lilliths-story-studio

[lilliths-story-studio]

Cassy’s Taurus isn’t up to the steep ass hill where the mine entrance lay. So we take a thirty minute hike up this slope and I wonder for the fiftieth time since being in this area why these outdoorsy assholes won’t just call a mountain a mountain. It’s easier than scaling some of the rides during set up and break down, but I’d still rather be scurrying ladders and running tools that Joseph forgot.

The woman in charge is wearing black jeans, hiking boots, and a generic black t-shirt. Her hair has been braided up and tucked under another black bandana. I see no pack or gear, only the small, black flashlight sticking up from her back pocket.

Outside of our decision to walk and a promise that we wouldn’t be gone long enough to need much more, neither of us has said a word. She just started leading the way and I followed.

I hadn’t spent a ton of my time out here exploring the various cave and mine systems open for functional operation and tourist adventures alike. I had expected a shaky wooden frame cut into the side of a rock face, and I’m sure at some point it might have looked just that way. Today, however, the entrance is encased by a small, locked shack to which Cassy produces a key.

“Does he own the mine?”

How does that not scream sketch?

Cassy scowls at me.

“His family does. The mine is actually a cave that they found and explored back in the twenties, then carved further into.” She opens the door and lets us into the dusty interior. There’s a small wooden table and a single folding chair immediately along the far wall, just to the right of another locked door. “Thomas let Cassy and I come up here any time we suspected something had caught our scent.”

“Caught your scent?” My eyebrows have fused, I’m sure of it. “Were you hunting the wolfman?”

“He’s not indigenous to the area.”

I whip around and find her snickering as she shuts and locks the door. Is she fucking with me, or had I just been sealed in where I’ll never be found again?

“He more fond of the Apalachee region?” I ask flippantly, watching her twirl the key ring around her finger.

She catches the keys, no longer amused when she looks at me.

“Among other things that live there, yes. I assume you stayed out of the woods there, given you’re still alive.” She passes me to open the second door. “I think Evelyn suspects one such tag along caught sight of her friend and took her.”

I remember Evelyn and her friends, sort of. They’d been at several of the parties Cass and I had put together for the wayward elements in that Brady Bunch town they call home.

“Wait, is this about…oh what was her name?” It would be easier to think if this ringing would stop cutting in and out.

“Marx.” Her voice is stiff. “I’m surprised you remember. Yes, this is about her.”

Cassy pulls the door open, and I’m pretty sure hell wishes it could get this inky.

Without the illusion of a barrier that the door provided, the opening gapes at us like a maw. Darkness can’t spill out, so it’s ridiculous to bother watching for the edges of it to move, but I do. Something electric that hadn’t been on the air a moment ago stands every piece of people fur along my arm to its end.

“Do you feel that?”

“Cold air and vague terror?”

“That’s it.” She nods, looking almost proud. “It’s always charged in here, but it gets real bad close to the full moon.”

I’m fairly certain I glimpse the underside of my grey matter as hard as I roll my eyes. Of course it does, because everything in these hills goes by the moon. I pause.

“Would that be the day you wanna go in here?”

“Bingo.” She smiles, tilting her head towards the door. “Come on. I only grabbed one flashlight, so stay close.”

She barely finishes the sentence before she walks through the door and immediately down the first three steps. She pauses, turning at the waist to look back up expectantly.

“I thought we were just checking out the area in the daylight for today.”

“We are- it’s daylight, and we’re going in to check it out. Shut the door behind you.”

“You very specifically said outside, Ca-“

“No names. Not in here.” The words are biting. “There’s nothing outside but trees and rocks, I can’t feel a thing. Did you?”

Did I? How the hell would I know. I don’t recall the itchy water, but in the face of whatever is swirling about in the pitch behind her, I’m not sure I would remember anything so comparatively faint.

“You said outside.” I remember that. “We’ve got no gear, no water - just the two of us, a flashlight, and my fading patience because I’m starting to get hangry.” My stomach growls to make my point.

“Not far.” She insists, pointing her light down in front of her. “It’s my cousin, T. I know family means something different to you, and I wish I could have helped you with that. But this is my family and she’s missing. I need some kind of information. Please.”

I don’t want to. And it’s on my tongue to say as much until those big, brown eyes catch me. I know guilt when I’m staring at it- he and I are old acquaintances. Swearing, I step through the threshold and shut the door as requested - this will go faster if I just let her go some. The stairs down are slick, and the sides of the cave are quick to hug in and warp out by turns as we pick our way down.

“Why do you think she went in here?”

“Last time we were here, about six months ago, she came across something in the woods and wouldn’t talk about it. Then two weeks ago she came to me and confessed she’d gone down in here alone and found whatever clue.“

“You didn’t ask what it was?”

