The Moth

A moth walks into a podiatrist’s office.

The podiatrist sits her down and asks, “So, what’s the trouble?”

And the moth says, “Trouble, doc? Trouble. I’ve got so much trouble I don’t even know where to begin.

I used to have a job I loved, but I quit to take care of my older brother after he was in a car accident. That was three years ago, and I’m still taking care of him. He’s paralyzed from the neck down. He can’t do anything. I mean, he could. If he tried. But he doesn’t try. He doesn’t want to take care of himself, so I have to do everything for him. Turn him. Feed him. Change the channel on the television. Change him. I love him, so I don’t mind doing it, but after three years, it just…takes a toll.

Like with my family, Doc. My kids…I hardly ever see them anymore. It seems like every time one of them have some kind of event I need to go to…Sally’s soccer game…Benji’s band concert…whatever it is, suddenly my brother is having some kind of emergency and I have to rush to take care of him. Sometimes it seems real, like something medical, and other times he’s just having these…I don’t know…depressive fits where he can’t stop crying. I was sympathetic at first, Doc, but he made me miss my oldest’s high school graduation! She went off to a college six states away and she won’t speak to me anymore. Oh, sure, she’ll speak to her father all the time, but if I try to get on the phone? She’s gone in an instant. The only way I can hear her voice anymore is when my husband puts the phone on speaker without her knowing, and then I have to keep absolutely quiet. I can’t say anything.

My other kids know something is wrong but they don’t know what. Or maybe they do know, I don’t know. I honestly don’t know anymore, Doc! I don’t know why I should be so surprised I can’t keep in contact with Samantha at college when I barely know anything about the kids living in my house! Every time I try to do something with them, my brother is ringing his emergency bell. Oh, sure, he can’t do anything else to take care of himself, can’t learn to use the fancy computer to send email or pull up a website or anything else its programmed to do, but he sure can hit the emergency bell and send the alert to my cell phone, he sure can do that. Hell, Doc, the only reason it hasn’t gone off during this appointment is I turned my phone off.

I’ve been doing that more and more, Doc. Just turning my phone off, leaving the house. Once he’s asleep, I leave the house and just walk the streets. It’s well lit, it’s a safe neighborhood, I’m not afraid. It’s sort of freeing, actually. Just me and the night breeze. No responsibilities. It’s getting harder and harder to turn back into my house, actually.

The only reason I do it is because of my husband. We don’t love each other anymore. I can just say that now. How could we? We haven’t been a real married couple in three years. I see more of my brother’s naked body than my husbands’, how’s that for a life? We’ve been sleeping in separate bedrooms for close to two years now, because I sleep in the master bedroom on a cot to be near my brother. In case he needs something. Yes, we gave him the master bedroom. He needed all the space for his medical equipment, you see. So he just…lords over all of us from the top floor of the house, hitting that emergency button and sending us all into a panic whenever he wants.

My husband and I…I don’t even know why we’re staying together. For the kids, maybe? Although, I know he wants to divorce me and take the kids away. He forgot to close his computer, I saw the emails to his lawyer. And you know what, Doc? I don’t blame him. He should. Get them away from that bloodsucking creature in our bedroom. But he won’t, because he’s too good a man. He’ll never just abandon me like that. And I won’t let him do it, I won’t even let him know I know, because I’m a coward.

Yes, that’s what I am, Doc. A terrible coward. Even as the weight of it all is crashing in on me I’m too scared to move. I feel like I’m buried up to my hips in the sand and the tide is coming in and I can’t do anything about it. Every time my phone goes off I want to scream.

I said my night walks were safe, Doc, but I lied. They’re not. We live in a good part of town, but we’re not far from the bad, and that’s where I go. I go and I walk and I make myself look small, just hoping that someone…anyone…will do something. Something to take me away from all this without it being my fault.

Because I’m a coward. I can’t do it. No matter how many times I stand on that bridge, or get the gun out from my husband’s safe, or stand over my sleeping brother with a pillow in my hands, I just…can’t…do it. I’m so much of a coward, Doc, I can’t free all of us from this prison we’ve all been buried in.”

And the podiatrist says, “That does sound like a whole lot of trouble, and you do sound like you need help, and lots of it. But I’m a foot doctor, why come to me?”

And the moth says, “Because your light was on.”

Inspiration credit to Norm MacDonald.

Moon Over Prairie Fire, Part 4

Previous

Gus only got two seconds to be confused. A loud snap ricocheted around the room, causing everybody to jump. Gus the worst of all. The sound was that of his humerus bone snapping back into place. A second pair of sounds quickly followed as the two bones in his forearm found their proper place, but no one could hear it over the sound of Gus screaming.

Fire, fire, his arm was on fire. Nerves were buzzing, harder, faster, they were going to burn out. Flesh tingled and then itched and then sizzled, and there was terrible, peculiar feeling he couldn’t place that made his stomach turn inside out. If he knew it was tendon and joint and muscle replacing themselves and stitching themselves back up, he might have vomited right there. The pain went on and on, never growing, never fading, just a constant and ineffable wall of pressure and electricity.

And then it was over.

Gus gasped and sat up. He felt like he had just sprinted a mile, covered in sweat and breathing in big and deep.

The bones in his arm were unbroken. His skin and muscles were not torn. It came up at the shoulder and went down again. It bent at the elbow and straightened out. His wrist twisted as it should have, and his fingers gripped and wiggled. If it weren’t for the scar tissue scratching out stripes across the bottom of his upper arm and the top of his forearm and the dried blood that was just about everywhere, no one would ever think he had just been attacked by a wild animal.

“Are you okay?” Inez asked.

“I don’t know how, but…yeah. Yeah, I am,” Gus said, still examining his arm.

“Then can I have my hand back?”

Inez’s hand was still in his, and he realized he was still gripping it like a vice. When he let it go she gingerly inspected it.

“What the hell just happened?” Matsui asked. His eyes were wide and unblinking. Behind him, Jesse had backed up slowly until he found the wall behind him. He slid down to the floor and sat with his head in his hands, refusing to look at them.

“Exactly what we said would happen,” Inez said. “Good lord, if that had happened in front of paramedics?”

Adelaide laughed at the thought and Inez shot her a look.

Gus carefully climbed off the pool table. It was matted with blood. More of it pooled on the floor underneath, and a trail of it led to the front door. The right sleeve of the shirt he was wearing was completely torn off, but blood stained the rest of it. Matsui, Jesse, Inez, and Adelaide were all splattered with it.

“Is this…is this all mine?”

“Yes,” Inez said, examining the blood on her.

“You should have regenerated it by now,” Adelaide said. He stared at her. Regenerate? Did that word just get used out loud?

“How do you feel?” Inez asked.

“I feel fine. Is that normal? How can that be normal?”

“Define normal,” Adelaide muttered.

Gus looked between Adelaide and Inez. There was something about them, now. They had changed. Adelaide looked older, and for some terrifying reason looked completely in her element splattered with blood. Inez wasn’t just this beautiful woman who liked to talk to him anymore. It occurred to him that he knew nothing about her past, and what he did know might be a lie.

“Who are you? You’re not photojournalists, are you?”

“No,” Inez said. “I can’t take a picture without cutting everyone’s heads off.”

“Then what? What are you doing in Prairie Fire?”

“Because we found a very distinct pattern, and dealing with those types of patterns is our job. Our real job,” Inez said.

“Let me guess what this pattern was,” Matsui said. He still seemed very calm, as though what just happened had happened a lot. “Animal attacks. At the full moon.”

