow (APEP Publications) and Golden Ticket from Roaring Junior Press.  She is the founder of Pink Plastic House, a tiny journal and co-founder of Performance Anxiety, an online poetry reading series. Follow her on Twitter:  (@lolaandjolie) and her website kristingarth.com.

His Husband's Ghosts

The End of the Cadiz Crew:
Notorious Criminals Dead in Botched Heist

Philip Coulter (31), Devon Strand (32), Caesar Silva (31), Tyrel Woodside (30), and Lucas Wakowski (26), the group of criminals commonly known as the Cadiz Crew have finally been brought down, releasing their stranglehold over Los Cadiz, CA. Police interrupted a robbery in progress at the 6th Street branch of Acotane Bank. A bloody shootout ensued, leaving Wakowski, Strand, and Silva dead on site. Though Woodside has been apprehended, Coulter is still in the wind […]

Correction:

Woodside has since died in police custody of apparent suicide. 

The newspaper clipping hung in a frame on the bedroom wall, and Chad sat across from it in his favorite leather armchair, rereading the words he’d already committed to memory.

“So I don’t forget them,” he’d explained the first time Echo asked. “It’s my job to remember them. They deserve that much.”

“You’re a good person,” had been Echo’s response, and Chad shook his head.

“No I’m not, doll,” he’d said. “But I’m honored you think so.”

Echo was never sure what to do when his husband was like this, wistful for his days as a career criminal. It was October, the day was winding down, and Chad was doing exactly that now, staring off at the clipping. 

All Echo could think to say was “You don’t look like a Philip.” 

Chad grinned. “Oh, I know. That was the idea,” he said. “When I filed all the paperwork so I could finally be legally recognized as a man I had to change my name, and while anything was better than Emily, I thought I’d pick something stupid. So legally Philip was the criminal, and nobody was looking for Chad.” 

“Why didn’t anyone else do something like that?” Echo asked. 

“Y’know, I’d say they were too dense to think of it, but Tyrel was smarter than the rest of us put together, so that’s a valid question,” Chad said. “The point is, I told the boys if they ever called me Phil I’d punch ‘em in the nuts.”

“Did anyone ever try?” Echo asked. 

“Caesar did, once. He was drunk. Sobered up pretty quickly afterwards, though.” He was smiling at the fond memory, but Echo could see the sadness in his eyes, creeping up behind the laughter. Chad was always like that when he talked about his brothers, and Echo was all too aware.

“Tell me a story,” Echo said. “Not one of the robbery ones. Don’t tell me a story about the crew, tell me one about the family.” 

Chad was looking at him now the way he’d looked at their wedding. It was the same expression he’d had on the first time Echo showed up at his doorstep after finding out about the criminality, when Chad had thought he’d never see him again. It was an expression filled with so much love. 

“Of course, doll,” he said, flopping down beside Echo onto the plethora of pillows that lined the headboard of their bed. He’d gotten distracted getting ready for bed and was shirtless. Echo found himself staring at the four names of Chad’s brothers tattooed over his heart, just above the scars on his chest. “So I’ve told you how Lucas was the baby, right?”

“Many times,” said Echo. 

“I mean, we’d known him since, like, ten, so we babied the fuck outta him. Anyway so we were casing this bar—okay, who am I kidding, the place was a club, a swanky club at that—because we were supposed to rob the place that upcoming weekend. Some guy apparently had a beef with the owner—”

“Honey,” Echo whined. “I didn’t want a robbery story.”

“It’s not a robbery story, doll,” said Chad. “So we’d given the place a solid once over and, having already paid the entrance fee, we decided fuck it! Let’s get smashed! Except Lucas No matter what it said on his fake ID, he was still eighteen. I mean, we’d let him get drunk at home, we just wanted to hassle him, so Tyrel bought him a Sprite and we dubbed him designated driver.” He ran a hand through Echo’s hair as he spoke, staring out the window to the deck like just beyond it lay the past perfectly intact. “Now imagine all our surprise when little Lucas hits it off with this chick at the bar, one who’s also obviously there with a fake ID. I mean, Lucas was cute but in a ‘I wanna pinch your cheeks and buy you a cupcake’ kinda way--” He pinched Echo’s face for emphasis and echo squeaked in surprise. “--Not a ‘you’re cute let’s make out’ way, but maybe I’m biased because he was our baby. So we discover that shit, the kid’s got game. Now we’re legally obligated to embarrass him. 

“At least for his sake we did this all at once, we didn’t come up to him four separate times throughout the night. Basically, we decided to give the poor guy the worst sex talk ever. I’m talking ‘high-school-health-class-that-does-not-give-a-shit’ bad. We’re reading off Wikipedia pages, we’re pulling up diagrams, Tyrel being the group dad that he is apparently brought fruit to a nightclub in his man purse, so he’s demonstrating how to put a condom on a banana, and of course Lucas is dying. He was hiding under the table yelling that he was gonna leave and make us walk home. Now, the girl thought it was hysterical, and he still got her number, so I guess we didn’t hurt his chances too badly.” 

“You guys had a lot of fun together, didn’t you?” asked Echo. “I can tell how much you loved them.”

“They were my family from age fifteen on,” Chad said. “They’ll always be my brothers, I’m just trying to do right by their memory.” 

“From what you’ve told me about them, they’d be happy with where you are today,” said Echo. “You’re a good man now.”

“All because of you, doll. I think you’re the only one who could get me to believe that.” He kissed Echo’s forehead and turned off the light. “Get some sleep, alright?”

“Can do,” said Echo. “Night.”

Echo did sleep until some ugly, remote hour of the morning just south of three a.m. when he woke up needing a glass of water. Having grown up in small town Kentucky, Chad’s massive house had seemed like a TV millionaire’s mansion to Echo when they’d first met almost three years earlier. Even living there hadn’t really accustomed him to the sheer amount of space. He’d always felt like something might be lurking down a dark hall at night, and he remembered that now as he slipped down to the kitchen.

“It’s Echo, right?”

He just never expected to see one of those somethings face-to-face.

“Please don’t scream.”

That was easier said than done when what was standing behind him didn’t have much of a head.

His left eye was still there, along with most of his too-big nose and his mouth, but the entire right side of his face was gone. What was left of his auburn hair clung to his skull, matted with blood. Perhaps scarier than the gaping hole in his skull was the fact that Echo knew his face. He looked so young, he always looked so damn young in Chad’s photo album, cute like I wanna pinch your cheeks and buy you a cupcake. He was supposed to wait in the car that day, Chad had said, but he panicked when he saw all the police cars. He was barely through the bank’s front door when a SWAT sniper’s bullet went through his right eye. 

“Hi,” the thing that used to be Chad’s brother said. “I’m Lucas.”

“What the actual fuck.” Echo wasn’t proud of that reaction, he didn’t like to swear, but it was two-fifty in the morning and he was talking to a dead man with half a face. A logical, fully awake person probably would’ve screamed, he probably should’ve screamed, and he couldn’t say why he wasn’t freaking out more. Just that his first reaction was an honest one.

“Sorry,” said Lucas. “I know I look pretty bad.”

“That’s an understatement,” Echo said, steadying himself against the kitchen sink. He was vaguely aware of his Kentucky accent coming back in full; he always got especially southern when he was nervous. “What do you want? Are you tryin’ to possess me or—”

“Oh, shit, no, nothing like that. I don’t know how to do that. I can’t even touch you.” He tried to clap Echo on the back, only for his phantom hand to fall through his arm.Echo shuddered. “Please don’t do that again,” he mumbled. 

“Really Lucas?” A deadpan voice from the direction of the kitchen table interrupted. “We told you not to go say hi. You’re missing half your face, if anyone should introduce themselves it’s Caesar. He got out the best.” Echo couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment he realized there was a tall, lanky black man with a crooked, broken neck sitting on the kitchen table, but there he was, looking more perturbed than anything else.

“Oh come on, Tyrel, I just wanted to be neighborly is all!”

“Well you’re not his neighbor, and you’re scaring him.”

“So, can I ask, what kinda name is Echo anyways?” said the hispanic man with the slicked back hair half leaning through the kitchen wall. Out of all of them so far, he looked the most alive, save for the bullet wound right through the heart. “Been wondering that for a while. Isn’t that a chick’s name?”

“My parents are kind of hippies?” Echo said, though it came out more like a question. “I have a twin sister named Narcissa who’s a few minutes older, they thought it’d be funny. How long is a while?”

“What Caesar means,” said the one sitting on the table, Tyrel, “is we’ve been looking after Chad for several years now. When you came along, that included you. So yes, we’ve been wondering a while.”

“Well there you go?”

“Sweet.” The last of them was a broad-shouldered Black man with a floral tattoo on his neck. Bullet holes had reduced him to swiss cheese, but he stood by the kitchen doorway looking remarkably at ease. “Caesar thought it was because you must’ve parroted shit back at your parents as a kid, and I said that was bullshit. Nobody waits until their kid starts talking to name them.”

“Devon, I’m gonna come over there and kick your ass!” said Caesar.

“Then get out of that wall and come do it!”

“Am I dreaming?” Echo interrupted them.

“Would you like to be?” asked Tyrel. He shrugged, making the horrible angle his head hung at look worse.

“Can I ask what all this is about?” Echo asked. “Because I just wanted to get a glass of water and go back to bed.”

“Well, you see, it’s coming up on the anniversary of…yeah.” Lucas awkwardly scratched at what was left of the back of his head. “And Chad always gets so sad. We wanted to check in.”

“So you’re talking to me and not him because…?”

“We can’t show ourselves to him,” Caesar said like it was obvious. “As much as he misses us, it would kill him if he found out we’d been hanging--” He winced and looked at Tyrel, who shrugged. “--Staying around this whole time. We don’t need him wallowing, trying to talk to us. He has a life with you to live.”

“Despite all the suspicion around a Black guy dying in jail, I did kill myself,” Tyrel said. “I did it because we were bad people, I knew I was never getting out and wouldn’t have a chance to be happy again. But Chad, Chad’s gotten that with you. We’re not letting him waste it. No matter how much Lucas wants to talk to him.” 

“He was just so mopey in the beginning,” Lucas said. “But you make him so happy.”