“I couldn’t be sure we weren’t being overheard, but she told me she was going back in here. So that’s where I assume she’s gone.”

I swear she’s going faster with each word, and my foot slides on the slick boards about every third step. Adrenaline flashes through my chest as I flail, slapping my hand against the similarly slick wooden hand-railing.

“Can you slow the fuck down.”

“Can you move like someone’s life is in danger?”

“If I break my goddamn neck I can’t watch fuck all for anyone, can I?”

She jolts to a stop as I pick down the stairs towards her. Two taps of those toes.

Personally, I think I deserve a medal for not giving her a good shove to get some real-time empathy. My shoulders feel itchy, and what had started as a tingle atop them starts to feel like too much energy trapped under my skin.

“I don’t have your freaky ass tree-frog toes. This shit is slick.”

She scrubs a hand over her face, shaking her head.

“I know it is, I’m in here too.” She starts moving again. “I’m worried, okay? But I’ll try to slow down.”

I’ll take what I can get, I guess.

The air grows cooler as we get further into the cave, chilled currents sliding gently over my arms. I’m about to ask how far she plans to push when we hit a plateau. A set of stairs to the right leads down further into the natural cave system, while a blocky cutout in the wall directly before us gives way to the man-cut mines.

“That looks ominous.” I say

“Or promising.” Cassy starts right for the new tunnel.

“Woah, hold on.”

She stops, turning and tapping those toes.

I won’t smash them, because that would be an extreme overreaction. But damn is that the single most annoying sound I can imagine right now.

“This is pushing past ‘checking it out’ by a fair bit. I think we should go back up and come back with a plan and supplies, now that we have an idea of what’s in here.”

“We know there’s a mine, which we already knew. I don’t want to get lost on our way back out, do you?”

I do not. But the farther down we’ve gone, the more restless this charge beneath my muscles has grown. Everything from the back of my neck to my wrists feels a flex away from snapping.

“Do what you want, go back upstairs if you like. But I’m not leaving yet.”

To prove her point she goes right through the door, taking her light with her. Tension rises in my chest as the glow fades a step at a time and I’m left wrestling with the two options I’d been given. Which, upon contemplation, boil down to do what she wants, or stumble in the dark.

To hell with that.

I shuffle in careful steps backwards until my heel bumps the last step I’d come off of. I may not be able to see my hand in front of my face, but that didn’t mean I’m stuck sucking up her hastiness. The stairs coming down have been linear, so long as I feel my way up the railing and go slow, I should be able to get back up top.

The second I feel the slat bump my Achilles, I turn and grasp my guide rail and begin the walk up. My ears are perked for every little sound, such as the faint squeak of the wood straining under my vice-grip. It hadn’t seemed such a loud sound during the decent, but suddenly I’m certain it’s screaming through the mysterious cavern. How big is this thing? Clearly deeper than that first landing - why aren’t there lights in here, if the family’s been mining?

…are there bats? The idea of planting my hand in the droppings of a ceiling-affixed inhabitant has me jerking my palm away.

I roll my shoulders, trying to ease the bunching tension between them. It doesn’t work. Neither do the slow, full breaths I pull against the restrictive tug in my chest. How many steps have I gone up? How many had we gone down total?

My foot slips again, knee cap crashing to the edge of the same step that had betrayed me. A jolt lances up from the point of impact, and I cuss my way through the initial blooming swell of pain. The railing wobbles as I heft myself up, pushing outward further than I expect.

I feel in small, cautious taps past my perceived stability and find air and more air, and nothing even vaguely rocklike.

Fuck.

I don’t know how long I remain crouched on the step. My leg isn’t even the problem, though she’s still unhappy with her recent treatment.

‘You see well in the dark’

I lift my hand in front of my face. Nothing. Just darkness. I let it fall to the slats and consider waiting until Cassy comes back. It seems smarter than potentially falling to my death because she took the only flashlight. Or planting my hand in something, which I’ve been lucky enough to avoid.

I think.

It’s generally a quiet cave. The drip of water patters uneven rhythms from every direction. Some tap against stone while others rain more insistently onto some pool. There’s no rushing sound, so I can only assume that means the water isn’t any kind of river…I think? Maybe I should have explored these caves more last time I was out this way.

Like I could have predicted I’d be down here. I’d never had a reason until Drew had been drawn into this mess.

Drew.

I don’t know how long she’s been gone. I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here. It can’t be but a few minutes, right?

Something tickles along my shoulder and I swipe at it, a soft body the size of a marble rolling away under my hand. I rocket to my feet and brush over my shoulders, breaths puffing out faster than I can draw them in. I find nothing else.

Sitting here no longer sounds like the option.

I want to start back up, but remembering my boss stops me from pushing on. If she trips, breaks something, or gets into some kind of trouble, this entire trip will have been pointless. So instead I once more pick my blind way down the stairs with a drum line going off in my chest every single step.