Inez was nodding. “Always found the morning after.”

“No, no, come on. We’re a small town surrounded by wilderness. It’s going to happen.”

“This year hasn’t been lean,” Adelaide said. “Local animals should have plenty of food to keep them out of the city.”

“Every full moon, Gus,” Inez said. “No other attacks on other days.”

“That’s why you think he was attacked by a werewolf?” Matsui asked.

It was the first time Gus was hearing the word himself, having missed the previous screaming match due to gray zone unconsciousness. He could hear blood rushing in his ears, and there was a sinking feeling in his gut.

“You…you think that was a werewolf?” The word tasted weird on his tongue.

“It was bigger than a wolf should be,” Inez said. “And tonight is the full moon.”

“You said…you said you were going to get pictures tonight of the moon,” Gus said. “But it’s been snowing since noon.”

“We were looking for it,” Adelaide said. “I guess it found us, first.”

“It was just a wolf,” Gus said. He liked the sound of that better.

“What about what just happened to you?” Inez asked.

Gus looked down at his arm. “I don’t know what happened to me. Nothing…nothing happened to me.”

“Are you crazy?” Matsui asked. Jesse looked up from where he still sat on the floor.

“Shit,” Inez muttered.

“No, no way,” Adelaide said, waving her arms. “I’m sorry, Gus, but you don’t have the luxury of pretending that nothing happened.”

“Adelaide-”

“No, Inez. You know how I feel about letting people forget about this stuff, but either he figures it out now, or he figures it out the next time the full moon rolls around.”

“How can you think nothing happened to you?” Matsui asked. “Your bones snapped back into place like Legos. You were bleeding out five minutes ago, and now you have scars like it happened weeks ago.”

“It’s easy for you to believe,” Gus said. “You’re not the one they’re saying is a…a…”

“Werewolf,” Adelaide and Matsui said at the same time.

“No. No, it’s not real,” Gus said, shaking his head.

“Can you prove it?” Jesse asked. He had stood up and stepped towards them without anyone noticing. “It’s a full moon still. Why isn’t he turning into a wolf?”

“Werewolves don’t turn the first night,” Inez said.

“Awfully convenient,” Jesse said.

“Why would we lie?” Inez asked. “What could we possibly be after?”

“You’re not after anything,” Jesse said. “You’re both just crazy.”

“I think you’re the crazy ones,” Matsui said, looking between Jesse and Gus. “You saw what I saw. What’s your explanation?”

“Something rational,” Jesse said.

“That’s not a real answer.”

Something flew across the room towards Gus. Adelaide, unnoticed, had picked up the cue ball still sitting on the blood covered pool table. After taking quick aim, she had lobbed it at Gus’s head. Without ever turning to look at the cue ball, Gus put up a quick hand and caught it inches away from his face. He turned slowly to look at it, as though it was someone else that had stopped the ball. They all turned to look at Adelaide.

“You’re not going to turn tonight,” she said. “But there are a few…extras…during the rest of the month. Like heightened reflexes.”

No one said anything for a few seconds. Gus dropped the ball like it was painful to hold.

“You two need to leave,” Jesse said, his voice dangerously quiet. “Before I call the police.”

“Because I’ve never had the cops called on me before,” Adelaide said. But Inez was looking at Gus. Gus wouldn’t look at her.

“What…what he said.”

Inez pursed her lips. “Fine. Adelaide, let’s go.”

“What? We can’t-”

“We’re going,” Inez said.

Inez started walking for the front door. Adelaide sighed.

“Inez says we’re going, we’re going. You’re going to want to use bleach and cold water and salt to get those blood stains up. Cold water, not hot.”

Inez had the car running before Adelaide got into the passenger seat.

“We can’t really be leaving him,” Adelaide said.

Inez rolled her eyes. “How bad at my job do you think I am?”

The Tao of Pots

There’s a story that goes like this:

There’s this college art professor. I don’t know what college and I don’t know what kind of art, except the assignment is to make pots, so…ceramics? Pottery? Ghost appreciation? I don’t know, I didn’t take any art classes in college. Unless you count writing, which most people don’t, I guess it’s a craft, which… whatever, you know? What’s the actual difference between an art and a craft? It’s all creativity. Anyway, I don’t know what kind of college art class would involve making pots, so if you do, go ahead and comment and tell me. Or don’t. I’m not your supervisor.

So, college-level Making Pots class. And on the first day, the professor splits the class down the middle.

I mean, the first day of class in most 101-level classes is syllabus and ice breaker exercises. We all hated those ice breaker things, right? Like, “Tell us two truths and a lie and we’ll pick out the lie!” But then you spent so much time obsessing over what your two truths and a lie were going to be that you didn’t even pay attention to anyone else, and then after you went you obsessed so hard about how well you did that you still didn’t listen to anyone. These ice breakers were only exercises in social anxiety and I hated every one of them. If I could have, I would have gotten up and walked out. I did that for a lot of ‘okay, lets break up into groups!’ scenarios in college. When everyone else was moving around, I was moving out the front door. I’m paying you to teach me, not Bud from Gator Farts, Florida, so if you don’t want to do that I’m going to leave and go down to the Student Union and get a footlong from Subway and eat the whole thing and never have to worry about it because I literally have the metabolism of a twenty year old.

So, on the second day of class, the professor splits everyone into two groups.

(If you’re expecting me to go on a side rant describing the professor using classic art professor stereotypes, you are shit out of luck. As I said, I didn’t take any art classes in college, so I didn’t run into them enough to make any sort of judgment. Fill in your own takes as you see fit.)

Half the class is going to be graded on the amount of pots they make. They just need to be churning out pots, day and night, as fast as they can, and the more pounds of pots they make the better their grade. Big pots? Little pots? Fancy pots? Plain pots? Polka dot pots? Piss pots? Small pots? Chicken pots? A big honking YES to all of that, and more. Whatever kind of pots these kids want to make is fucking go. Just makes pots, that’s the entire assignment.

The other half’s assignment is a little different. For them, they’re only making one pot. But it has to be perfect. If you went to college, you know what that means!

Professor Potsaplenty has worked on this rubric all summer. It is a piece of art unto itself. He has it framed. He has his daughter paint the damn thing with a bowl of fruit and then gets mad when the bottom third of the rubric is blocked by the fruit, and Thanksgiving dinner is ruined when Professor Potsaplenty flips the gravy bowl while screaming, “I didn’t want a painting of fucking bananas, Jessica.” And, I mean, this relationship is strained enough already, they only talk at the big holidays and haven’t even called each other for birthdays in years. This was Jessica’s way to try and mend things with Papa Potsaplenty but if this is the way he’s going to be then he can just forget about her showing up for Christmas.

Back in class, he shows this half of the kids the rubric. It’s very detailed, but all boils down to a single thing: they have to make the perfect pot. One perfect pot. And they can take all semester to make it.

A bunch of students flake off before the Add/Drop date, but the rest of them set about doing whatever it was they were assigned. One half of the classroom is filling up with a multitude of pots, while the other half is planning and charting and drawing and imagining the perfect pot. These assholes are stressing about what they’ll do when they finally shape the clay or whatever into the perfect pot, while the other half of the assholes are just churning out pots willy, and even nilly. Time, as it’s wont to do, marches on, and when the bell tolls it’s a class bell and the semester is over. Yes, I know colleges don’t have class bells. No, I don’t care.