“We don’t wanna be seeing him again for a very long time,” said Devon. “That’s actually why we’re here, we wanna to talk to you.”

“Me?” said Echo.

“Yes, you, white boy,” said Devon. “You’re married to our brother.”

“Devon means well,” said Tyrel. “That’s just how he shows affection.”

“And what he’s trying to say is thanks for taking care of Chad,” said Caesar. “You remember what he was like when you met right?”

Echo nodded. “He was so…cold,” he said softly, remembering that day. Chad’s brothers had barely been dead a year, though Echo wouldn’t find out about his dark past for months. He’d just seen an attractive, well-dressed man in a too-crowded coffee shop. Blushing like a giddy teen girl, Echo had worked up the nerve to ask that attractive man for his name. Chad had brushed him off and Echo had wilted under his cold expression. That had been that until he ran into him again by chance.

Brushing him off had made Chad realize how lonely he was, as he’d finally told Echo after a few dates, and apparently Echo had a very cute face. Echo had gone redder than his hair at a compliment from someone so handsome. Even now, he still blushed when Chad called him cute. 

“Yeah, he was a sad sack of shit,” said Devon, interrupting the trip down memory lane. 

“And then you and your pretty face came along,” Caesar said. Echo wasn’t sure how to take a compliment like that from a dead man, and just looked down at his glass of water. “And he actually started smiling again.”

“So thank you,” said Lucas. “For taking care of him. He wouldn’t have believed it before, but he’s a good guy these days. He deserves to be happy if we can’t.”

“Plus, I don’t think anyone ever thought he’d settle down,” added Devon, leaning back so he appeared propped against the wall. “Back in the day the dude could get it in any gender—”

“He doesn’t want to hear that about his husband, you idiot,” said Tyrel, rubbing his temples like he had a headache. “But yes, thank you for looking after him. Keep him safe for us, keep making him happy.”

“I’ll do the best I can,” Echo said. “Even if that’s just letting him tell his stories, it seems to help.”

“It has,” said Caesar. “Back when you first met, he still thought of himself as a terrible person. The survivor’s guilt was something awful and he never would’ve let himself be happy. But now?”

“You’re a good man now.”

“All because of you, doll. I think you’re the only one who could get me to believe that.”

“Now he actually believes it,” Echo said. 

“He does,” said Lucas. “Because of you. I’d like to hug you as a thank you, but…” He gestured to his gaping head wound.

“Yeah,” said Echo. “I’d prefer y’all didn’t do that.”

“Fair enough,” said Lucas. 

“We swore to look after him,” said Tyrel. “To protect him from losing himself in his grief, and now we don’t have to.”

“So that’s why we wanted to talk to you now,” said Devon. “To thank you. Now we’re relieved of duty. So have a nice life, you two.” 

It had been a gradual change, so much so that it snuck up on Echo. But as Devon stepped back and they all stood together, Echo realized he wasn’t staring at mangled corpses anymore. There were no gunshot wounds, Tyrel’s neck was no longer broken, Lucas had both eyes and an expression of absolute wonder; Chad was right, he was cute. They no longer wore the clothes they died in, but were dressed the way they’d been when they were alive, the way they looked grinning up from the pages of Chad’s photo album. 

And then they were gone and Echo was alone in the kitchen. 

“If I’m dreaming, I have one hell of an imagination,” he said to himself, drying off the glass and returning it to the shelf.

“Oh! And one more thing!”

Echo jumped at the sudden noise from behind him, grateful he hadn’t screamed as he whirled around. All of them were gone save Caesar, looking disconcertingly alive as he sat cross-legged on the kitchen island. Echo knew that of the four members of the crew, he was the one Chad had been the closest to. They’d grown up together, the crew had started with the two of them and they’d built it from the ground up. Their birthdays had been a week apart so the other three called them the twins, and he was the one Chad had the most stories about. Echo couldn’t imagine what Caesar had to say to him one-on-one and suddenly he was convinced Caesar disapproved of him, that he was about to skip out on whatever afterlife the four were long overdue for and threaten to haunt him for the rest of his days for not being good enough, that—

“You already think you’re dreaming, you’ll chalk this up to that so you can tell Chad this. Lucas is sorry is stole a toilet brush back in the day, he knows he was being stupid,” Caesar said. “I’m sure Chad’s told you that story, it’s hysterical—”

“Caesar, don’t bring that up!” Lucas’ disembodied voice whined from somewhere Echo couldn’t quite place. “He doesn’t need to know what a stupid teenager I was!”

“Yes he does!” said Caesar, turning back to Echo. “Alright, it’s late, I’ll be on my way. You should go back to bed.”

*              *              *

Echo woke up to the morning autumn sun slipping through the blinds and Chad’s weekend’s-worth of stubble tickling his face.

“Morning, doll,” Chad said when he realized Echo was awake. “You sleep okay?”

“I did,” Echo said as he sat up, attempting to corral the tangled mess of gingery curls that his hair was in the morning. “I had the weirdest dream, though.”

“Was it about me?” Chad asked with a grin.

“Yes -- no it wasn’t that kind of dream!” Echo pouted.

“You’ve always had a very active imagination,” Chad said, ruffling Echo’s hair and only making it fluff up worse. “It’s what makes you such a good writer. What was this one about?”

“Your brothers,” Echo said. Chad paused and cocked his head like a dog listening to a far-off sound. “Your brothers were ghosts and they were in our kitchen. They wanted to hug me and thank me for making you so happy.”

“Maybe I should stop telling you stories about the dumb shit we did right before you go to sleep,” Chad offered. Echo shrugged.

“Maybe,” he said. “And…Caesar, it was Caesar, he was wearing that awful jacket he has in all your pictures. He said Lucas was sorry for stealing a toilet brush, whatever that means.”

“You’re so cute,” Chad said before planting a kiss on his cheek “You want coffee?”

“Sure, you make good coffee.”

“I’ll bring it up then,” Chad said, not even bothering to put on a shirt before heading downstairs to the kitchen. Echo had always had a very active imagination and normally he would’ve written it off as just another instance of that, except for one little detail. It was such a trivial story and not nearly as funny as Caesar made it out to be, that was how he was so certain he’d never told Echo about the time Lucas stole a toilet brush.

“You guys,” he said to the empty kitchen, “are idiots. If you’re listening, you picked a dumb story to tell him.”

And though he waited for something, anything, all he heard—in every sense of the word—was his echo. 

Alice Scott (she/her) is an author who may or may not be a ferret turned into a person by a kiss from a prince. She has a degree in creative writing from George Mason University and is currently working as a bookseller with a specialty in recommending queer and underappreciated YA. When not at work she is usually chipping away at her novel, writing collaboratively with her boyfriend, AJ, or procrastinating working on her novel by writing short stories. "His Husband’s Ghosts" was one of said procrastination projects. She is the author of short stories “A Professional Relationship,” “Playing Possum,” and “His Husband’s Ghosts” and is also the cohost of the #LGBTWIP hashtag event on her Twitter, which you can follow at @AllyScottAuthor

Standardized

“This will be a test of your creative ability as wizards,” the proctor says, showing the four of us her gleaming fangs. “Now, as you ladies are all from Texas, I will put you together at a table. Take a few minutes, get your equipment out, and relax. It’s a simple timed test. You took these in third grade.”

I don’t laugh. It’s an old joke, and it’s not funny. There’s nothing simple about this test. The three other girls with me titter politely. Aside from Cameron, I don’t know any of them, and I only know her because she sits across the room from me in Advanced Spellcasting. She has long curly hair, perfect teeth, and she smiles a lot. She’s smiling now. All dolled up like a cheerleader with her hair in a bun and a pencil twirling like a baton between her fingers. We pick up our bags and follow the proctor to our table. They are hideous things, garish orange, and poorly made. All our testing materials are in it, and the seams strain under the weight. I’ll throw it away when the test is over. Or ask if there is somewhere in the school where they recycle them. I don’t need a souvenir. 

Cameron leans in and whispers in my ear. “Glad they are giving us our own table, aren’t you? Jesus, Ellie, I don’t know anyone here. Isn’t it exciting?”

I hate that nickname. And I know the bag is going to break.

The proctor gives us a long table with too many legs, like the guys in the Arts lab designed it to walk about on all eight. “Pull up a chair,” she invites, “and make yourselves comfortable. You can look at your examination book, but don’t go any further than the first page.” She wags a finger at Cameron, who is peeking. “Don’t make any marks on your sheet until the timer starts, and don’t make any marks in the book itself. You must use the issued pencils for the test. Don’t sharpen them. They’ll take care of themselves.”

I look at the blunt end dubiously. I can’t tell what it’s made of yet, but I have a way of finding out. I set the pencil in my mouth and nibble. Cameron gives me a look. I sit on the far side of the table in a folding chair that speaks. “Elspeth Lamiter. Austin Polytech. Weight one hundred and ninety-three pounds,” it snarls. 

Everyone titters. Cameron Moreland is a feather at one-hundred and fifteen, but she blushes furiously, and says something about salad for lunch. I risk a nibble of pencil again, and spit. Synthetic wood. Tastes like plastic beaver crap. I hate the feel of them, these self-sharpening pencils. Not worth the work it takes to mass produce them, not when it’s so easy for anyone to shape the wood into the tool you need with magic, like I do. I’m a mechanically-minded girl, or I wouldn’t be in Advanced Spellcasting. And if one hundred ninety-three pounds gives the chair a complex, just let it try to buck me off. I’m from Texas. I’ll fix it to the floor. 

The room is filling up with people I don’t know and never will. They chat together like old friends. It’s that strange camaraderie I can’t understand, but it seems to exist among average wizards with a unity of purpose and place. Their chairs announce them in big voices with big name schools for surnames. I think I even hear someone from Salem.

Damn, I wish I’d gone out and gotten shit-faced last night. I could have made a case for staying in bed sick at the hotel, instead of eating a stale bagel with peach jelly in the lobby, and washing it all down with bad coffee while Cameron declared she couldn’t eat a thing; she was that nervous. 