I don’t want to touch the railing in a way I hadn’t worried about on the way down. But I want to fall down these steps even less, so I place the tips of my fingers to feel my way along. The method is slower than a water gun race between two drunks - at least this time no one’s chuckling and aiming at me on ‘accident’- but I find the landing she’d left me at.

The spot between my shoulder blades itches like a mother fucker. Scratching doesn’t dislodge anything, which offers a small sense of consolation after mystery bug on the shoulder.

Fuck, I hate this cave.

The drop had been to the right. I shuffle a precautionary step the left. What had been to the left- a wall? Had I seen? Shit, I don’t remember.

Okay, not too far to the left either.

“Ca-“ I pause- she’d said no names, right? “Samantha!”

If I think calling a name now relegated to Nick-at-night will summon her, I’m proven wrong instantly.

“I should have known.”

That’d be too easy.

But she should at least call back, right? I press my lips together and strain my ears. I don’t hear anything but water and the yawning silence of the cave itself. No voices - maybe whispering? Probably my mind playing tricks on me in the dark. Like seeing shadows move within shadows in here- dark is dark, and I’m psyching myself out.

Right.

I pick my way forward with arms out. Every step is tapped with my toes before I trust the ground and step forward. I hear dragging, though I’m not sure if that’s my shuffling steps, their echo, or something else. It’s behind me. Or maybe to the right?

No. No, there’s stairs down to the right.

It has to be an echo.

My wide-arm shuffle finally yields the far cave wall. The stone is rough and jagged when my fingers make contact. I jerk my hands back, shaking out my legs. I need to walk or run off the charge or…something. But nope, we’re looking for the most stubborn woman in the universe.

I call for her new alias again and receive more silence.

I shuffle to my left, tapping my fingers carefully along the wall to find the opening.

This is stupid. This is damned stupid.

Coming in here had been stupid. Why had I gone along with this shit? I should have stayed my happy ass upstairs- I don’t know shit about caving, but one flashlight seems underprepared.

And still here we’d gone.

Something tickles over my fingers and up my wrist. I jerk my hand back, shaking it and swiping at it with the calm of a man on fire. When I’m satisfied whatever it was is dislodged, I shuffle back and forth on my feet and sweep at my arm again at the faintest tickle. Nothing but the chill of the air starting to set into my skin.

There’s a bark that sounds faintly like her voice.

“Sam?”

One pregnant beat.

Two.

Nothing.

“Sam, are you alright?”

Another beat.

One more after that.

Still nothing.

Dammit.

I jam my hands into my pockets, wanting to do anything but touch another damn thing in this prison. My fingers brush chain, and I’m reminded of the pendant that, so far, seems to be asleep on the job. If it could produce a pair of gloves or a Delorian, it would a ton more helpful.

But it’s just some kind of metal.

Lacking a better option, I pull the trinket free and wrap the chain around my wrist once before pinching the remaining length between my thumb and forefinger. I shuffle a hair closer to the wall I’d been feeling along and swing the pendant until I hear and feel it ‘plink’ against stone.

I might as well be fending off a flamethrower with a piece of paper, but it’s better than another round of ‘guess what’s crawling on you in the dark.’ Eventually the pendant hits nothing. The toe test proceeds in sliding steps that I don’t like on a surface as slick as this. An inch, then tapping - the floor holds as I set my foot down.

It’s like picking through one of the old warehouses I’d hidden out in as a kid; only difference is I knew what to expect living in those. This forgotten tunnel to hell is a mystery of unknown life.

Again I try her fake name, this time there’s a call back. Couldn’t say what the word is, but it’s her voice for sure. So I swing the chain and make like the fiercest of snail warriors on a rescue mission.

There’s a glow, finally, around a turn to the left.

I exhale, moving more easily around the outlined corner, which leads to another set of stairs. A solid, shadowed figure moves a foot in front of my face and I stop to prevent a head on collision.

I’m about to chew Cassy out, when I realize that there is no light - it’s just as dark in this corridor as the stairway down had been. I can’t perceive a thing more here than I had there. I look back, then forward to where I’d been stopped.

“…Samantha?”

Nothing.

The chain bites into my fingers, metal soaking up the heat from my hand and cycling it back to me. I test this wall like I tested the others. The chain seems to warm farther, but touches nothing.

“Bitch, you’re not funny.”

And it’s not, whatever the joke is has gotten old. My pulse is thundering in my ears when I take the step to swat her with the pendant- it’s the kindest option in my mind just now- and meet air.

Two more swings of arm.

Just.

Air.

Cool. Cool. I’m jumping at shadows.

I push forward and down the stairs with the worst way to feel out a cave in the history of spelunking.

“Sam, I swear to someone’s fucking god, when I find you...” I’m gonna drag her out by her hair.