As I’m sure many of you know, the moral of this particular story (a parable from Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland) is that at the end of the semester, the best pots weren’t on the side trying to make the best pot, but came from the side that were making as many pots as possible. In making pots over and over, these kids were learning from their mistakes and perfecting technique, while the other side was doing a lot more imagining and, like, picturing the perfect pot.

Too much plotty, not enough potty.

Why am I rehashing this story that probably every writer in the past twenty years has heard at least once? Because next week will be the one year anniversary of starting this blog, and this story is what has guided me in my writing. With this website I wasn’t trying to achieve perfection. I was trying to achieve three things:

  1. Write. A lot. Like, a lot a lot.
  2. Get used to finishing something. Even if I think it could be better. Even if I think of edits I could make. Make a deadline. Achieve the deadline. Publish it. Live with it.
  3. Get used to people reading my stuff. I’ve been writing for, like, three hundred years or something and I’m generally deathly afraid of people reading it and then hating it and then skewering me in the eye with a kabob. Hey, I didn’t say it was a rational fear.

And there was a bonus!

  1. In John Truby’s The Anatomy of Story, one of the earliest things he instructs writers to do is to write down a “wish list:”

…[A] list of everything you would like to see up on the screen, in a book, or at the theater. It’s what you are passionately interested in, and it’s what entertains you. You might jot down characters you have imagined, cool plots twists, or great lines of dialogue that have popped into your head.

I once sat down and wrote out the wish list in one twenty-minute period, but I think writing like this has been way more illuminating. Everything I’ve written in the past year is essentially my wish list. When you’re trying to get two to three short stories done every week, you start to see patterns. Characters, premises, and lines that get used repeatedly, and you realize those are the things you wish you could read all the time. And if you want to read something, and someone hasn’t written it, then obviously the only solution is to write it yourself. Basically, this website has given me a better sense of my writing self.

For now, I’m going to keep the same schedule for the website. But starting now I’ll be thinking of which direction I want to go. Pot Making with Professor Potsaplenty is a great place to start, but you can’t stay in a 101 class forever, because eventually your two truths and a lie begin to get bitter and disturbing.

Your True Self

There once was a man who lived a good life.

I mean, it was okay. Middle of the road. He had a family and he loved them. He had a job and he was indifferent about it. He had hobbies. He had just bought a new television. Things were mellow, things were fine.

The man liked to drink. The man liked drugs. One summer they had a party. The next morning the man woke up in the middle of a yellow duck-shaped pool floatie in the middle of a large fountain in the middle of a park in the middle of a city that was not his city. No, this city was a state away from his city. As the man waited for his wife to pick him up, he began to think. Was this who he was? Usually, the answer was no. He was a responsible man, who was never late to work and took his kids to band practice and soccer. As he sat in the passenger side of his wife’s car, sitting on two towels and a garbage bag so the lingering fountain water wouldn’t soak into her bucket seats, he came to a decision. There would be no more drinking and drugs.

From then on, the man vowed to only be his true self.

The man stopped drinking. He stopped drugs. He stopped smoking marijuana. He stopped smoking cigarettes, afraid even the nicotine could change him. It was hard. For weeks, he was irritable. He was itchy. He had cravings. He was not his true self. But he knew if he continued on through this dark tunnel, he would come out the other side into the light. And, much to his family’s relief, he did. The cravings and the itchiness stopped. He made jokes again. He played games with kids. When he and his wife went to parties, he politely declined alcohol and stuck to his diet soda.

“I have become dedicated to my true self,” he would say, and his friends would give him supportive looks and his wife would pat him on the arm with whatever hand wasn’t holding her white wine. She was not worried about finding her true self.

A few months later, at one of these parties, the man was again talking about his true self. He was very proud of being his true self, and he talked about it often. He was good about it. He wouldn’t bring it up until someone offered him a drink or a smoke. And then he would begin.

“What about the caffeine?”

The man blinked. His friend had interrupted him, and at a good part, too.

“What?”

“The caffeine in all those diet sodas you drink. And I bet you still drink coffee?”

The man lifted his shoulders. “Tea, actually. You see…”

“Tea has more caffeine than coffee.”

It was all a joke. Everyone laughed. Even the man laughed. He was his true self, after all, and when he was his true self, he could take a joke.

The man did not sleep that night. Just because it was a joke didn’t mean it was true. Lots of jokes were true. Lots of jokes were funny because they were true. Was he really his true self? Had he gone far enough?

The next morning, the man got rid of all of his sodas and tea, pouring it all down the sink or into the garbage. To avoid the temptation, he also threw away his wife’s coffee. She was unhappy, and didn’t understand.

“It’s the temptation,” he told her. “It’s easier if it’s not here.”

“But what if I want coffee?”

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You should really consider finding-”

But the wife was already walking away. They had already had this conversation, and she wasn’t interested in it again.

For another few weeks, the man was irritable again. It gave the man immense joy. His body was overcoming a caffeine addiction, which meant that he really hadn’t been his true self on the caffeine. Once his body adjusted, he would achieve his goal.

Only, he began to wonder. Was he his true self if he was overly tired? Surely, he couldn’t be, not if he couldn’t think right or feel right. He began to regulate his sleep. Ten o’clock at night to six am, precisely. It wasn’t enough to get the same amount of hours every night, they needed to be the same hours. Ten to six. And if anything threatened to get him to bed late, he would get very anxious. Once, his son’s dance recital went late and he went home before his son ever went on stage. His wife and his son had to get a ride home from a neighbor. But the man was asleep on time, so he was sure they would understand. Why would they want to be with him at all if he wasn’t his true self?

The man began to exercise, an exact amount of steps every single day, no more and no less. Any less and he got fussy. Any more and he got tired. Neither was his true self.

The man stopped taking his prescriptions. These would only take him away from his true self.

The man snapped at his wife after a long day at work. He quit the next day. Clearly, the job was keeping him from his true self.

The wife left one day, while he was walking, and he came home and found a note and all of his wife’s and the kid’s clothes gone. And after some reflection, the man decided this was for the best. He was different around his wife and kids. Not his true self.

Soon, he realized he was different around everyone. He reflected back the people he talked to. Keeping him from being his true self. So the man sold everything he owned – the act of possessing anything changed him – and headed off into the woods.

He lived in serenity for a few days, for truly he must have found his true self. Only, when the hunger and thirst set in, he realized these things changed him, too. He could not be his true self when he was starving and cold in the woods. But, he could not be his true self when he owned anything. What could the man do?

He heard of a great spiritual leader coming close. Not to exactly where he lived, but to the city where everything had begun in a duckie float in a fountain in a park. The man hitched rides across the state, trying not to talk much but also trying not to look like a serial killer. It took three days but he made it on the last day of the spiritual leader’s visit. He waited in line for eight hours, not talking to any of his in-line neighbors, until finally he stood in front of the spiritual leader.

“I have been on a quest to find my true self, but it is harder than I thought. First, I thought I only needed to stop drinking and doing drugs, and I did. But caffeine is a drug. Medications are drugs. It turns out other people and possessions are drugs, too. And, worst of all, not having possessions is a sort of drug. I am lost. I am trying to find my true self and I am lost.”

The spiritual leader considered this, and the man waited patiently because he had been trying to find his true self for a year and he was willing to wait a little longer.

“Did you like drinking?”

“I guess so. I didn’t like what it did to me, but I liked drinking.”

“And did you love your family?”

“I did.”

“And did you like having possessions?”

“I had too many, probably, but there are some I very much liked. Like my bed. And a house.”