Cameron is picking through her bag. I do the same. The table jams me in the leg, but I’m not giving that chair a chance to weigh me again by getting up. I take out the test booklet, all slick with plastic to protect it from magical splash, and set the paper examination sheet on top. Next is a disc and a disc drive to play the stupid thing, since they won’t allow us to connect to a common server. Too easy to cheat for some of these guys. Everyone gets their own copy. It’s old school, but there’s no hacking. Next is a tablet with a cord to attach to the disc drive. I suspect it will show shape puzzles for magical manipulation. I pull out a set of earbuds and confirm my suspicions.

“I’m so nervous,” Cameron chatters. “Are you?”

“I just want it over with.”

She shuts up. I should never have applied to take this test, but I let my physics prof'’ talk me into it. That’s what I get for being a wizard and an engineering major. I’m not going to pass. Magic at this level is for brilliant mathmagicians like Cameron, not visual-spatial hacks like me who only know it when they do it. 

When the proctor takes the stage, the chairs are still squeaking names, weights and schools. The noise stops when she pulls a cord and the curtains open to reveal a massive hourglass full of red sand, and a tiny, puff-cheeked demon holding the stopper closed. He’s got his face scrunched up like he needs to take a shit. My gut isn’t happy either. Stress sets me off. Next time the proctor swarms my way, I’ll ask her how bathroom breaks happen. I’ve tested plenty of times, but never at this level. Never for a fellowship.

“Students, we are pleased to welcome you to the final examination for the Michael A. Bourette Scholarship,” she says, smiling like she means it. “Only one student here today will be awarded this grant, and I wish you all the very best of luck. Some rules before we get started. First, no eating or drinking during the examination. You should have stopped off at Starbucks before you got here, kids.”

People laugh. I squirm. I wish I hadn’t drunk my usual gallon of coffee.

“Second, you must use only the pencils provided to you for this examination. They are self-sharpening, so you won’t need to adjust them during the testing procedure. You’ve all seen bubble sheets. Mark only the answer you want counted. Stray marks on the sheet could cause your answer to be disqualified. Don’t make any marks in the test booklet. Any calculations should be done on the scratch paper provided and turned in with your test at the end of the examination.”

I check through the bag for the paper and stick my elbow in Cameron’s hip. “Sorry.”

“Shh. I’m trying to listen.”

She has a point. Although the proctor is speaking loudly, the chairs are constantly complaining over her. I find the paper. 

“You have to be shitting me. Look at this.” I wave the index card shaped spiral notebook in Cameron’s face. 

“I can do it all in my head, anyway,” she says smugly.

“Lastly, although this is a timed event, the actual length of the test depends upon how long it takes for the Fellowship Board to tally the results and declare one of you has passed. While you may have three hours, time could be called at any minute if the board makes a selection, so don’t spend too much time on any one question. If you don’t know the answer, mark your best choice and go on to the next one. Once the sand starts to fall you may begin. I will be walking around the room to offer assistance with the directions, and to answer questions about the examination and the rules, but I can’t help you with the actual questions themselves.”

I won’t bother to ask about bathrooms. Cameron has the look of a racehorse, dancing in the gate before the bell rings. She’s so competitive, she’ll take the teacher to task for a technicality on a half-point deduction. I’ve seen her do it. More than once. My best bet is to answer what I can, and walk out when the urge hits, and I’ll just not come back. I don’t have a shot at this, not when the test could be called at any moment. Cameron might have a supercomputer for a brain, but I need to draw the geometry to make it work. I always have. 

“You may begin.”

The sudden shrill of chairs announces that over half the class has literally jumped in their seats. The demon in the glass is crushed by a wheelbarrow load of sand that smashes him to the bottom of the glass. He oozes out like a squashed wad of gum and rebuilds himself in a less sandy spot, then preens his scales back into shape. I open the booklet.

The page is composed of questions written in tiny print, with the possible answers below for the purposes of marking them on the sheet. I see somebody didn’t bother to listen to the instructions about not marking in this booklet; it looks like an inkblot test.

I set my pencil to the examination paper and wait while it peels away the layers to expose the blunt end of the lead. The first question isn’t even about magic. It’s basic arithmetic and, like Cameron boasts, I can do that in my head. But the pencil marks are very faint. I bear down harder. Nothing. I glance at Cameron. She looks as red faced as I feel.

“Sharpen your pencil?” I offer.

“Shh.”

“Don’t say I didn’t offer.” Under the desk, I give the pencil a good neck-wringing. It yelps, but with all the squeaks and grumbles in the room, nobody hears but me. It’s a lost cause, though. It dulls as soon as I set it against the examination paper, and I’m back to bearing down like a drill press.

The table knees me in the calf. I scrunch my chair around, but there’s no such thing as personal space at this table. Cameron is practically sitting in my lap. I would like that actually, but she wouldn’t, and she moves. She shoulders into the blonde next to her. 

I glance around the room. All the tables are built on the same lines as this one. Approximately six by four, with two students crammed on each side, and the legs serving as dividers below the hip in case anyone gets frisky. I pick up my chair, and plant it at the end of our table. There’s no room to spread out otherwise. 

“Elspeth Lamiter, Austin Poly—”

“Shut the fuck up.” I give it a good shove, but it completes my weight with triumph and adds an ounce to rub it in. My bladder is growing turgid, not yet miserable.

I settle down again and read. This one is interesting. This is magic. I get out the postage stamp scratch pad. It won’t open. The first page is stuck to the second, stuck to the third, the fourth, the fifth. There’s no tearing off sheets to make more room. I have to fill one full before I can use the next. I test this by doodling with the dull pencil until it gives me the next sheet. I tear off the first. Doodle the second page full. Tear it off. It gets wise to me around the sixth piece, but I’ve got a decent sized pile now, and I lay them all out and work out the details of designing a bridge to withstand the concussive blast of an elemental explosion.

Behind me, Todd Mathison, Northwestern, weight two-hundred one and change, shifts his chair to the end of the table. 

“Are you uncomfortable?”

Damn. The proctor is here, vampire teeth showing. She sets a friendly hand on my shoulder, cold as winter. 

“Yeah, I am,” I say boldly.

“Perhaps another table,” the proctor says, and moves to confront Todd the same way. “Are you uncomfortable? Yes? Another table.”

She turns back to me. “Put your things in your bag, you and you.” She points to Cameron, and then to Todd, who looks as embarrassed as Cameron. “Another table will be more comfortable.”

But it isn’t. They looked the same from where I was sitting, but I would swear they narrowed the new one by a good six inches on the end. Todd shoves in next to Cameron, and a Tennessee girl bumps shoulders with me, and we go at it again, knocking knees and excusing ourselves as we try to arrange papers and booklets to fit the space. All around us, chairs are announcing names again as more students are shuffled to new tables. 

“It’s part of the test,” Tennessee mutters. “See if we can stand it.” She buckles down to her work. Her notes are so tiny she has to squint to read them. 

Cameron dashes off a few more answers, reads the third page, and pulls out the machine and the disc. 

“Do you mind?” Todd grumbles. 

Cameron shoves her elbow into my examination paper. My pencil slips and a long line of black appears through the answer I was marking. Six pages of scratch paper in the garbage. 

The sun is streaming through the long glass windows of the examination room now, and a blinding glare falls on the screen Cameron is setting up. She angles it. I pull my pencil up before I lose another answer. I stand, grab my chair and turn it, back facing the table. I read a question, shut the book, and then use it as a clipboard to support my scratch papers while I work out the answer.

The proctor is there before I can work out the equation. “I’m sorry, but you need to have your examination paper on the table for your results to be recorded.”

“I’m not marking. I’m thinking.”

“Perhaps another table.”

This time Cameron doesn’t come with me. Todd and Tennessee glare at me, and I can see Todd’s relief as he slides his machine into the space where I was parked. About halfway across the room, the bag breaks. The proctor, with inhuman speed, reaches for the machine and the disk, but the extra pencil, the scrap paper, the examination and the booklet go flying. I have to stop and gather things again, but the paper notebook has split apart, and I only salvage a few pieces that didn’t crawl under the tables. 

“Here,” the proctor says, pulling out a seat for me at another table with three students. She points at the red hourglass. “Don’t run out of time.”

The other students regard me with the cordiality reserved for a scorpion in the laundry basket. It’s time for the spatial test, and I’ve got to use the machine. But the students here are in the same place, and there’s no room.

“We could share a screen,” I offer. “That way there’s more room.”

The two across the table shake their heads. They are well into their manipulations, but a red-headed boy with a California smile grins at me. “There’s an idea.” He shoves his screen in my direction and with a sigh of relief, I turn to the next page in my booklet. 

I can barely read the directions, let alone the problems. “Does your book look like this?” I whisper. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Some shithead drew all over it.”

“Part of the test.”

“Maybe.”

It’s a struggle to decipher the first construction, but California and I match our pace. He turns the shape one way, and I the other, and we reach our own conclusions.

“Excuse me?” Monster teeth appear in the monitor’s reflection. “Are you uncomfortable? Perhaps another table.” 

California sighs. He takes his screen and goes, and I have to pull out my machine and screen. It never hit the floor, but something isn’t right with it. It’s slow to load, and I have to wait minutes for my thoughts to register and turn the shape. The earphones are buzzing like fluorescent lights. I definitely need to piss.

I yank the headphones off.

“Are you uncomfortable?”

“Is it deliberate?” I confront her this time as she shifts me across the room again. Cameron, lucky girl, is still stationed almost at the front of the room. She is working frantically. In the hourglass, the demon is dancing on the sandpile, and kicking it up in the air while more grains fall like raindrops on his head.

“The Fellowship sets the examination parameters,” she says. “Do your best. And don’t run out of time.”

I have a moment to think as the table empties and students shuffle through the musical chairs. With no one sitting near me, it feels like I’m alone in the world. I don’t like it. Not like I’ve ever had a lot of friends, but I like the company. Helps me pretend I belong.

Briefly, I scan the room for Cameron. She’s coming my way, red-faced and guilty, supporting her bag with both hands. Wordlessly, I scoot over and she sits next to me. She looks like she wants to cry.

“It’s like a damned nightmare,” she mourns, but pulls out her examination sheet bravely. I do the same. In minutes, we are joined by two students and the battle for space begins again. 