I get an answer, which sounds suspiciously like my name, but I can’t be sure. She’d said not to use them, though.

‘Nothing collects names for no reason.’

It’s not a good time to remember that conversation.

I hear something clatter across stone and finally see another glow around a bend to my right. I take the chance that this one is real, and find her mini-maglite illuminating a jagged rock wall.

Fucking finally.

I pocket the necklace once more- the chain already slid off once in the bath. If I lose it on this discount Dig Dug adventure, I don’t know if Drew will forgive me.

I grab the light and turn it forward. Cassy is on her belly, head and shoulders jammed in an opening that looks just a hair too small.

“Finally. Can you help me, now?”

Her voice is muffled, but I understand the question just fine. It’s the tone that I’m looking at sideways.

“How the fuck do you and E do what you tell me you’ve done, but you decide to come in here with one flashlight and no damned supplies?” I stuff the light in my back pocket and come to stand by her legs. “How did you even get in there?”

“I folded my shoulders in. Grab my legs and pull, dammit.”

I should leave her here.

The thought forms, settles, and if I’m being honest it sounds like a weight lifted. The thought that follows suggests that the first thought isn’t a good one to have.

I draw a slow breath.

One, Drew. Two, In spite of life’s best attempts to the contrary, I have a decent enough moral compass. Three, seeing her in distress bothers me - it scrapes at my brain like a screwdriver etching a permanent lesson into a chalkboard. Four. She does that scrunchy thing with her nose. Five, I don’t want to be that kind of person.

Five does it.

“Hello?!”

I hold on to five like a lifeline.

“Can you get your knees beneath you at all?”

“If I could get leverage, I wouldn’t be freaking out.” She answers.

Five.

Five.

Five.

“Fine.” I position myself to grasp her by the hips. To give her credit, she uses her limited range of motion to lift them as she feels me adjust my grip. “I’m gonna count down from three. On one, exhale and scrunch your shoulders in, when I say zero, I’m gonna pull.”

There’s a hum that I assume is agreement, because she’s got exactly zero room to say anything else. So the countdown begins, and on zero I pull like I promised, she yelps, but we gain an inch.

“That fucking hurts.”

“I bet.” What did she think would happen if she crawled in there?

It takes three more rounds, but finally we tug her free of the hole. I pull out the flashlight to give her a look over. Her shirt is torn at the shoulders, and her own bandana is gone. The skin that shows is scraped and smeared with red and dirt.

“Thanks.” She says, reaching back into the hole she just came out of and produces the lost headwear and a necklace. “E was here, this is hers. Can you help me up?”

I do, because I’m a saint.

And also because I want to get the fuck out of here, thanks.

I keep the flashlight when she sticks out her hand.

“Tasha-“

“My turn.” I turn and start back the way we came. “For every reason I shouldn’t have to explain, I’m leaving and taking the light with me.”

“No, we’re not leaving yet!”

I stop and look back at her with the smoldering ashes of my spent patience.

“Yes. We are.”

She shakes the necklace at me.

“She was here, did you not hear me?”

“No, actually.” I slide my free hand into my pocket, toying with the coin. It’s still warm and I focus on that to distract myself from the fire trying to burn out of my chest and mouth. “I called. And called. And I have no idea how long you called back, but I didn’t hear shit til I got down those stairs. You’re fucking lucky, because my ass was halfway up and out before I decided to come make sure you didn’t get yourself fucking killed.”

Do I omit the bug freak outs? Yes, yes I do.

She finally moves, and I know she’s gonna reach for the light the second she gets to arms length.

Nope.

I turn and resume walking.

“If you’d just come with me in the first place, none of that would have happened. You’re here to watch my back, remember?”

“I remember you saying we would check the outside-“ I clutch the pendant until the sides bite into my hand.

Truce. We called a truce.

Goddamn do I need a drink.

“Nevermind. I’m hungry. You’re hurt. I’m leaving.”

I march my happy ass right back up the steps, stopping periodically to make sure she’s not left flailing up these things in the dark. Once back in the shed, I shove the maglite back at her and wait in silence until she’s locked both doors.

“If she’s dead when we find her, I’m blaming you.”

She marches down the not-mountain and I follow, without body checking her down the dangerously steep slope. That sort of tumble would break things.

Like I said.

I’m a saint.

Prompt #2057

"I should have known."

[lilliths-story-studio]

Morning rolls around with nothing more dangerous than the muggy, July air attempting to suffocate anything in need of oxygen. Sweat slicks my back as I sit up, wondering why Thomas’s love of the outdoors couldn’t have allowed for air conditioning.

Sitting up reminds me of where I am, glancing first to my left and the securely closed door, then to my right, where a squared kitchen table looks into the darkened kitchen itself.