“Those likes and wants are a part of you. How do you know the you that drank to excess wasn’t your true self? If you liked drinking, but not what it did to you, could you not just drink less and find your true self? The self, you see, is what we make of the world, not what the world makes of us.”

The man considered this for a time, long enough for the person in line behind him to start tapping her foot. Finally, the man spoke.

“You’re full of shit.”

Thus, the man learned nothing, and neither have we.

The Waitress: A Body of Thieves

A Body of Thieves

Vinnie took another sip of his ginger ale and prayed to the train god that the ride would smooth out.

“How do we get them back there?” he asked, his lips still on his glass. It was a murmur, so quiet without the tin ears Verna never would have heard even as she stood half a foot away.

“We don’t,” Verna said, matching his tone, still facing the bartender. “She does.”

Hannah was in the back with Duane, so ‘she’ had to mean Maggie. That meant she had to be around somewhere. Vinnie let his gaze cross the party car, his eyes skimming across faces. She should have been easy to pick out, with that long black hair and the bruises across her face. Since the plan had been put in motion there hadn’t been time to think about anything else. Now, finally standing in calm waters, he wondered. Vinnie knew next to nothing about her. Her name. Her position with the team. The fact that he didn’t like her. Maybe that was unfair of him, but he’d come to like and trust the others, and if they didn’t like her…

Bar fight, maybe. He could picture that. She did always dress like she hung out at rough places. Probably some biker bar at the edge of town. Probably pissed someone off. Stole their drink. Flirted with the wrong guy. Cheated someone at pool. He could picture it all in his mind, now, like he’d actually been there.

“Can I take your empty glass?”

One of the waitresses had come around, startling him from his daydream. He smiled at her and put his glass on the tray she held out to him.

“Thanks.”

“No problem, sir. And you, ma’am?”

Verna’s eyes flashed. She had finally gotten her drink from the barman, and Vinnie didn’t think she would be willing to part with it so soon. To his surprise, she took a heavy sip from it, emptying half of it, and then put it on the tray.

“Too watery, anyway,” Verna said.

The waitress nodded and wandered off, toward the back of the car.

“Hand off complete, coming to you,” Verna muttered under her breath.

Vinnie raised his eyebrows at her. He looked around the car, trying to catch Maggie walking away from them. When he saw no one, he turned back to her and held his hands out, confused.

Verna laughed, a little too loud, and waved a hand at him. “That waitress called me ‘ma’am.’ I hate that. I’ve still got plenty of ‘miss’ years left in me!”

He shuffled around, forcing his hands to stay away from his ear. Instead they readjusted his tie, pulling the satin this way and that. Vinnie was confused, and only growing more confused as Verna made faces at him. As though he should have understood by now.

“In that case, maybe next time I’ll card you,” said a new voice in his ear.

Maggie’s voice.

She didn’t sound like the waitress. Did she? Wait, what had the waitress sounded like, anyway? No, she definitely didn’t sound like the waitress. Or look like the waitress. The waitress…had been wearing a black and white suit like the rest of them. And her hair had been…blonde. Yes, blonde! He was sure she had been blonde. Or maybe a light brown? Definitely not black. And…and…Vinnie would have noticed if she had been right in front of him, damn it!

“Let me help you with that.” Maggie’s voice came through his earpiece again. It must have been Maggie, anyway. It was a woman’s voice, and it didn’t sound like Hannah or Verna. But it didn’t really sound like Maggie, either. It sounded lower, huskier. Did it sound like the waitress? He already couldn’t remember.

“Thanks,” Hannah said. Then, a couple seconds later in a much lower tone. “Hand off two complete, heading for the back.”

He looked at Verna, who shrugged.

“There’s more than one way to disappear.”

She turned back to the bar, trying to get a replacement drink from the bartender. Vinnie knew he should be walking away. Finding someone to make small talk with. Blending in, somewhere not near Verna. But he was very confused and his head hurt and mostly he just wanted to find a quiet place to sit for a few minutes while staring at nothing.

He got a few steps toward the bathroom before he heard Hannah and Duane in his ear again.

“Break time,” Duane said.

“Switching off.”

Vinnie could picture them, standing in front of the guards at the front of the car and flashing the pilfered badges. How long did they have until the undercover guards found they were gone?

“There’s no switch scheduled,” he heard one of the guards say. Barely. The earpieces weren’t meant to pick up surrounding voices. It must have been quiet back there. Quiet enough that he could hear the suspicion in the guard’s voice. He could imagine his hand, reaching slowly for the gun in his holster. Duane and Hannah were silent. Maybe they hadn’t expected any resistance.

Vinnie saw the first guard he had pegged, obviously trying to keep her face flat as two socialites tried to talk at the same time.

Boring quiet, nothing is going to happen, I hate this detail.

“Tell them you need the break from the party,” Vinnie said. “That if you have to listen to one more socialite complain about some designer you’ve never heard of you’ll put a bullet in your mouth.”

“Look, man, the break isn’t for you, it’s for us,” Duane said. “That party…If I have to listen to one more socialite…”

A pause. Vinnie held his breath. He felt like he could feel everyone holding their breath. Verna. Joey. Maybe even Maggie. Then, quietly, he heard the guard laugh.

“Yeah, I get that. Fucking rich dicks, man.”

There were sounds of shuffling around and commiseration between the two real guards and Duane and Hannah.

Hannah’s breathy voice sighed over the earpiece. “The tweedles are gone. All clear sailing from here, if I do say so my…oh shit.”

“Don’t say that,” Joey said, speaking for the first time. “Why would you say something like that?”

“This lock is electromagnetic, that’s why I would say that.”

“What’s that mean, babe?”

“It means I can’t pick it until the power’s off. I mean, I could pick it. But it won’t open, and will probably set off an alarm somewhere.”

“Can you see where the juice is coming from?” Joey asked.

“I’m looking…looks like it’s wired into the train’s main power. The electromagnet might have been an afterthought. If I’m looking at these wires right, this should go right up to the electrical car at the front of the train. Face or Smile?”

Vinnie looked across the car at Verna. She was chatting and laughing with some guy who kept flashing his diamond cufflinks. She didn’t look like she’d heard a word, but Vinnie knew better.

“Smile’s trapped by a trust fund kid,” he said. “Guess it’s me.”

Previous Next

Moon Over Prairie Fire, Part 3

Previous

Inez was running across the parking lot, flanked on either side by Jesse and Mat. The van behind Gus shuddered as Adelaide slammed the passenger door. They all reached him at the same time.

“Jesus Christ, Gus, are you okay?”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“That is a lot of blood.”

“We need to get him inside.”

“I’ll call an ambulance.”

“No!”

“What do you mean no?”

“Adelaide, get the first aid kit from the back.”

“I mean…that’s too much blood.”

“Just help me get him inside.”

Jesse took his legs while Matsui and Adelaide took either shoulder. Mat was on the side with the bite, and he took extra care not to touch the broken bone or blood. Or look at any of it too hard. Inez held the door to the bowling alley bar open.

“Take him to the pool table. Set him down, gently.”

He was barely down before Adelaide darted back outside, before Inez could even suggest that might not have been a good idea.

“Can I call 911 now?” Matsui asked. He was covered in blood up to his arms. They all were, actually.

“No, you can’t,” Inez said. She saw the look on his face and help up her hands. “I know how it sounds, but if you call an ambulance and get them involved, the situation is going to get a lot more complicated.”