“Don’t run out of time,” the proctor reminds us. I can’t tell if fifteen minutes have passed or a year. Cameron is biting her lip. She hurries, her pencil breaks, and a line appears where her answer should be. She squeaks like it’s the first time. I’ve got a damned page of the lines already. She sits back. Everything in her face twitches. 

“It’s okay,” I say quietly.

“I made a mistake.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t make mistakes.”

I don’t argue with her. It’s worthless. There’s no more room and I find I don’t care. I turn around and stare at the frantic students fumbling through their mental calculations, with their dreams of earning the scholarship vaporizing as fast as their answers. I’ve learned that the squeak of the chair is an automatic eviction notice so I twist my body to evenly distribute my weight. I can see the whole room from my vantage place near the doorway.

I could get up, leave the stupid bag, the stupid machine, the stupid pencils, and the stupid paper wads behind. I never belonged here anyway. I’ve half a mind to take the examination book, though. I won’t take it out of the school. Just take it to the bathroom, piss on it, and leave it in the commode. When Cameron comes back to the hotel, I’ll go get drunk with her as she celebrates her win. I might even make a pass at her because I’ll be drunk enough to do that, and she’ll be drunk enough not to hate me for it. She’ll have other things to think about. Then I’ll go home. I’m a magical engineer. That’s good enough. The hourglass is emptying behind the desk where the proctor should be sitting, but she’s moving around the hall, shoving students around. 

I thumb through the examination book, glancing at the questions I won’t be answering today. I could do them all if I just had the space to work and a little quiet to do it in. This is ridiculous.

I stand. Shove my chair back. It sounds the alarm and the proctor looks my way.

“What are you doing?” Cameron says.

“Going someplace quiet to work.”

She snorts. 

“You want to come?”

She answers by shoving her chair into my spot. I pick up the torn bag, tuck it under my arm and march to the front of the room where the hourglass counts minutes and the demon dances the seconds. The proctor is on her way. I run the last few steps, jump onto the stage, and pull the comfortable leather chair out from under her desk and sit.

“Are you uncomfortable?” I yell as she reaches me. “Perhaps another table? No need to help me. I’ll help myself.”

All her monster teeth shine. “Time,” she says.

R. Lee Fryar (she/her) is a writer living in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas. When she’s not writing stories, she works as a small animal veterinarian, homeschools her children, and acts as chief servant and personal attendant to three cats, two dogs, and six spoiled brat chickens. She also paints watercolors of her characters and settings whenever she feels inspired.

Roadtrip

Loud banging on the door.

You roll out of your too-small bed. Cheap plastic picture frames, empty of anything save a photo booth strip from six years ago, rattle over the water-stained walls with the force of the knocking.

“Alright, alright,” you grumble, shrugging on a ragged bathrobe. The townies at the bar last night were particularly loud, leering uncomfortably often and cracking jokes about fixing what’s about you isn’t broken, just far enough away that you can’t call harassment. The sun is pouring through your tangled blinds, dust motes dancing. As you swing open the door, more gray Oklahoma dust comes swirling into the grime-filled room.

“What, who is it?” you ask, shading your eyes and squinting against the glare of the sunlight beating down on the dust and the road. You sleep in a shed, really, just large enough to legally live in and just small enough to not require building codes. It’s behind the bar where you work, the only place that sells alcohol in this tiny, tired town you call home.

The girl standing in front of you is a blaze of color against the sunbaked, dusty ground and the black tarmac, bedecked in a loud orange blouse, complete with her usual pride pin, and riotous neon blue and black shorts. She’s got Jackie O sunglasses buried in her blooming cloud of hair, the white frames sharp against the black. Her mouth is swiped with vivid red lipstick; her eyes surrounded by streaks of yellow and blue and winged eyeliner sharp enough to draw blood. She saunters past you into the room, tossing a purse into your arms, and you swing the door shut behind her and turn to face your best friend.

“When did you get back in town?” you ask, surprised to see her at all. Last time she left, she vowed — screamed, at her parents — that the only time she’d be in the same zip code was when she was flying over it on her way to her next gig. Now that your eyes have adjusted from the switch from darkness to searing light to darkness again, you can see she has her guitar slung over her back, hands on hips as she surveys your room.

“What the fuuuuuuuck?” she says back, drawing out the word. “You live here?”

“Can’t all be stars like you, Atla,” you say, grinning in spite of yourself. “Thought you’d never come back here though.”

“Only came through for you, love” Atla says, eyes creasing as she smiles. “We’re goin’ on a road trip.”

“What? Now? I can’t, I have work, and—”

She’s grabbing things as you protest, toothbrush and medication and rumpled clothes, and shoving them all into a reusable canvas bag that appeared out of nowhere. Once she’s gotten several days worth of dirty clothes, she surveys the room again, pursing her lips, and grabs your well-worn copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, tossing it at you. Like her purse, you catch it instinctively, and continue to voice increasingly mumbled protests as she picks up your wallet and phone from the nightstand and pushes you out the door.

“Listen, Atla,” you say firmly, locking your knees. “I can’t—”

“How about my car?” she says easily, grabbing your cheeks with one callused brown hand and moving your head towards the road.

This effectively stops your stream of objections. The car is gorgeous, a powder blue 1960s convertible with the top down, idling on the side of the road. Even from here, you can tell she’s made adjustments, changing out the engine for one with better horsepower and gas mileage, resettling the frame, and almost certainly installed a better sound system.

“Like it?” she says, ducking around you and tossing the canvas bag into the tiny backseat, already loaded with snacks, a few bags, and assorted trash. “It’s all fueled up and ready to go.” She twirls her keys around a finger and looks at you expectantly. “I have an extra pair of sunglasses for yooooou.”

You walk out to the car, drawing a hand along the top of the passenger door. The paint is smooth and almost soft under your fingers, and you can feel the engine rumbling through the car. She follows you, in surprisingly sensible boots, and slides across the front hood to the other side. You’re lingering, feeling the pull of the road trip against the dull ache of routine, when the door to the bar slams open and your boss storms out.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he hollers, waving a spatula. He’s fat, as faded as the landscape, skin cracked and dirty, balding on top, watery eyes and a sneering mouth. He encourages the jokes. “Who’s that in that car? You steal that car? Listen you lesbian bit—”

As he storms towards you, you look back at Atla, who’s grinning like a cat. Her eyes are twinkling as she offers you a hand. You reach out and grasp it, warm and alive, and turn your head back towards your (former) boss.

“Consider this my resignation,” you say, cutting him off, and leap over the passenger door, your shirt slipping through his fingers. You hit the seat just as Atla stomps on the gas. It’s lucky her hand is holding you back, because the car leaps forward with a glorious growl, leaving another layer of dust over the swearing, raging man.

You’re out of town before the two of you stop laughing, the wind whipping through your hair and great empty plains stretching out before you.

“Settle in, love,” Atla says. “We’re heading for New York.”

*                 *                 *

Hours pass.

The sun sets gloriously, you twisting in your seat to watch the blaze of color that almost matches the girl in the driver’s seat. She’s singing along loudly now. No radio out here, none that works anyway, so she’s been playing her old favorites. The album winds down and she looks over at you.

“Get some other ones out of the glove compartment, yeah?” she says.

You click open the glove compartment. There, nestled among old receipts, an out of date driver’s manual, and assorted cracked cases covering Panic at the Disco’s entire body of work, you find a stunningly maintained, pristine .38 revolver.

“What the fuck is this?” you say, not daring to touch it.

“What, that?” she glances over, not at all bothered by taking her eyes off the road.

“Yes, that! Why the fuck do you have a gun?”

“Call it insurance.”

“Atla, answer me seriously. Did you kill a man?”

She laughs and turns up the music.

*                 *                 *

Around six in the morning, the stars are beginning to fade in the light of the rising sun, and she pulls over to a completely empty rest stop. You get out, and immediately an eerie feeling washes over you. The silence is complete.

“This is weird,” you say, staring out over the empty picnic tables. They’re gray in the pre-dawn light, or are they always that color? You hug yourself and decide you don’t want to find out.

“I gotta pee, go stretch your legs,” she says, waving a hand with supreme unconcern. Of course.

You ignore the bathrooms and start tracing a circle around the rest stop. Sometime during the night, you entered the endless cornfields of the Midwest, and there is no boundary between the end of the rest stop and the beginning of the fields. Just stalks and stalks of whispering corn. You stop right next to the edge of the corn and something on the ground catches your eye. You stoop to look closely; a smooth, gray-red stone, nearly perfectly circular. You pick it up and as you slip it into your pocket, you hear a rustling from the corn just in front of you.

Your head whips up, eyes frantically searching, but all you see are the green-yellow stalks, waving gently in the perpetual breeze. Nothing there.

You stare into the corn, hard.

Nothing.

You start backing away, back towards the car, and the rustling starts up again, slightly to your right. You keep backing up until your legs hit the door, and you scramble in without taking your eyes from the waving corn, wishing for the first time for a roof.

The rustling eases back into the whispering of the corn as Atla emerges from the bathroom, grinning.

“Ready?” she says, twirling her keys.

“Yeah,” you say, drawing a shaky breath and feeling unnerved for reasons you can’t quite articulate. “Let’s go. And Atla?”

“Hmm?”

“Drive fast.”

*                 *                 *

Late afternoon. The sun is moving in and out of clouds. You’re driving, as Atla drowses in the passenger seat. She wakes up blearily and stares around at the endless fields of waving corn.

“Who the fuck is going to eat all this corn?” she asks.

You don’t have an answer.

She goes back to sleep.

*                 *                 *

Twelve hours later, you’ve left the bulk of the corn behind, only to have it interspersed with wheat and soybeans, the occasional ruined barn sprawled out in crumbling glory, vines and weeds growing in around the weathered boards and debris.

You’ve entered Ohio.

So has it.

You hear the rustling in whatever trees or corn or wheat is nearby when you stop for gas, and every so often you swear you see glowing yellow eyes, watching as you speed away. Atla switches off driving with you, and you’re going faster than even she was. She loves it, of course, hands dancing through the air as she revels in the speed. But she doesn’t know what you’re trying to outrun.

You pull into a tiny diner around midnight, exhausted and ready for dinner. The owner, a fat, middle-aged woman named Kate, smiles like a grandmother without it reaching her eyes. She gives you apple pie and thick, rich coffee without asking for your order.