I push to my feet, spotting my blanket through still-fuzzy vision. The offending mass of brown wool has been flung to the floor a foot from the couch, and for the life of me I can’t imagine why I’d thought I’d want the damned thing.

I have no idea, but I need a shower before I peel off my own skin in disgust.

I grab my backpack and push through the bedroom door. The bathroom lay along the wall to the right, but my attention’s caught on the bed in the middle. Her frame is flung across the mattress, body twisted in the grey sheets. A spot of mussed blue has tangled free of her black, satin bonnet. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that thing stay put all night.

Right.

I don’t stomp or slam the door as I move to the shower. Partially because I was taught some manners between the wolves and streetrats that raised me, and partially because I need a few quiet moments to put all of this together.

I run the shower colder than normal, because it’s ninety degrees in this damned cabin, then throw myself under the spray. I invent twelve new cuss words in the first minute, but inevitably I bitch and temperature adjust my way to acceptance, and then back to my current predicament. In the light of day, last night is feeling more like a bad trip than a memory. I’ll defend til I’m hoarse that I shouldn’t have been dragged into her mess, but none of my creative insults or sour reticence has gotten us anywhere but frustrated with one another.

If I accept her premise that not-Bigfoot in the woods has her well-intentioned-but-clearly-suicidal cousin, and some whisper-monster-boogie man is going to try and steal my soul in the night, then pissing her off every step of the way is a poor strategy towards self preservation. Which leaves genuinely swallowing this absolute cluster of a situation, playing nice, and getting shit done.

I do not need a beer at what-the-fuck AM. I can want it, but I don’t need it.

Something metal clatters to the white porcelain, and I look down in time to spot a coin sliding for the popped drain.

Drew’s charm.

I slam the plug lever down in time to catch the end of the chain. I can barely grasp the lobster clasp between my fingers, but I manage to grab securely enough to lift the lever and fish the necklace back out. There’s a pull of resistance when I first tug, but I work my fingers into the hole to grasp more of the chain. The metal is slick with water and soap, but a few inches at a time I work it up. Along with several wet, stringy strands of chestnut hair that have tangled themselves about the chain and my fingers.

My nose wrinkles and my stomach flips. I jam my hand and the chain under the shower spray to scrub away at slimy tangle clinging to me.

“Some protective charm, you can’t keep yourself out of trouble.”

That creeping, tingling crawl skitters from each stringy point of contact to swarm my fingers and over my arms as I pull, pluck, and clear the chain. My chest is tight and my breath is short, the ringing in my ear is back, but I’ve got nearly all of the hair off and I just want to be done.

I just want this whole affair to be done.

“You wanna do your job after this nasty shit? You better thank Drew, I’dda tossed you in the trash.”

I stop.

I’m talking to a fucking necklace.

I toss the thing onto the sink counter and push through the rest of scrubbing away sweat and dead skin. Twenty minutes later I’ve got my head on enough to handle the day, fresh clothes to swelter in, and a runaway necklace stuffed into the pocket of my light-wash jeans.

I can’t bring myself to put it back on, I can still feel the hair between my fingers.

A rich and nutty aroma has invaded the cabin proper when I shuffle out. Cassy’s still in her good-night gear. Her hair’s caught in a slightly reformatted bun similar to last nights, while a familiar, oversized, grey Felix-the-cat T-shirt hangs off of her shoulders. She notices me, blowing a snort of laughter as she spots my tank top.

Black, fitted, and sporting the same black and white feline that’s splashed across her chest.

“So that’s still a thing.”

“Some things are eternal.” I shrug, tossing my bag back on the couch and padding across the hardwood. There are already two mugs out. Old blue and white freckled things into which she pours the steaming nectar of life. She doesn’t ask before she adds enough cream to the first mug to question the point of the coffee itself, then three teaspoons of sugar. When she does speak, it’s a single word as she pushes the mixed drink across the dark, wooden counter.

“Truce?”

Steam tickles my chin and nose as I lift and contemplate the cup, then the woman who made it.

“I didn’t poison it this time.” Her tone is flat, eyes still focused on the drink she stirs.

“I appreciate the accommodation. That stuff was starting to mess with my sleep and digestion.”

“That’s typically the design.”

The ghost of her left dimple teases me with an appearance, and I pointedly look into my cup.

“I don’t like how you handled this-“

“You didn’t leave me much choice, Tasha.”

“Disagree, but that’s moot.” Neither of us is moving on that point. “But truce.”

I want to get out of here this century.

I take a long sip of my coffee, hazelnut and sugary bliss making me forget for a moment where I am and with whom. When I set the cup down she’s still watching me.

“Thank you.” She says with a soft smile, then takes a long drink of her own coffee. She hums her delight, then grimaces as she glances towards the stacked, yellow fridge. “I’m afraid I didn’t remember any groceries aside from the coffee.”