“What are you even talking about?” Jesse asked. Confusion and terror were starting to be replaced with anger. “The situation is that Gus was just attacked by a wolf. He needs surgery and stitches and I’m pretty sure I’m staring at a piece of bone right this second.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Gus said with a groan. He was trying to watch the faces of his friends as they talked. Mostly his eyes seemed to swim across the ceiling. “I don’t want to look at it. Do I want to look at it?”

“No!” came from four different people.

Adelaide had just come in the front door carrying a giant, red plastic tackle box. She set it down on a bar stool and started rummaging through until she found what she was looking for. Jesse tossed his hands in the air.

“Oh, great. He’s going to bleed out on the pool table, so you’re going to take his temperature.” He was yelling now.

“He’s not going to bleed out,” Inez said, sounding only partly sure of herself. “He’s going to be…fine. We just need to give it a minute.”

“Open up, Gus,” Adelaide said, and stuck the thermometer in Gus’s mouth. He didn’t seem have enough energy to argue.

“Listen to me, you crazy bitch,” Jesse said. “He’s not just going to magically be fine.”

Inez and Adelaide glanced at each, having another of their quick, unspoken conversations.

“Actually…” Inez said out loud.

“What the fuck are you, a Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

The thermometer beeped. “102.4,” Adelaide said, before putting the thermometer back in Gus’s mouth. Jesse’s face had turned purple, and he sucked in air as he got ready to scream again. Matsui, who up until this point had been sitting on a barstool, calmly watching everything with eyes partially glazed over, stepped in front of Jesse at the last second, holding a hand up in front of his face.

“Give me one good reason not to call the ambulance right now,” Matsui said, his voice even.

“You’re not going to believe me.”

“103.5.”

“Try me.”

Inez looked at Adelaide, tried to decipher what she was thinking at that moment. Adelaide only shrugged.

Inez took a solid breath. “Okay, fine. Gus wasn’t attacked by a wolf. He was bit by a werewolf.”

“WHAT?”

Jesse started for the phone behind the bar.

“You people really are crazy. Werewolf? Werewolf? I’m going to call an ambulance, and then I’m going to call the police.”

“105.8”

“Jesse, don’t.”

If Matsui had just slapped Jesse he would have had the same look on his face. Matsui looked calmly back, arms crossed at his chest. “Don’t call.”

“You…you can’t seriously tell me you believe any of this.”

“It’s a full moon. That wolf was…huge.”

“Just a few minutes, that’s all,” Inez said quickly. “It takes a few minutes, but he is going to heal, I swear.”

Jesse looked between Matsui, and Inez, and Adelaide and Gus. Adelaide looked at the thermometer.

“106.1”

Gus looked considerably worse. He was almost completely white, and sweating hard. His breath was coming in small, fast jags. His eyes were opened but completely unfocused, swimming. Gus was dying.

With a shake of his head, Jesse picked the phone off the counter. Matsui walked calmly to the phone and pushed Jesse away before he could hit the first ‘one.’

“You’re crazy like they are!”

Jesse pushed back, and the phone hit the ground with a plastic clatter. A shoving matched erupted, with Jesse falling back farther each time.

“Guys, stop it…someone is going to get hurt and we will have to call an ambulance. Guys!”

“104.3”

Inez whipped around. “What did you just say?”

“104.3. His temperature is coming back down. It’s coming. It’s about to happen.”

“What’s about- Jesse, get off- what’s about to happen?”

“Mat, come over here,” Inez said. She was standing next to Gus, now, on his good side. “Around here, behind him. Help Adelaide hold his shoulders.”

“I thought you said he was going to heal,” Matsui said as he walked around.

“He is,” Adelaide said flatly, but her face made Matsui think that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. He stood behind his friend, looked down at his pale face, and wondered not for the first time what the hell he was doing. Over at the bar, Jesse had picked up the receiver for the phone, but he hadn’t dialed anything yet. He was watching. Waiting. Matsui realized he was waiting for something, too. Something was gathering in the room, in the air above them. They could feel it.

Inez had taken Gus’s left hand with her own.

“Gus. Gus, can you hear me?” Her voice was soft, and she carefully brushed the hair out of his eyes. “Hey, I need you to wake up now.”

Gus opened his eyes and after a few seconds managed to bring them into focus.

“Is the ambulance here?” His voice was almost nothing.

“No, it’s not,” she said. “Gus, I need you to hold my hand, okay? And I want you to squeeze it as hard as you need to?”

“What? Why?”

“Because, sweetie. This is going to hurt like a motherfucker.”

Next

Take it Off: Pacific City

Pacific City

Peggy watched Aster cross the parking lot toward the front door of the Thorny Crown and thought, well, at least they’ll blend in. As soon as they had gotten inside Peggy walked around the parking lot, cutting across the last bit to get to the back of the bar.

The music was bleeding through the walls so loud she could almost pick out what was playing. If she knew more metal music she probably could. To her, it all sounded the same. Raging guitar and growling vocals and somebody just absolutely losing their fucking mind on a drum kit. Put all that on an album and slap some illegible scribblings on it in white or red and you’ve got yourself a metal record, my dude. She’d seen a few brave souls attempt one metal song or another at Dinah’s. Only one of them sounded any good and managed not to hurt themselves, and last she had heard he was fronting a local band. That could be them playing inside right now.

The Thorny Crown was on a corner. The back door of the place led to a strip of pavement big enough for trucks with deliveries to pull through. Then there was a thin strip of grass, then sidewalk, and then the road. This fight – if it happened at all – was going to be out in the wind, for anyone to see. Peggy sighed, watching as a few cars drove by in either direction. Her only hope was that no one would be surprised by a fight behind the metal bar. At least, not surprised enough to call the cops. Or worse, try to step in.

She realized her heart was racing and her vision was beginning to tunnel. Adrenaline. No good. Peggy started bouncing up and down, back and forth, trying to burn it off. When she realized how stiff she was she started stretching her arms and doing lunges, too. The last time she was in a fight…four years ago? No, five. Five years ago. With her mother. A fight she might have won, if her mother hadn’t been the one to teach her how to fight in the first place.

“Just a fight,” she said to herself. She held her hands in front of her, frowning. If she’d known she would have taped them up. “Just a quick fight. With a vampire. That’s all, just a fight with a vampire. You’re a quarter-god, this’ll be a snap. Just…punch, punch, stab. That’s it, that’s all it’ll be. Punch punch stab.”

The door to the back of the Thorny Crown burst open and slammed against the bricks. Aster practically fell out, tripping over their feet, not sparing a look back.

“Behind me!” Aster shouted. They got behind Peggy and spun to a stop.

Peggy settled her feet and bent her legs. The stake was gripped in her hand.

The open door sat still, the only thing coming out of it the waves of the thrashing and growling.

Aster stood to look over Peggy’s shoulder.

“She was right behind me,” they said. “I thought-”

Kristina with a K launched out of the doorway. Fast. Too fast, maybe, for Aster to see properly. But Peggy could see every muscle twitch. Kristina sprinted at them, expecting to knock them down. Peggy pulled Aster away seconds before Kristina reached where the two of them had stood. She pushed Aster back gently as she kept her eyes on Kristina.

She got nearly to the street before she managed to stop herself and turn around. Her blonde hair was down and stuck in her lipstick, and she pulled it away. A grin revealed her fangs were already down.

“I knew there was something about you,” Kristina said, taking slow steps toward Peggy. “I can practically smell it. What are you? Fairy? Witch?”

“Nothing you have to-”

“I’ll have you know she’s part god!” Aster’s call rolled over Peggy’s quiet statement. Peggy sighed.

“What they said.”