*                 *                 *

You’re driving near a collection of small towns, farmhouses really, in a loose configuration but apparently enough to be counted as a town. At least, it counts as a town by the standards of the enormous fold out map Atla’s been using since her data ran out. There are signs and arrows announcing a fruit stand coming up. They’ve been there for miles, steadily counting down.

“Let’s stop,” Atla says, throwing her hands up and almost chucking the map out of the car. “I’m dying for some fruit.”

You shrug and pull over into the dirt circle, a wide, weather-beaten wooden stand in front of you. There’s a small girl playing in the dirt in front of the worn sign, the letters washed out almost entirely, a near middle-aged woman behind the makeshift counter, and an old lady dozing in a fold out chair next to the stand. The girl looks up as you approach.

The woman greets you gently. “Looking for fruit, dears?”

“Yes please, ma’am,” Atla says politely. She takes the fruit, something red and ripe, but unfamiliar to you, and bites into it, the juices running down her chin. Her eyes close silently as she chews and takes another bite. The woman continues to pass her fruit as you feel a tug on your hand.

It’s the little girl. You follow her insistent pull over to the old lady. You thought she was asleep, but her eyes are open and sharp. You’re not sure what color they are in the shade provided by her wide, faded sunhat. Green, maybe, or a deep, deep brown.

“Be careful of what you carry,” the old lady says, voice unexpectedly crisp.

“Sorry?” you ask, startled.

“It’s following you,” the little girl says, eyes eerily knowing. Her ragged doll dangles from one dirty hand.

“What?” you demand, a sick feeling in your stomach.

The old woman doesn’t answer, simply tips her hat down over her eyes. Stunned, you let the little girl lead you back to the fruit stand, where juice is still dripping down Atla’s chin.

“We should go,” you say. “Pay for those and let’s get back in the car.”

“Don’t want to,” she mumbles around a mouthful of fruit.

You put a ten down on the counter and take hold of Atla’s arm. You pull her away, with mild protesting.

You’ve been driving for a few miles, Atla staring out at the flat scenery.

“Atla?”

“Hmm?”

“What kind of fruit were you eating?”

She opens her mouth to respond and then stops, dumbfounded.

You don’t talk for a while after that.

*                 *                 *

Eventually, the car breaks down near a rest stop when you’re in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania, surrounded by thick wooded mounds of earth that are too big to be hills and too small to be mountains. The sky is swiftly darkening, and Atla reports, after an annoyed ten-minute phone call, that AAA won’t be there until morning.

“So we’re sleeping out here?” you ask.

“Looks like it,” she sighs. “We can always put the top up.”

“There’s a top?”

She glares at the car as you wander towards the bathrooms, these also housing vending machines under a small pavilion. If the hills were cornfields, it would be identical to the first rest stop.

As you stand between the bathrooms and the vending machines, a low rustling starts up in the trees ahead of you. The space where you stand is open on both sides, and as you stand, frozen in terror, a creature steps out of the trees.

“What the fuck is that?” Atla asks, suddenly next to you.

The thing is huge, antlers brushing the top of the pavilion, ten or fifteen feet tall at least. It’s skeletal, horribly stretched out, with clawed hands longer and wider than your head. Its own head is a strange mix of a cow skull, maybe, or a horse skull, and something wider and nastier, with sharper teeth. The thing’s eyes glow a dull yellow, the same flash you’ve been seeing at restaurants and gas stations for days now. It’s too thin to be healthy, or even alive.

“Should I get the gun?” Atla asks.

“Shut up.”

The three of you stand silent, and then the thing extends one slow, claw-like hand towards you. You can feel Atla looking at you, but your eyes are fixed on the creature.

Slowly, slowly, you take the stone out of your pocket.

The air changes, the tension deepening, as you take slow steps forward and hold it in your palm, your shaking hand hovering over the thing’s claw, your frail human body dwarfed by its terrible tallness.

You turn your hand over and drop the stone.

It falls into the creature’s palm without a sound, the red flashing dully before it disappears into the darkness of the thing’s body. It holds your eyes for another few seconds before it slowly backs into the trees. There’s more rustling, and once a hint of burning yellow.

And it’s gone.

Not just out of sight, but you can feel that it’s gone, back to whatever hole outside of this world it lives in until someone else trespasses on its property. You back up to Atla and you wordlessly grasp each other’s hands.

Back in the parking lot, the car starts.

Kathleen Myers (she/her) is a writer of short stories and novels. She graduated with a degree in English Literature from Juniata College, and has worked in St. Louis, Northern Iraq, and is now based in Denver, where she teaches full time. "Roadtrip" is her first published work. 

The Quiet City

The ads turned the city into a war zone. 

Millie rubbed two fingers between her eyebrows. Today’s short run to the pharmacy would take hours to recover from. Even now, in the elevator, out of the onslaught, her head throbbed and her stomach heaved and beads of sweat hung heavy on her brow. She closed her eyes and shuddered. 

When she opened them again, an alternate-reality version of herself stared back, dead-eyed. Elevator Millie had a waspy waist, a fashionably flat chest, and bowed, needle-thin legs at least two shades lighter than her real skin tone. A strapless tiered dress, chiffon and mint green, flickered into place, and slinky white heels replaced her sensible flats. 

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ORDER NOW WITH ONE-TOUCH

Real Millie sighed and turned her gaze up to the ceiling. At least the elevator was consistently reading her as a woman these days. Unfazed by her dismissal, a deep blue dress appeared, this one all taut angles and asymmetric hems and a plunging neckline. A small cluster of gold fascinators levitated around her head like an abstract halo.  

MILLICENT FORD IS A WOMAN OF MEANS AND TASTE

The white letters unfurled with a flourish, as they did every day.

$889.97

ORDER NOW WITH ONE-TOUCH

She maintained her gaze. She was a woman of means and taste, and the blue dress would have looked marvellous on her, had she only a function to wear it to. But she didn’t. Millie clicked on her face filter mask as the elevator slowed, groaning as the fans inside sputtered to a stop. 

Mid-range body spray enveloped her like a neon shroud as the elevator doors opened. This one was different from this morning—the scent was changed daily—and smelled like a watermelon stand crashed into a jazz club. She pulled her sweater over her face and hurried to her apartment door. 

“Would you like to hear—” 

“No,” she snapped, palm against the squawking door reader. She didn’t care what today’s coupons were. She craved only darkness and silence and once the door was shut, she had it. 

Millie sighed with palpable relief as she peeled away the mask, toed off her shoes, and padded across the thick, wine-red carpet. The apartment had every stimulation-reducing luxury that money could buy, from the dimmers on the lights to the acoustic insulation in the walls. The windows were fade-to-black solar paneled, and sound-proof, for good measure. In the living room, muted-gray furniture was dispersed through a calming minimalist space; sunset bulbs in every lamp provided a soothing, even ambiance. 

She flung herself onto a couch, pulled a thick weighted blanket over her head, and promptly fell asleep. 

*                 *                 *

Charlie and Louise were trying to be quiet, she knew, but the crinkle of paper bags and whisper of conversation from the kitchen roused her from her nap anyways. 

“...but Will won’t tell me anything about the blend, so—”

“She’s awake, why don’t you just ask her?”

Millie sat up on her elbows and blinked the sleep from her eyes. “Ask me what?”

“Oh! Do you know what’s in that new strain Will is growing for you?” asked Louise, sliding a stack of frozen pizzas into the freezer. 

“More importantly, is it working?” Charlie drummed his fingers intently on the countertop, having already forgotten the groceries. 

“I… I think he’s been experimenting with adding klonopin to the mix… I don’t know explicitly what’s in it. But yes, Charlie, it is working.” She rubbed her eyes and sat upright. “It’s been putting me under the reg-levels for three, four hours at a time.”

“Klonopin too?” Louise shook her head as she hefted a bulk box of spaghetti to the top cabinet. “With the crap that’s already in it? One of these days you’re going to give yourself brain damage—all so you can get that stupid—shit!” she exclaimed. The box slipped from her fingers and landed corner-first, sending a thousand strands of spaghetti in a thousand directions. “...all so you can get that stupid chip!”

“All so I can break that stupid chip,” Millie retorted, as she stooped to gather dry noodles off the floor. “Charlie, stop laughing and help us.” 

“Sorry—heh—I don’t like it either, Louise,” Charlie said. “But frankly, I’d try anything if it had a half-chance of shutting those damned ads off.”

The Maestro brain stem-to-machine chip wasn’t just an interface with the functionality of a supercomputer; it came with an ad-blocker. Not a good one, of course, because the ads mutated like viruses, but anything that could dim the cacophony had to be better than nothing. 

Not that Millie, and the other occupants of apartment 37A had a say in the matter: they were what polite society referred to as neurodivergent and what pharmaceutical companies referred to as a problem. 

The first, and as it turned out, only, test of the interface on a neurodivergent subject had gone… poorly. The atypical brain, the reasoning went, simply must not be sophisticated enough to operate a computer within itself. It was costly to redevelop the chip for accommodation—far cheaper to slap an FDA ban on the tail end of an unrelated congressional bill and call it felony possession of an unauthorized device. Besides, someone had to keep the dying cell phone industry afloat. 

“Millie knows what she’s doing,” Charlie continued, “...right?”

“Will knows what he’s doing,” she said. “It’s his idea. I’m just the guinea pig that codes.”

“What, do you think that with the chip he’d be able to, you know, actually—”

“If he wants to, yes. That’s exactly what’s going on here, and why I’m willing to smoke up god knows what if it’ll make me seem ‘typical for a few hours.” Fists full of noodles, Millie stood and straightened them up a little more forcefully than necessary. Once she had a neat circle, she dropped it into the empty box with a satisfying thwack. 

“Just let her do it, Louise. She’s going to with or without your blessing.”

Louise huffed. “Fine. Fine! I’m just worried is all.” 

Millie didn’t need the reminder. 

*                 *                 *

Later, in the privacy of her bedroom, she peeled two flesh-colored stickers from her temples and scanned them into her computer. 35 unread emails, it chided. Mostly contract requests, she was pleased to see on her first skim. Far more than enough to keep the aircon on and food on the table.