“Caffeine and air, what else do you need?”

“Dorito’s and Dr. Pepper.”

“So all of your spell books are covered in that Nacho Dust then?”

“Better than Funyun powder.”

“I’m sorry that you think so.” Another sip of my coffee. “So, what, grocery shopping? I thought we were hunting big foot.”

That look from yesterday is back.

“I thought we put the Bigfoot thing to bed.”

“Do you know what has her?”

Her lips press together.

“So you don’t know that it’s not Bigfoot.”

“Nevermind teaching you to ward, the woods can have you.” She sighs. “But then I’m stuck watching my own back.”

“We all make choices.”

“Some people make them difficult.” She narrows her eyes in a mock glare. “And then they drink your coffee.”

I take a long, exaggerated slurp and smile wide over the rim.

“Can you stop being insufferable long enough to grab something from my car?”

Hazelnut and Deja vu make an interesting combination.

“It’s weird, cuz I see both legs holding you up fine.” I might overplay the checking of her legs - which are pale as moonlight in spite of all the time she spends outdoors- because when I come back up to her face, the glare has lost a beat of its humor.

“You know I’m shaky in the mornings. Before a supply run, I want to head up to the mine entrance and check out the area while we’ve got good daylight. Between the drive and the bickering that’s bound to happen, I don’t want to bank on getting groceries and getting back before dark.” She nods toward the door. “I only grabbed my backpack last night, but there’s a kit in my trunk. We need to seal your energy before we go walking into the woods.”

Eventually that whole sentence won’t sound batshit.

“Gimme your keys.”

I down the rest of my coffee, pull on a pair of fresh, white socks and shove my feet into the same worn, black sneakers while she runs to the bedroom. It’s about time to replace the pair, assuming I need to worry about something like shoes at the end of this adventure.

When she reappears, she jingles the keys before me with a bunny scrunch to her nose.

“Thanks.”

I roll my eyes, but take them and head for the door. I recall the soft thud - which literally anything could have caused - for a moment as I grip the handle that’s finally returned to gold.

Or had, given it marks right back up when I grasp it. It’s less the handle and more the chain lock dangling like a pendulum that catches my attention. My brows knit and I move to flip the deadbolt to find that it, too, is already open.

I look back to the kitchen, where my ex is rinsing cups in the sink and is humming something under her breath. Probably Garbage, knowing her.

“Tasha?” She’s finished the cups and pauses next to the counter. “You good? Is something wrong?”

“Did you walk out for yoga stretches or whatever nonsense you do this morning?”

It’s her turn to roll her eyes.

“It’s not nonsense, and no. Why?”

Is she fucking with me? The question is clawing its way up my throat, but we just reached some kind of truce. The days just started, and I’m already too tired for the argument that asking would likely spark.

“Curious.”

I let myself out, enjoying the mild morning. A pair of cardinals dance by, one bright red bird chasing another, and the several dozen other species that call these woods home chirp and twitter their way through the early hours. Dew clings to grass in pinpricks and beads, and there’s the building weight of ozone on the air. Clean, earthy, and charged with promise of rain on the horizon.

Fantastic.

The trunk yields a small, army green duffle bag that I shoulder. There’s a faint skitter on the rocks and gravel of the drive behind me, but nothing other than wind when I jerk around to look.

I’m jumping at the breeze and bargaining with jewelry- all before ten in the morning.

Back inside, Cassy gestures for me to drop the bundle on the couch and digs out a small cosmetic case and a black handkerchief. She drags me back to one of the three bar stools sitting at the counter and pulls out combs, small brown bottles, and a small packet of elastics.

“I expected a cauldron and a broom. Or maybe a bouffant and seasonal allergies.”

Again with that look.

“This isn’t a movie or tv show.” She plucks up one of the bottles. “I’m going to braid your hair using a few oils and charms. Properly warding and sealing requires feeling your own energy flow and directing it conciously - I don’t have time to teach you to do that right now.”

“So you’re going to braid my hair instead?”

What?

Slender fingers settle firmly atop my scalp and she turns my head none-too-gently to face forward.

“Stay.”

“Bark.” Sarcasm aside, the careful carding of her hand through my hair delights in sparks down my spine and along my shoulders. I hear another of the bottles being plucked from the counter, followed shortly by the friction of rubbing hands and the blossoming of something earthy, woodsy, and a little floral on the air.

“Braiding may sound silly, but a lot of cultures and mythologies use them for protection.” Her fingers comb through my hair, and the pleasant tingles sing and sparkle along my nerve endings. “The oil is a mix of herbs and essences that will help reinforce that protection. While I work, I want you to try to visualize any kind of barrier around you- a lot of people use white light.”

“So…what, the yoga hippies are onto something?” I ask with a laugh.