Kristina looked back and forth between Peggy and Aster. Her face became an over-exaggerated sneer, and Peggy knew where this was going.

“The fuck you mean ‘they?’ All I see is-”

Peggy launched herself at Kristina before she could finish whatever hateful garbage was about to come out of her mouth. Kristina readied herself. She clearly had no idea how strong Peggy was. Maybe Peggy didn’t either. Even with the blonde bitch lowering her center of gravity Peggy still managed to knock her over. Her head hit the pavement with a smack violent enough to have killed a human. Peggy rolled over her, landing on her feet.

“Do you know how hard it is,” Kristina growled as she pulled herself up to standing, “to get blood out of your hair?”

“It’s called a shower, you gross asshole.”

They threw themselves at each other and the fight really started. Peggy focused on avoiding Kristina’s punches. Biding her time until she could get a hit in herself. Peggy was stronger than a usual human. She was stronger than Kristina thought she would be. But she wasn’t stronger than Kristina. Wasn’t faster either.

Kristina got her with a solid punch. Right upper chest, in the ribs. Peggy’s lungs froze and she staggered back, holding her ribs. She looked up in time to see Kristina coming for her again, fist pulled back.

With a scream Aster jumped onto Kristina’s back. Kristina stumbled. For the first time Peggy noticed she was wearing stiletto heels. One heel snapped in half, sending her reeling forward. She put her hands out, not to fight but to catch herself. Leaving herself exposed.

All Peggy had to do was place the wooden stake in the right place. Gravity did the rest.

Kristina howled. Anywhere else and everyone inside would have heard it. Not here at the Thorny Crown. It was inhuman. It faded into a wheeze. Her skin was rotting. Her muscles desiccating. Within seconds there was nothing underneath Aster but a skeleton, and they fell to the ground.

“Christ,” Peggy spit out. She was bent over, clutching her side, panting. “I think she broke a rib. You good?”

Aster scuttled over to the grass and began throwing up with vigor.

Wincing with every other step, Peggy went to Aster and patted their back as they upchucked everything they had eaten in the last three days. When the dry heaves finally stopped, Aster spit.

“That was gross,” they said, their voice weak.

“Yeah. That was part of why I didn’t want to do this. A big part.”

Aster tried to sit down, but Peggy grabbed their arm and dragged them up back.

“No, no. Let’s not linger between the huge pile vomit and the bones, shall we?”

“Oh. Right. Good point.”

They walked back the way they came, significantly slower this time. Aster was still the palest Peggy had ever seen them. As slow as she was walking, cradling her side, Aster didn’t try to go any faster. They were only a block away from Dinah’s when Aster took off their beanie and ran a hand through their hair.

“That was fucked up.”

“Yes.”

Aster stopped and looked at Peggy. “You going to live?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“You heal faster than normal, too, huh?”

“…maybe a little.”

“Lucky bitch.” But Aster was smiling, and Peggy couldn’t help but smile back. “We actually did it. We killed a vampire.”

Aster held out a hand for a high five, and Peggy reluctantly put her hand up. She winced as the force of the slap rolled through her ribs.

“Might not be so lucky next time,” Peggy said, heading for Dinah’s again.

But Aster only stood there, staring at her. “Next time? There’s going to be a next time?”

“I didn’t say that!”

“But you did. You said the words ‘next time.’”

“I didn’t mean-”

“Look at us! We should get costumes. Masks, at least. You’ve got to tell me everything that could be out there. I’ll need to get books. I was actually good at studying in college, right up until I dropped out. Aster and Peggy, defenders of Pacific City! We’re going to make a difference.”

With their last word they slapped an arm around Peggy. Peggy screamed and winced away, trying to turn it into a laugh. A young couple – the same couple from before – stopped at the doorway to Dinah’s and stared at them.

“Shit, sorry, I keep forgetting. Come on, I’ll buy you a beer.”

Previous Next

Marietta: A Biddies and Broken Hearts Story

The Biddies and Broken Hearts

Spring had finally come to the Biddies, but only because Marietta had said it had.

No one knew precisely what it was Marietta was looking for, but starting in the middle of March she would be out there, walking the fields that had once been an open space park. She would poke at the dirt. Watch the sky. Listen to the wind, maybe. Some of the new people would watch her and think there was a screw loose. Make a wind-up motion next to the head and whistle. Until Birdie or Wendy or Henry would catch them and tell them off but good. They were alive because of Marietta, there just wasn’t any bones about it. She could be out there using pure science or she could be water-witching, whatever it was it was keeping them all alive.

She was thirty-five years old when she’d found Broken Hearts and the Biddies, and she looked it. Hers was the face of a woman who had taken the world head on and survived through sheer force of will. She was made of angular cuts obviously carved from years of physical labor, from her calves to her glass-cutting cheekbones, and she was crowned with a mad tangle of strawberry blond curls trying in vain to burst their banana clip bonds. Her brown eyes had a glint not from the sun but from a wild vindication of the life she had chosen to lead.

She had grown up on farm in Wisconsin that made its money off the dairy cows but also grew a few crops here and there to feed the family and the neighbors. She knew how to take care of everything from the fields to the barns by the time she left for college in Nebraska and it was in an environmental politics class that she had met her husband Donnie. They fell in love through a dangerous combination of mutual lust and a shared passion for changing the world. They had married in a small, outdoor ceremony directly after graduation that had left no footprint, except of course for the physical ones left by their bare feet in the dewy grass. Donnie became an environmental lawyer who worked more for spirit than for pennies and she became a lobbyist who after six years felt she’d done more harm than good. Surrounded by the TV and desktop computer and the lamps and the on and off hum of the fridge and the urgency of the bills printed on the clean, newly made paper, with her feet and her head drumming to the same beat and her spirits hovering somewhere below the earth’s mantle, she sipped at her white wine and sighed.

“We can’t keep living like this.”

Donnie nodded sagely without really looking away from the TV, for it was a conversation they had often, and said, “Someday people will come to their senses – one way or another.”

“No, not people – us. I’m sick of waiting for the world to get it. I’m sick of getting nowhere or, worse, going backwards. Fuck the world, Donnie. Let’s fix ourselves.”

And because Donnie loved his wife very much, and because he’d daydreamed about doing it for years, he agreed. They sold everything they owned, emptied their bank accounts, cancelled their cards and bills and subscriptions, moved out of their apartment and fell off the grid. They purchased a plot of land in Colorado in the foothills north of Denver and became survivalists.

There were missteps. Their first cabin was not leak proof and they became soaked as their roof sacrificed them to the dark god of storms. Their first crops failed, leaving them to an entire winter of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee and Spaghetti-ohs. And improperly sanitized water led to a tremendous case of the shits that left them both immobilized in the latrine for days. But by the time the Blues found them they had lived seven of the happiest years they could have, living off their own wit and hard work and leaving little impression on the earth behind them.

In fact, they were so cut off from the world it was a full twenty-five days after the world had died before they noticed anything wrong.

It was Donnie who first noticed and Marietta almost walked into him as he sat at the doorstep, watching the sky.

“Staring at clouds?” she asked, because things could still be funny. But Donnie only needed to get two words into his sentence before Marietta realized he was scared to pale and by the time he finished terror was creeping down her spine as well.

“Do you know I’ve been out here all morning – that’s three hours, now – and I have not seen a single airplane?”