There weren’t many workplaces willing to hire the neurodivergent these days—not since the subsidized chip came along, anyways, and divided society cleanly into haves and have-nots. Overnight, a neurological bottom-caste was born and watched in horror as careers, contacts, and hard-won tricks of social camouflage dried up overnight. 

Can’t make a phone call with your mind? Well, that’s all we do around here. Can’t add change in a millisecond? The other applicant for this job can. Can’t sign the rights to your ideas over to your employer? Then how do we know you can be trusted?

But Millie was lucky. Millie could code. And when you freelance online, and can play a terminal like a violin, no one is ever the wiser. And so it was that she financed not just the high-end tranquility of 37A but its occupants as well—Will: genetic botanist, non-verbal recluse, craft grower of hydroponic marijuana; Louise: knower of every aircraft that flew overhead and dishwasher at the Greek restaurant over on 3rd; Charlie: painter, sculptor, piano player and songwriter. The rich, comfortable silence of 37A contained them all: Millie’s stacks of trashed and salvaged hard drives, Will’s laboratory and grow room, and Charlie’s studios.  

On the screen, she traced the peaks and plateaus of the data and furrowed her brow with academic pleasure. Will’s new Klonopin-Indica strain had sent her synaptic activity plummeting to neurotypical levels for three hours and fifty-two minutes today. She leaned back in her desk chair as a shrewd smile worked its way across her face.

She was ready. 

*                 *                 *

Millie woke up late the next morning to sunlight streaming in through the window and a familiar tightness in her chest. She washed down the day’s pills: Abutrex for the anxiety-depression combo, Sedrin for the day’s upcoming headache, and Estradiol for that pesky testosterone. Then she put on a bubbly pink affair of a dress and her tallest heels, and strolled down the hall to Will’s lab. 

The humid, fragrant air greeted her as she knocked softly, three times, on the doorframe. Rows of shining glass canisters filled the sterile white walls and wooden benches of the lab. From the ceilings, lush bunches of greens hung from brassy hooks, their roots exposed to the open air or soaking in water-filled spheres.

Will sat behind a shallow tub of murky water and tiny green sprouts and regarded her warmly through curls of red hair. He handed her a perfectly rolled blunt as she approached. 

“Thanks, love—this one have a name?”

He set his jaw thoughtfully, then gestured with a finger to the floor.

“Down?”

He nodded.

“I like it. Straight to the point.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Try not to worry about me too much, okay? I’ll be back before you know it.”

He nodded and squeezed her hand, a worried, hopeful smile crossing his face. 

*                 *                 *

 “Millie, are you sure you’re ready for this?” Louise had foiled her plans of a quiet escape, and she stood, arms crossed, in the kitchen. 

Millie laughed. “Louise, I’ve been faking it for thirty-eight years, I think I’ll do just fine. It’s just an EEG test, after all.” 

“Ruth at work told me her husband just did it. She said it’s more than that, that there’s an interview, and a physical, and even a hand-writing—” 

“Ruth is ‘typical, she’s probably just trying to scare you.” Truthfully, Millie hated Louise’s supervisor. It wouldn’t be the first time she had messed with Louise. 

“No, I think she was trying to help me.”

Millie sighed. “Well, I’ll be careful. And look, I’m as prepared as I—as any one of us—could ever be.” 

“But what if it’s not enough?”

“Then it isn’t enough, and I get arrested and sent to jail.”

“That’s not nothing, Millie! We need you here!” Louise snapped. 

“Well you know what I need?” she snapped back as she spun to face her. “I need to be able to leave my goddamned house without having a meltdown. I need to stop hauling around a big sign—” she whipped out her cell phone and waved it flippantly— “that says ‘please treat me differently’ everywhere I go. I need to walk down the street without getting a migraine after half a minute. And do you know what you need?” 

“What do I need?” Louise sneered. 

“A good job!” Millie barked, sounding much harsher than she intended. “Someplace without any Ruths. If you had that chip, Louise, you’d be able to leave. You’re basically a prisoner at Kosta’s.”

Louise considered this, hurt plain on her face. 

“And Charlie would be able to do exhibitions again. And talk to clients. God, maybe even paint a sunset or something nice instead of those horrid, strangled cityscapes.”

“And Will? Will can’t even leave the apartment. We can’t live like this anymore, Louise. Something has to change. I don’t care if it’s illegal, I’m going to get that damned chip, and then I’m going to make it work. For us.” 

A tense silence passed.  

Finally, Louise shook her head. “You’re out of your mind, Millie,” she muttered. “I hope you’re right.”

*                 *                 *

It would have been a pleasant Sunday morning, with the churches full and the streets empty, but the pleasantry ended where the screens began: screens flat on walls, screens on bus stops, screens on trams and trucks and trolleys, screens up in the air that leered down at the populace; the higher, the bigger: perspective-bending, nausea-inducing. The advertisements were an all-out assault on the senses. A monotonous array of thin, white bodies, ‘shopped into oblivion, writhed over a sickening miasma of reds and blues and neon-pinks and electric-yellows like a disco gone mad. And the noise! Speakers embedded in every screen screamed and wailed and sang over one another in every direction, all competing for the listener’s attention. The whole act was a sprawling, hellish, never-ending opera; molten lead to the ears, fists of lightning to the eyes. 

Millie stretched a new filter mask over her nose and mouth, her admission ticket to the chaos. At least she was able to block the cacophonic odors of the motion-sensing perfume ads. 

“FEELING FAT?” screamed an ad to her left. It was a man’s voice, not shouting, but nevertheless pitched at the volume of a jet takeoff, and Millie wanted to put her first not just into his bleached face but through the speaker itself. She ground her teeth instead. 

More faces and colors shrieked as she hurried down the street, ads for soaps and sodas and menswear, cat food and solar panels and sports teams, diets and trips to space and ladies deodorant, dating apps and cheating apps and therapy apps, gaming consoles and sexbots and VR skins, cheap cheap cheap!

“The Maestro 2.0! Are you worthy?” intoned a booming, sensual woman’s voice from high above. On a theater-sized screen, two women played tennis on an immaculate court, a young woman in a suit placed a folder on an important man’s desk, a race car blew past on a track. “The new Maestro comes with more options, faster speeds, and a full ad-blocking experience. Ping your local Maestro center today!”

No ads, huh? So they already figured out how to do it. Jesus, this might actually be simple. She lit up Will’s beautifully crafted joint and let the sights and sounds blur together. Just walk right in, claim a prior religious exemption, and voila. Peace and quiet for the rest of her days. 

Then for Will’s. And for Charlie’s, and Louise’s. And… then what? The chip was still illegal. The ads would still play. She sighed. What about others like her all over the city? They couldn’t escape.

*                 *                 *

Maestro Central occupied a building of the Classical Greek style that dominated the city’s Old Town. Inside, tall marble columns pressed in like they already knew her secret. Millie tightened her gait to a feminine sway, fooled with a strategically loose curl of hair, and approached the front desk. 

A woman with green eyes and a lilac buzz cut looked up from a high desk at the click of her heels. “G’morning, ma’am, what can I help you with today?” she asked.

“I’d like to get myself one of them fancy chips I’ve been hearing so much about.” She leaned forward onto the desk, resting her chin on her left hand and presenting her best charming smile. Show your teeth, she focused. Tighten the corners of your eyes. Drop your eyelids just a hair. It had taken years—no, decades—for her to produce a natural-seeming smile on command, but it was her best weapon, her most effective disguise. 

“Of course, ma’am, we’ll just need you to fill out some paperwork and take a physi-mental examination.”  

A what? “Delightful.” Shit, Ruth was right for once. 

The receptionist shuffled some papers together and handed them to her with a flower-tipped pen. 

“Thank you.” She squeezed the corners of her eyes together once more, graciously, and wondered how ‘typical people didn’t exhaust their faces doing shit like this all the time. 

Old-fashioned pen and paper, huh? Millie gripped the pen in her non-dominant hand and slowly filled in her information with sloppy print letters. She didn’t know what they were looking for, but they weren’t going to get her this easy. Millie flashed another smile for good measure as she slipped the papers back over the desk.  

Well, here she was, on the verge of the unknown. It was suddenly very cold in the room. What if Maestro was right? What if the chip really was incompatible with the way her brain was wired? What if neurodivergence was so far removed from normalcy that—

“Millicent May Ford?”

“That’s me.” She deftly navigated a handshake. “Enchanted to meet you.”

*                 *                 *

Head spinning, Millie sat up from the chair and nearly threw up. High up on the back of her neck, a point the size of a pinhead stung and throbbed. But it was there! She had passed!

And someone else—no, something else—was there with her, embedded in her consciousness like a browser window she couldn’t close. She concentrated, focused her thoughts, and reached out to touch it. What was it connected to? What did it do? 

Pure, unrefined digital logic swelled to meet her like a cresting ocean wave.

What could she do with it?

Even through the Klonopin-marijuana haze, the chip’s gates were clear. Sensory input. Analytics. Raw external interface. She pushed on the interface and networks materialized before her eyes like dust in a magnetic field. Medical equipment ran to outlets, outlets connected to circuits in the walls, everything was controlled by a router on the third floor, protected by a simple WEP-1024. 

Pff. A 1024? And the password was probably “password”. 

The system pinged back [0]. 

Millie recoiled, sat bolt upright like she had received an electric shock. Guess that’s a no. Then she tried again. 

12345678? MAESTRO? 

[0].[0].

Nothing. 

She scratched her head. A birth date, perhaps. She set her origin to 01011950. [0]. Now the trick: she grasped the set of numbers, felt their calendrical weight, and riffled through them like a deck of cards. 12232006 pinged back [1]. Suddenly the whole building was hers to command. She grinned. 

And then she jumped as the door swung open and the doctor walked through it. She dropped the connection and swore at herself for being so stupid.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” he said. He carried a scanner in his left hand. “Have you had time to think about what OS you’d like?”

Linux, please. But should she know that? She decided she shouldn’t.

“What’s an OS?” she asked, innocently. 

The doctor smiled sympathetically. “It’s just like your computer, sweetheart. Does your computer have a black apple or four squares on the cover?”