My scalp starts to tingle from the roots where the oil’s been worked in. Is that supposed to happen?

“Yeah, actually.” She starts separating and combing. “Anyone can move their energy around, and anyone can learn to seal it. It’s an important skill to have- you don’t have to be able to do ‘woo woo shit’ to be a snack for something that feeds on emotions and energy.”

“Sounds scary.” Did that sound condescending?

“It’s super common. Or at least, I see them a lot.” She pauses. “Anyway, once we get this done we can check out the mine entrance and then head into town for a grocery run.”

The tingling in my scalp has grown almost tight, and it’s started to travel down the back of my neck. I have no idea about her light, all I’ve got is the back of my eyelids and her fingers pulling chunks of my hair into her weave.

“So, is this just another normal Tuesday for you?‘My cousins missing, vampire shadows everywhere and, ope, Timmy fell into hell and this time the dog said fuck it. Oh well, at least it’s not a Monday.”

The back of my neck gets a flick and I jerk away.

“Focus on your white light. We’re already cutting corners to save daylight, at least lift up your half of this bridge.”

I suppose she’s got a point. As she’s worked on my hair, that restrictive sort of buzz under my skin has spread over my shoulders. Curious, I try to picture this bright light - where is it supposed to be coming from? Me? Her? Felix?

I decide on Felix.

I imagine him with those wide ass eyes glowing like beacons, which in hindsight seems more threatening than comforting. But fuck it, this cat hasn’t let me down yet, so I imagine that light just growing until it’s a full, glowing orb that takes my whole self in its imaginative center.

The tingle from my neck blends with this warm, expansive light. Or I think it’s warm? That could be the boiler kicking on in the sky and making every living thing on the planet suffer.

“If you’d stayed, I could have taught you.”

I don’t realize that she’d dropped the braid until she says it. It’s low, and almost lamenting. I open my eyes, waiting with fingers tapping my thigh as she ties the bandana into place. The second her hands fall away, I push off the stool.

“All sealed up?” I turn to look at her and my gut squirms - it’s the first time her gaze has been this soft in years.

Mayday.

“Yeah.” She shakes her head and then makes a point of organizing her supplies back into the pouch. “Yeah, you’re good.”

“Perfect. I’ll let you…” I wave generally at the mess of supplies while I inch into the living space. “Thanks for the braid.”

She hums and zips the pouch.

“I’ll meet you outside.”

I make for the door like I’d been given orders. I just want to get to this hell mouth and then get breakfast. Really, I’m only hasty because I’m starving and impatient.

Its not like I’m running.

Next Post

“So, is this just another normal Tuesday for you?”

[lilliths-story-studio]

I hate her damn car.

It smells the same way she does, cloyingly sweet and everywhere in this confined space. Her navy curls have been piled into a messy bun, and all four foot, eleven inches of her is perched at the edge of her seat. Her adjustments to reach the pedals make me comfortable as a cat in a bath.

“I don’t want to hear it.”

“I didn’t say anything.” I adjust against the discount-velvet seat, looking pointedly out the window.

Midnight had rolled into one and now hangs fifteen minutes shy of the second hour. Soft moonlight seems brighter than it should be, silver rippling over the patchwork of treetops that blanket near every undeveloped inch of these hills.

“You think loud.” She grumbles and I freeze.

Can she actually read my mind? Distaste bubbles from my stomach to my throat. No…no, too much wouldn’t have happened if that was the case. The air floods my lungs anew and I look back to find her just watching me.

“Are you even here?”

“Just trying not to choke on the gallon of perfume you soaked the car in.” I nod towards the road. “You wanna look forward, or do you just woo woo the car to and from hell.”

“Are you going to be like this the whole time?”

“Good chance.”

“What a wonder that I let you go.”

“I think that rope unraveled from both ends, sugar. Let’s be real.” She doesn’t have anything to say, and I have no interest in awkward silence. “So I’ll be real with you, I haven’t processed anything for the last hour or so. How the fuck did Bigfoot end up with your cousin?”

“Bigfoot?” I’m smarter than she thinks I am, the way she’s looking at me right now. But damned if I can remember that through the squirming of my stomach. “That’s what you got from our conversation?”

“I got a headache from our conversation, Cassy. What I didn’t get was anything that made actual sense.”

She shakes her head.

“You remember we told you to stay outta the woods at night?”

“Yep. Lots of times. You seemed a reasonable bunch until those trees were involved.” Or I started noticing holes in their stories.

“It’s because the wilderness in this area is…odd. There’s a lot of tales that get told about these woods and a lot more that don’t. After Evelyn’s friend went missing, she started looking for the stories that no one wrote down, for names no one was supposed to know.”

The car slows its roll over an old, iron bridge. Cassy pointedly presses her lips together and shakes her head as I open mine to speak.