Marietta sat down next to him and reassured him that surely he’d just missed something and that they’d see something eventually, anything, and there they sat for the rest of the day and on until the night and when they couldn’t even make out an international flight skimming the atmosphere against the starry backdrop they both knew something had happened. They put the emergency batteries into the radio first and when they got nothing but static they got their bikes from the shed and rolled into town except town was dead and there was no one left alive to tell them why everyone was dead, or that just because they were dead didn’t mean they weren’t contagious, so they learned first-hand why it was called the Blues. Donnie lasted a couple weeks. Marietta never even got the sniffles.

Marietta buried him in his favorite spot in the woods and kept on with her life because what else was there to do? They had become completely self-sustaining, fuck the world, and her lonesome life could have continued on indefinitely if a thunderstorm hadn’t lit up a tree and set fire to the whole forest, a fire that smacked up her crops and her home and forced her out into the chaos. She was coming south down the foothills, trying to find the freaking highway so she could get down the mountain without breaking an ankle, and she managed to come across the Biddies without ever going through Broken Hearts.

It was only John and Birdie, then, living in the Rockby. It had been a month since Birdie had managed to crawl out of her house looking for help and still she didn’t have much strength, so John had been the one to step outside. Birdie stayed inside, just at the shadows of the door, holding a rifle.

“Morning,” John said casually, leaning against the wall. Marietta turned quickly and surveyed John for a few slow seconds.

“I guess this is your place, huh?”

“It is.”

“The whole thing just for yourself?”

A pause. “No.”

“Well, you’re letting some good earth go to waste, here.”

“Am I, now?”

“Sure. Good sun, good water source. You could be planting here.”

A pause. “You know about gardening?”

Marietta smiled. “Tell you what. Give me a place to stay tonight and I’ll tell you all about it.”

She was armed, but she was the first stranger since the Blues that had spoken to John like they were both sane, so John let her in. By that night the three had planned out the fields and the next few months and Marietta had chosen a room, one on the second story that she chose not because of its size, but because its window overlooked the parks.

Three years ago that had been, and if Marietta was careful she could go a whole season without thinking of Donnie. Over the winter she thought of nothing else. Every second, it seemed, was spent reliving another. The day they met. The day he died. They day he really died and they didn’t know it yet, biking into the Springs without a clue of the invisible villain waiting for them. The little bits in between. A day came back to her frequently, and she never knew why. There was nothing special about that day. They were living in the cabin. Donnie had caught fish, and she had made some version of ratatouille. She remembered them laughing, laughing so hard she had to sit sideways in her chair and bend all the over, so every time she breathed in she could smell the dirt and dust on the wooden floor. But she couldn’t remember what they were laughing about. Maybe if she could remember, she’d know why she kept remembering that day. It had been five months already.

Winters she was as dead as Donnie.

That’s how she knew. It wasn’t water witching. It wasn’t quite science, either. Oh, sure. She paid attention to the winds and the sun. She felt the earth and smelled it, made sure it was ready. But as she walked through the park and back to the Biddies in search of John, feeling the way her heart quickened and not thinking of Donnie at all, there was really one reason Marietta knew it was time to plant.

Previous Next

Moon Over Prairie Fire, Part 2

Previous

Inside, Inez had just reached the bar and was reaching for where the phone was sitting next to a napkin holder on the bar when it started to ring. She waved it in the air at Matsui and Jesse who were looking at her with confusion before answering it.

“Thanks, I-”

“It’s here.”

“Yeah, I got it.”

“No…The wolf is here.”

It took less than two seconds for Inez to cross the bar and be at the front plate glass window.

“Oh, shit.”

“No shit,” Adelaide whispered.

“Okay, just…don’t move.”

“Yeah, I’ve got that much of plan figured out. I was hoping you could fill in the rest.”

“What are you looking at?” Jesse appeared next to her, looking out the window. “What are they doing…is that a fucking wolf?”

“There’s a wolf outside?” Matsui jumped the bar and ended up on Inez’s other side. “What the hell?”

“I’m calling animal control,” Jesse said. He started towards the kitchen.

“No!”

“No?”

“Why the fucking hell not?” Jesse asked.

“Because they won’t know what to do with it-”

“They won’t know what to do with a fucking wolf?”

“-and anyway, they won’t get here in time. We need to scare it off, at least long enough to get Adelaide and Gus back inside the bar.”

“Okay,” Matsui said. “How do we do that?”

“Do you have a gun?” Inez asked.

Matsui’s eyes brightened. “Yes! Yes I do!”

“Not in the bar you don’t, idiot,” Jesse said. “It’s in the back of your truck.”

“Not my gun, the bar’s gun. It’s…” Matsui winced and balled up its fist.

“Well?” Inez asked, holding out her hands.

“It’s locked in Big Bill’s office. He lost the keys last week.”

“Oh, well, let me go break down the door,” Jesse said. “Tell Gus to hold still for about half an hour, I’m sure that thing will understand.”

“You’re not helping,” Inez said. She started looking around the bar. “We need to work with what we have.”

Outside, soft flakes of snow were pushed down the street nearly horizontal from the never-ending wind. Both Gus and Adelaide’s eyes were watering from the cold. Gus’s fingers, still wrapped around the top of the car door, were stiff and white. The pinky he had broken back in high school had long since checked out, and he could see it starting to turn blue. Neither of them dared moved. Every move they made bigger than a cough made the wolf shift, almost nervously.

“Why is it just standing there?” Gus asked, most of his voice carried away by the wind.

“If I didn’t know any better…”

“What?”

“Well, it’s kind of acting drugged, right?”

It was. Even as it had stood watching them it had tilted this way and that, sometimes putting out a paw to keep from tumbling right over. Its eyes were sharp, yes, but they didn’t look as sharp as they should have been, and while every sound they made drew its attention, if they stayed quiet for a while, the eyes would lose focus and start to drift.

“What are they doing in there?” Gus asked, glancing at the phone still held up to Adelaide’s ear.

“Mostly yelling at each other.”

“Oh. Good,” Gus said. “I think we should get in the van.”

Adelaide shook her head slightly. “Inez will come up with something. We can’t draw its attention-”

“We can’t wait here any longer,” Gus said. “If it has been drugged, it looks like it’s coming out of it.”

Adelaide looked at the wolf again. He was right. It wasn’t stumbling anymore.

“Back up slowly, into the car. Try to get into the driver’s seat. Once you’re there, I’ll come around the door.”

“Okay.”

Adelaide took her hand and phone away from her ear and lowered the phone into her coat pocket. With either hand she got a hold on the car frame. The wolf watched, but did nothing.

There was only a soft rasp as she picked her left boot up off the ground. In agonizingly slow movements, she bent her leg at the knee until she was confident that her boot would make it over the bottom of the van frame and in. After what seemed like much, much too long, her boot finally found the foot well.

Her grip on the door frame got tighter as she began to do the same with the other foot. It had to go up higher to get over the seat. She didn’t dare try to move back until the back of her boot rasped against her coat.

“It’s, uh…it’s looking a bit more interested in us,” Gus said. “I don’t want to hurry you, but maybe you could move less slow?”

“I’m-”

The glove on Adelaide’s right hand betrayed her and her grip on the car frame disappeared. The right side of her body dropped down until her knee met the frame of the car door. The impact egged a high-pitched keening noise out of her, one she managed to bite down on after half a second.

But half a second was too much. The wolf remembered that they were there, and then remembered that it was a wolf, and they were prey. Its ears went back, and its teeth, shiny and so much sharper than its eyes, appeared along with a low growl that surfed the wind to meet them. It was back on its haunches and then it had launched at them before Gus could even think.