I run Gentoo, fool. 

“Umm…” She searched the space above her theatrically. “You know, I think I have the apple.”

“Good, alright, we’ll try OSX.” He set a knob on the scanner and brought it to the back of her head. She experienced a sensation like chewing on radio static. 

Oh. There was an interface, now, a slick and shiny one she could see inside her mind just like a thought. All the usual icons spread before her, music and photos, a camera… no terminal. She cautiously reached for the networks only to hit a wall; smooth as glass, impermeable as stone. 

Shit. 

“This, um, doesn’t look familiar… I think I might have the other one,” she mumbled.

“Not a problem.”

A new interface, this one sleek and black, shimmering 3D icons hovering over a dark pool. She flicked through them to nearly the same results. This wasn’t a wall so much as an infinite void, but it was just as impassable. She shuddered at the vast emptiness inside her.

“Ah… you know, this one doesn’t feel quite right, either. Are there any other settings?” 

The doctor frowned. “Just these two for civilians. There’s another one, for scientists and such, but—hey!”

Millie didn’t need a chip to compute her odds of getting out of Maestro without an OS. She swiped the scanner and bolted out the door, making a wild, scrambling left and trying not to twist an ankle doing so. 

She was in a maze of identical hallways, green with gaudy floral carpeting, fluorescent lights overhead illuminating one shut door after another. She made random lefts and rights, footsteps always a beat behind, until finally a stairwell appeared. Off came her heels, and she leapt up the stairs three at a time. The footsteps thumped down. 

Hands shaking, Millie studied the scanner. It was fairly simple, with icons for OSX, Windows, Linux (tempting), and RESET. She set the knob to RESET, pressed it to the back of her head, and fumbled for the activating key. 

After the awful tingling in her mouth and jaw subsided, she stuffed the scanner into a garbage can and made her way down the stairs. Donning her heels once more, she adjusted her posture into something resembling collected and stepped into the lobby with her head held high and her heart pounding like an entire drumline. 

*                 *                 *

PIZZA! DISH DETERGENT!

ALTERED REALITY VACATIONS!

Millie stumbled and nearly fell at the new tsunami of- 

TEETH WHITENING!

- overstimulation the chip brought. Walking down the street, the ad bombardment wasn’t just- 

SUNSET CRUISES!

- in front of her but in her as well, popping up as-

GOURMET PASTRIES!

 - dancing icons or flashing landscapes, several overlapping at a time before-

LUXURY SANDBAGS!

- distorting, one-by-one, out of thought-existence. 

KITTENS THAT STAY KITTENS

 FOREVER WITH THE MIRACLE OF—

The ads were connected to one another by neat strings that cut-

SILVER STRAIGHT FROM THE

NEW REPUBLIC OF TEXAS

- across the street like a spiderweb of ones and zeros—and they all ran on the same network. 

FEELING FAT?!

The same man smirked at her from a different screen, and rail-thin, bikini-clad women paraded through her occipital lobe. 

JOIN UNIVERSAL FITNESS TODAY!

Enough of this. In her mind, Millie pushed through the flashing gym scenes, through the women, through the lingering odors of pepperoni and dish soap and saltwater until she grasped the grainy threads of the advertisement network. Unsurprisingly, they were better secured than the Maestro. She gritted her teeth and flooded the modem with random character strings until one pinged back. Some background process informed her the process had taken 56.7 milliseconds. She sifted through connections until UNIVERSAL_FITNESS_AD_96.MP8 appeared. Now, to sever it…

BLAM! The screen’s explosion showered the sidewalk behind her with glass, and liquid rainbows sizzled as they met concrete. Passerbys stopped-

LOW-INTEREST STUDENT LOANS!

 - to stare and Millie quickly hurried on. What the hell was that about? She hadn’t-

ESSENTIAL OILS HALF-OFF!

 - blown up the Maestro WiFi. But she had left the house at 11:30, and now-

MATTRESS LIQUIDATION SALE!

EVERYTHING—MUST—GO!

 - a large, floating clock face across the street indicated that it was 3:34 PM. The Down was wearing off, and-

NEWEST ARRIVALS AT

THE SUNGLASS SHACK

- she could feel it behind her eyes, a pressure fizzing at her sinuses like a fresh bottle of champagne, as the- 

NEXUS INFINITY

58-SPEED FOOD PROCESSOR!

- ads became clearer, brighter; nauseatingly sharp and hyper-real. She staggered and nearly screamed as-

VISIT THE MOULIN PARK REGIONAL ZOO!

- one projected a pride of lions into her path, their soft fur brushing her legs as they weaved around her. Make it stop!

THE FINEST PINOT NOIRS

She scrambled through-

FIFTY PERCENT OFF HOUSEWARES

 - the connections, found the-

MEET JEWISH SINGLES

 - zoo, and yanked. The faint crack of- 

FLOOD INSURANCE

- a high-up billboard barely registered as-

BATHROOM FIXTURES

- she snatched up a-

THE NEW MASERATI!

- hundred-foot radius of networks and-

—PING YOUR LOCAL—

 - snapped every thread.

*                 *                 *

Shattering, screaming, shaking; the cumulative explosion of a hundred screens and billboards rocked the ground under her feet and bathed the sidewalks with steaming, hissing jets of opalescence. The street’s occupants ran into shops, dove under tables, shrieked to one another as they dodged the torrents of wet, broken glass. 

But Millie didn’t notice the chaos around her. The inside of her head was finally, blissfully silent. And after the screaming died down… it was quiet.  

No, it wasn’t quiet, not all the way. A new presence announced itself, a calming, ethereal mesh that moved and thought and felt. People! She studied this new web. Each shimmering point a chip, each gossamer a connection, all laid out plain like a topographical map of humanity. Dozens of uniform strands from each mind linked people to others, to home networks, to sights and sounds and smells. 

Then she turned her gaze inwards and gasped at the map of herself. Thousands of strands, thick and thin, curling and twisting, some crossed, some knotted, some doubling back on themselves—all shimmered against the city of broken glass. 

For a moment, she stood unperturbed in the nexus of the beautiful, lawless flow. Then wary eyes turned as the ads began to congeal around their broken threads like a grotesque, living entity. Like a heartbeat, she felt a pulse of alarms surge outwards to the police.  

The delicate chip map disappeared as the ad network rebuilt itself.

Millie ducked her head and hurried down the road toward home, but the faraway trigger of a police drone fleet had already clicked in her mind. She let them get well airborne before she reached out, snapped their threads, and hastened her steps. 

What power, she contemplated. Disabling the drone fleet had been easier than a thought. What else could she do? Could she liberate the whole city of ads all at once? No, the network would just re-establish itself. And how long before she was caught? In the absence of wifi, Millie shone like a lighthouse beacon. She was just going to have to lay low while she came up with a plan. 

EXPERT LAWN CARE PERFORMED BY—

Not this shit again.

Millie felt the hum of police cars in the net.

GET YOUR MASTER’S DEGREE ONLINE!

 She pulled gently on their threads until- 

LISTEN ON SOUNDCLOUD AT—

- she felt the hum fade—hopefully, explosion-free. She shuddered and- 

NEW YORK TIMES BEST-SELLER

- tried not to think about-

THE NEW BACON-OREO MCFLURRY

- the license to kill she’d just been issued.

NEW BROOKDALE’S GRAND OPENING

TOMORROW AT—

Visions swirled in her head again: the smell of new books and a freshly cut lawn, watermarked images of some elite-looking brick building, the cloying taste of chemicals and cold vanilla. 

Her stomach began to twist and turn,

THAT’S BEEN CALLED THE WORLD’S

MOST EFFECTIVE WINDOW CLEANER

 - a pounding began behind her eyes, and- 

UP TO NINETY! FIVE! PERCENT!

OFF FURNITURE AT GALE’S

- she suddenly found herself grasping the strings of the local sphere again. 

I’m not going to make it home like this, am I? 

IONIZE YOUR HOME WITH

THE HEALING POWER OF

HIMALAYAN SALT LAMPS

She shielded her eyes, took a deep breath, and pulled without a blink, the glass falling and the people screaming all over again as she strode, heels clicking, down the boulevard. 

Sweet silence fell once more.

A smile curved her lips. Was she beginning to enjoy this? Perhaps. Maybe she could just yank this city apart. Maybe she could blow out every screen and speaker and scent-sprayer so bad that the network wouldn’t know what to do with itself. 

A future of silence; it sounded incredible, too good to be true. She pictured herself strolling through a quiet park, Will by her side, with only the whispering wind blowing; nothing in the sky but the clouds, nothing in the air but the scent of cattails and pond water.  

Maybe—

“Ma’am?” A hand set firm on her shoulder. She turned around and forced a smile.

“Yes, officer?”

The man cautiously eyed the space around her and she realized that, in the quiet, he must be staring at her net aura. And not just him, either, two officers stood behind him ogling its density and span as it reached out over the city. 

“Sorry to trouble you, miss,” he said genially. “But we can’t help but notice there’s something… wrong… with your implant.”

“We believe it may be interfering with the local nets,” added another. 

“Well, I never!” she exclaimed. Was this acting? She hated it. “What on earth do you mean?”

“It appears to be… over-connected. If that aura is correct, you’re directly processing a thousand things at once.”

Gee, officer, that sounds terrible! She shrugged. “Feels normal to me.” Say something else. “I guess I’ll just have to have it looked at.” She turned to walk away. 

“Now look here, ma’am.” The man grabbed her by the arm. “You and your malfunctioning chip show up and everything blows out all the sudden. We’re going to need you to come with us.”

Shit. Now she was in it. They would take her back to the station and realize she had no operating system. Then they would realize she wasn’t even supposed to have any sort of chip. 

“Malfunctioning chip,” one of the officers muttered from the back. “More like ‘malfunctioning head.’”

“You know, there’s a whole bunch of people—ain’t even allowed to get the things,” returned his partner. “Busted up brains or something. Can’t handle it.”

“Bet that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

Yes, it is, how astute of you to notice. 

She turned around and swatted the hand away. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” she threatened. 

 “Yeah? I think we do.” The officer smirked. “I think someone gave you a chip by mistake, and now your screwed up little mind is out to cause as much damage to normal society as you can before someone catches you.”