In the space of two seconds, while the wolf was rapidly crossing the thirty yards between them, Gus pulled his hand off the car door (ignoring the fact that his fingers stayed at the same angle), came around to the other side, pushed Adelaide back into the passenger seat and slammed the car door shut. He turned to run toward the bar.

Too late. Two large paws met his chest and he was shoved back at the car. Rancid, meaty breath and high-pitched barking and low-pitched growling and a frenzy of pearl white and serrated teeth all occupied the space just inches in front of his face. It lunged at his throat.

A well-placed shove at its neck and shoulder kept it from reaching Gus’s jugular. It came at him again and he pushed back. From behind him he could hear Adelaide screaming something. There was no way Gus could keep this up. Every time the wolf pushed at him it got closer and closer. Gus had to figure something out but his brain had stopped trying to think.

The wolf’s, though, hadn’t. Tired of being foiled at every bite, the wolf went to take out the obstacle.

Gus’s scream was throaty and painful, making his throat burn. Not that he felt it. The wolf’s jaws, clamped down on his right arm around the elbow, were taking up all of his senses. Warmth dripped and spread all around his skin and soaked into his shirt, and beyond the pain there was an awful loose feeling around the muscles in his hands. Unaware of what he was doing, he started beating on the wolf with his other hand.

The wolf bit down harder, and Gus heard a high-pitched crack as he felt bone shatter.

When it let go of his arm, it was only to finally reach Gus’s throat, where the blood ran fast and the screams could be stopped. As he stared down the open bloody throat of the wolf, Gus’s brain had enough left to think, I didn’t think it would be this.

A long whistle along with shouts of ‘hey!’ and ‘over here!’ started coming from the bar. Both Gus and the wolf turned to look at where the sound was coming from.

A ball of fire, bright red and yellow, crashed into the back of the wolf and exploded, sending smaller droplets of fire into the air. The smell of singed fur joined the fracas. The wolf growled and finally backed away from Gus, intent on going for the sender of the fire ball.

Gus dropped to the ground and cradled his arm. He looked up from the blood pooling next to him just in time to see another fire ball hit the ground directly in front of the wolf, and yet another hit just to the left.

A third hit the wolf square in the face. Fearful keening noises came out of its throat. With a last look Gus could almost describe as sad, it ran off down the street before the fourth could hit it, instead fizzling out on the snowy grass. Gus waited to see what would kill him first – the blood loss or the cold.

Next

Back in Black: Pacific City

Pacific City

She only went back to Dinah’s the next night because she knew Aster wasn’t supposed to be working, so of course Aster was standing directly in front of her before the door could even close. It was early, yet, and there were only a few people scattered around the tables and the bar, watching a man in a MTA uniform growl his way through “Dancing in the Dark.”

“You’re not supposed…what the fuck are you wearing?”

Aster had once told Peggy the look they were going for was ‘Ziggy Stardust moonlighting as a librarian.’ Lots of slacks and button down shirts and sweater vests and suspenders, but always in bright colors. Topped with their ‘signature’ pale purple hair and a full face of makeup. Now, Aster was standing in front of her wearing head to toe black, including goth-like makeup and their hair hidden under a black beanie.

Peggy crossed her arms. “You very pointedly told me once that wearing all black was only for judges and mimes.”

“And I was wrong,” Aster said. “It’s for judges, mimes, and ass-kicking. Which is what we’re about to do.”

Peggy tried to walk around Aster. “I told you, that’s not something I can do.”

Aster grabbed her arm. “I asked around. I know where she is. Right now. We can find her, and we can stop her before she hurts anyone else.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Peggy said, pulling her arm back. “You’re going to get yourself noticed by dangerous people.”

Peggy started to walk to the bar, knowing she hadn’t actually won.

“You know I almost died last night,” Aster said, following. “That kind of got lost in the shuffle of, you know, finding out your grandmother-”

Peggy turned on her heels and closed in on Aster, trying to get them to stop yelling. They did, but they didn’t stop talking.

“-is a god, and that gods are a thing, and that vampires are a thing. But I realized it when I got home last night. I almost died. If you had come out just a few seconds later, that thing would have killed me and left my body in an alley. And that scares me. But what terrifies me is that she’s still out there. And she’s going to do it to somebody else. And I can’t live with myself if I don’t do something about it. So, I’m going out to find her. You can come, or you can cry about it, but I’m not just going to pretend everything is fine.”

With nothing more than a last glare in her direction, Aster turned around and headed out the front door. Peggy chewed her thumbnail. What were the chances Aster was lying, and wasn’t about to throw themselves face first into a vampire they didn’t know a thing about fighting?

“Shit.”

She caught up with them halfway down the block.

“Since when have you been this righteous?”

Aster tried and failed to hide a smirk. “I’ve always been this righteous, you just don’t know me as well as you think you do.”

It was Wednesday night, so the streets were fairly quiet. It was that in-between time, when the shops have closed but the bars hadn’t filled up with all their regulars quite yet. Besides the sound of the trolley chugging down the street next to them and the usual background city noises, the only sound was their footsteps.

“Well?” Peggy asked. “Where is she?”

“Her name is Kristina, with a K,” Aster said with a scoff. “She’s been hanging out in the neighborhood for a few months now, bouncing between bars. But her favorite is the Thorny Crown.”

“That metal bar? I guess that explains the hair and the jeans.”

The Thorny Crown was only a couple blocks over from Dinah’s. It was in its own building, sharing a parking lot with a closed hairdresser’s. The spaces in the lot were almost entirely filled with motorcycles, with just a few junkers to break up the monotony. They stopped across the street, scanning the few people standing outside the door smoking. None of them were Kristina.

“What’s the plan?” Peggy asked.

Aster stopped fiddling with their jacket and looked at her. “I thought you would have the plan.”

“What? Why? Why on earth would I have a plan, I didn’t even want to do this in the first place.”

“Okay, okay, okay, stop,” Aster said, talking over her. “I just figured you would, since you’ve done this before.”

“I haven’t done this before! I can’t even remember the last time I was in a fight.”

“You were in one last night.”

“That wasn’t a real fight. I was just trying to get her to give up and leave, I wasn’t trying to ki-”

Peggy cut off as a young couple walked by them on the sidewalk. Peggy and Aster smiled and waved and wished them a good night as they walked by, giving them increasingly weird and suspicious looks. When they had gotten far enough away, Peggy sighed.

“Do you even have a weapon? Something that will kill…them,” Peggy said, glancing around. If there was one vampire here, there might have been more.

Aster grinned at her, and reached into their jacket. What they pulled out looked like it had once been part of a staircase railing. The top of it, which Aster wiggled under Peggy’s nose, had been filed down to a sharp point.

“Wow,” Peggy said, taking it in her hand. “This is…this is actually really good. Where did you get this?”

“Let’s just say I am currently avoiding my landlord.”

Peggy bounced the stake in her hand, feeling the weight as she thought. “If I go in, she might get pissed to see me again and follow me out. On the other hand, she might run.”

“But if I go in, she should just follow me,” Aster said. She patted her neck where the gauze was hidden under a dark scarf. “Try to take another crack at me, or something.”

“I’ll stick to the corners, make sure she doesn’t see me, and-”

“No way. Like you said, she might run. I go in by myself and draw her out the back. You just be ready.”

“Fuck off, I’m not leaving you alone.”

“Yes, you are. But just for a few minutes. And if I don’t come out in, like, five minutes you come find me. And you had better be out there, because if she kills me I’m going to haunt you. Wait, are ghosts a thing?”

“Yes.”

“Groovy. Let’s do this.”

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