“Catches me? I believe I’ve already been caught…” she sneered. “Now try and stop me.” Empowered by the quiet, she laughed aloud, her aura growing stronger, brighter, as she summoned ever more connections. “I’m going to break this entire city. And then, you know what? We’ll all be free of these fucking ads. How does that sound?”

“Ma’am—”

The paltry threads of the officers’ chips shimmered in the late afternoon sun. There were so few of them, and they were all centered on her. It was easy, too easy, to simply reach in and—

In her mind’s fist, she released the city and instead gathered each thread she called her own into a small, neat circle, compressing, compacting, growing smaller and leaner until she had it—a fat, glowing cable of raw, white-hot sensation. With a mere flick she plugged it into the minds of the men before her. 

Their eyes went wide and they doubled over howling, strangled screams dying in throats. Their heads met the ground with a series of thuds and they lay twitching; eyes flickering, seeing all and none.   

She could do this to the world. 

Millie chuckled as she imagined millions of maladapted minds scrambling to recalibrate to thousands of new inputs. The entire population could feel as she did, could know the soaring heights of her joys, the profound depths of her sorrows, and every shade in between.  

But they didn’t deserve it. 

She would only do them one favor.

*                 *                 *

The wind was soft, warm, and fragrant with spring flowers as she sat in the scrubby green grass by the bank of the river. She leaned into Will’s shoulder and snaked her arm around his waist as they watched people pass by on the opposite side.

What do people look like to you? she asked digitally. 

Visions of elegant fountains shrouded in a golden mist filled her mind as his chip interpolated to her. 

That’s beautiful, Will. She laughed aloud. They look like spaghetti noodles to me. Of course, she had been arrested after the destruction of every advertising surface in the city. But suddenly, mysteriously, no one wanted them fixed anymore. In fact, there was a rather lot of noisy, stressful business in this city, wasn’t there? And shouldn’t someone do something about it? If only there was someone to recode it all…

Millie twined her fingers into Will’s as they watched the sun set on another day in the quiet city. 

C. M. Fields is a queer, non-binary astrophysicist and writer of horror and science fiction. They live in South Bend, Indiana, with their beloved cactus, Borne, spending eighty percent of their life shoveling snow and the other twenty writing a dissertation on the history of stars. They can be found on twitter as @C_M_Fields and @toomanyspectra. 

Val-Kerry

Noelle found the feather under the couch. She held it up to the light. She ruffled the vane apart, as one does with feathers, and it bit her. It was too light to drop and hit the ground. She shoved her bleeding fingers in her mouth and prised open the vanes again, gentler. She unhooked a tiny barb from the rachis, and the whole thing turned into dust for a shocked second before reforming off-white and brittle into her hand. She had not slammed the door coming in, only shucked off her sandals. The house groaned. It was too early for this heat. Too early for the suffocating stillness of summer. The crushing weight pooled to the rafters. Noelle’s feet stuck to the floor as she walked out to the porch. 

Kerry had put a plastic bedsheet on the couch downstairs and then, over that, she’d pinned a topsheet patterned with B. Kliban cats. They slept on that -- or rather, Noelle did. Kerry didn’t really sleep much. But Noelle woke up in the middle of the night to read the thin scrawl of nibble on they tiny feet repeating around the cat drawings. She’d sit there reading til she found a pocket of cool wrapped in the plastic on the side. She’d drown herself in that and drop off again.

“Flap for me,” she said to Kerry on a particularly broiling night. She flicked out her fingers like a magician. 

Kerry, perched on the couch end, naked and dripping sweat: “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not a party trick, you dumb turtle.”

“I’m melting.”

“Good,” Kerry said. “Less to carry away.”

*                 *                 *

Outside, the sky boiled blue. The clouds curled in parched wisps. Noelle kept her fingers in her mouth. The grass thirsted enough that one could mistake it for the brown of winter. Easy to miss the bright green fumbling at the roots. Kerry knelt over their wild-jungle flowerbeds on a battered foam board. She scratched at her shoulder to pull down the spaghetti strap. She gleamed. Besides her, the detritus of the locked seasons. The broken thorns. She didn’t wear gloves. She never wore gloves.

Kerry had explained it to Noelle once, explained the math of her adaptation. The concept of the battle is ageless, but it is far-spanning and does not insist on sword and shield. The battles here in the new shining world are against beetles and seasons. They are against rust, fungus, mold, neglect. The battles are hard fought, they are against varied enemies, and they do not stop. They, the flowers, are thus worthy.

“That’s bullshit,” Noelle had said. She was tired and she was wet and she had been planting daffodil bulbs all day. Kerry was serene and it annoyed her. Noelle threw her soaked gardening gloves on the kitchen table. “That’s bullshit and you know it.”

“It’s a metaphor,” Kerry said. She tsked. “You have no poetry in your soul, turtle.”

“I’m not doing the weeding.”

“Neither am I.”

Noelle growled. 

“That’s the point, I mean,” Kerry hastened. She came over to Noelle. Kerry worked security at the meat-packing plant and her hands were cool. She smelled like iron. They stood together, Noelle dripping, rocking her cheek against Kerry’s rough palm.

“I’m not being lazy,” Kerry said, soft. “I promise.”

*                 *                 *

Kerry did the dishes for the next month. Noelle kept forgetting to take out the trash. 

Kerry leaned over onto her hands. Her back shone. She grunted and showed her teeth. The wings burrowed out from under her skin, leaving rifts where they crept out. She held the trowel against her mouth and it glinted. It sparked. It sharpened.

Noelle held the feather between her thumb and forefinger. “Dropped this.”

“Oh.”

“You okay?”

Kerry grunted.

“You feeling okay, Kerry?”

“Yeah,” Kerry said, and coughed.

Noelle winced. “You need your inhaler?”

“Nahhhh,” Kerry said; she coughed again, with less of a wheeze this time, and slapped the gloves together. “’m good.”

“Your hands are bleeding.”

“Yah,” Kerry said, and she bent towards the beds.

The sun beat down. Kerry should be shifting in tandem with seasons, at the leaving of darkness and at the dying of the sun, but the world had changed since the days on the banks of the Sea of Wolves. She had migraines now instead of battles.

“Honey, you’re gonna dehydrate.”

Bathroom floor, cold white tile, and Kerry with her head in the toilet.

“Nina’s an ER nurse at Dell General,” Noelle said. “I can give her a heads-up we’re coming, and she can put you on IV fluids, and then you’ll feel better. I’ve done it before.”

“Oh, God, no. Why we need to do that?” Kerry set her forehead on the bowl and breathed like bellows. “It’s a headache, turtle. I promise, I have done this before.”

Noelle tried again. “You look half-dead.”

“So’s the year.”

“What?”

Kerry roiled over and puked. Noelle patted her on the shoulder and cooed til Kerry lifted out again. Kerry’s eyes were bloodshot and the tendons on her neck stood out but she was very calm, and her deep, unbothered stillness made the thought of bothering Nina less palatable. Noelle rubbed the bright knob of tension on the back of Kerry’s neck.

“Equinox,” Kerry gasped. “Go get me some ginger ale?”

Kerry’s blood crusted black and Rorschach-patterned down her spine. The wings worked out all the way. They rattled to be shaken out. Noelle walked three steps on tiptoe to lean over the railing. She rubbed the bony feather over her palm. Kerry was okay, even if she was wheezing a little. Kerry turned out to be right about the stupid weeding. The battles are hard fought and must keep being hard fought, so Noelle shouldn’t use plant food either, and the earth must provide its own bounty of flesh. They had a wall of seedlings in jars in the bedroom, and they called the shelves Valhalla. Or Kerry did. Kerry thought that was funny. Noelle wasn’t sure sometimes. 

* * *

Second date, except at this point it wasn’t a date. It was a threshold. An inevitability. Noelle sitting naked on Kerry’s kitchen floor, drinking cold hot chocolate and whiskey out of a red Solo cup. The start of the second date had been twelve hours ago. It was six in the morning now, a blizzard howling up against the window. Kerry had said on the first date last week that she didn’t celebrate Christmas. Noelle, about four hours ago, had had the thought well, joyeux Noelle, Christmas celebrates you. She hadn’t said that out loud, partially because it was dumb and partially because her mouth was full and partially because Kerry had the skull of an enormous stag in her bedroom, draped in mistletoe and oak leaves. The stag sat on top of a sword hilt, and the tip of the sword’s blade sat in a flowerpot of black earth. The earth had been harvested from the field where all the gods had died. The flowerpot was from IKEA. Noelle wouldn’t push her about midnight mass.

“Do I get to go to Valhalla?” she asked, instead.

“Depends,” Kerry said; she was drinking the whiskey straight out the bottle. Kerry was in love with Noelle, and Noelle knew that because Kerry had said it out loud. Kerry drew her fingertips across Noelle’s bare shoulder. The whiskey bottle was cool on the back of her neck. “Depends on where you wanna go. And, and. ’s hard, when you’re a mortal.”

Noelle spluttered. “When I’m a what?”

“Mortal?”

Noelle laughed so hard that she spilled her cold hot chocolate. She tried to swipe it up, lost balance, and rolled on the sticky floor. She looked up at Kerry, who was laughing too. Kerry’s wings nearly touched the ceiling, and she had a faded Rammstein tattoo on her ribcage.

“I thought you said turtle,” Noelle wheezed.

Noelle folded her hand. The feather cut at her palm. She had no calluses. Kerry had calluses. Kerry had bone-shards, shaped for a swan. Noelle licked at the cut. She watched Kerry sort through all the winter death. Her wings brushed at the lilac bushes. Noelle felt a splinter working its way into her sole.

“I’m fine,” Kerry said.

“Just turning early?”

“Yep. Can you make dinner?”

“Maybe.”

Something caught Noelle’s eye. On the pile, on the heap of bracken, a daffodil. A daffodil. A long white feather.

Kerry flapped. Just once. Noelle smiled. She went inside.

Colin Fisher (he/they) is from the American Rust Belt and currently lives in Reykjavík, Iceland, where he studies folklore and procrastinates on everything else. He has had poems published in Pithead Chapel and Pidgeonholes. You can bother him at @bear_euphemism on Twitter.