It’s the ringing in my ear and the swirling in my gut more than her comically exaggerated moves that still my tongue. A skittering of nerves fire off like ants dancing down my skin, the sensation swelling and then abating as we reach and pass the midway point of the bridge.

It’s only once we’ve rounded two bends in the road and left the eerie threshold several miles in the rear view that the last of the ants falls away and Cassy releases a breath.

“What the hell was that?”

“Something you would have noticed four years ago if you’d ever been sober enough to connect to your nerve endings-“

“How many fucking times are you going to fish that shit up?“

“I can’t have you and your love of the bottle causing problems, Tasha.”

“The bottle I don’t fucking have on me? You came to me, remember?”

She shakes her head.

“If it’s not a problem, then it’s not a problem.”

“Then stop bringing it up.” I tap a-shave-and-a-haircut against the meager ledge intended to serve as an arm rest. “And tell me what just happened. I don’t remember any of the folktales out this way.”

“There wouldn’t be any for whatever that was - it’s newer. The natives that grew up here don’t interact with it, and they don’t have a name they’ll share for it. Say it’s something all the new folk have summoned in the last twenty years they’ve been moving out here. It’s making the place sick.”

“You passed all of your science classes, right?” I knew she had- I’d attended her graduation and congratulated her on the special-snowflake red sash that had signified something to do with super good grades.

“Did you?” It’s the sniff at the end that really sells the dig.

“Well enough for a good enough.” I flash her a wide smile and she ticks her disgust in the back of her throat.

“We haven’t named it - E and I just know we don’t use names near the bridge. It collects them and whispers them in the night.” She shakes her head. “I’m not entirely sure why yet.”

“That’s not too bad. It just says names?”

Another cutting look.

“Nothing collects names for no reason. Don’t be careless.”

“You never worried about it before.”

“Grand Junctions so far from its territory that I’m not worried. You’ll notice we were always silent or listening to music when we passed this bridge…” she trails off. Come to think of it, we had typically been out of sorts with one another anytime we drove in or out of the area. Had she just been stirring the pot on purpose, then? “Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to have a very big sphere of influence. Did you notice it drop off?”

“Like itchy water rolling off my skin?”

She presses her lips together for a second.

“Itchy water?” Up a note- she’s laughing at me.

“Get bent, Samantha. Was that it or not?”

“Yep.” She pops the ‘p’ and then does a shit job of suppressing her giggles.

We slow and turn up a slender gravel road marked with a single wooden sign for Forsythia Farm. The wood itself is a light enough wash that the black letters are legible as we roll by in the dark. The handwriting would be a nicer touch if both of the hooks had been securely attached. As it stands, the sign dangles from a single point and waves like a broken arm.

I love this.

“I thought we were going to Grand Junction.”

“Not until we have her back.” She shakes her head, eyes darting about as the treeline encroaches closer to the road on either side. “My parents already told me once to drop the issue. If they realize I’m going looking for her…I won’t be getting back out of that town.”

“You know you’re a grown ass adult, right?”

“Don’t start.”

“Just pointing out facts.”

“Some of us care if we disappoint the people we love.”

I bite the inside of my cheek.

“Sounds like a drag. Can’t relate.”

The car slams to a halt, and it’s my turn to compulsively check the inky dark eating everything past the first, closest couple of trunks. Is she really just gonna sit here after telling me how friendly these trees aren’t?

“If we do this fighting the whole time, we’re going to get killed, and your friend is going to die tied to that lot.”

Fuck, I hate it when shit she says makes sense.

“Now, do you want to try starting again? This time pretend you’re an adult.”

“Stop taking shots if you don’t want them fired back.”

“I’m trying to get this over with. Do you want to help or make it harder?”

The car starts moving again and we wind our way up from the foot of the Osage hills - about as presumptuously tall as a thousand piles of rocks can be, yet technically not a mountain range because of measurements and science I don’t understand. The drive splits to the left, where the farm sits settled atop a cleared plateau. The property itself holds only a small, dark, wooden cabin and a large, red barn several yards back from it.

Splitting to the right and away from the property, a set of worn tire tracks leads into the thicket of woods that dress the next sloping ascent.

“So where’s here?”

“It’s a farm that Thomas’s family owns and the place she was supposed to be staying before she vanished.”

“And no one thinks it’s weird his place is the last she was seen? That guy always set off my shit-o-meter.”

“Maybe you’re more connected than I thought.” She mutters more to herself before she pushes open the door. “Come on.”

What the fuck did that mean?

I snag my bag from the back seat while she digs hers out of the trunk, then follow her to the door of the cabin.

“Thomas didn’t do anything.” She says, jingling a silver key from her pocket. “Matter of fact, he’s the only other person who seemed worried when she didn’t come back.”

“Not even her parents?”

Cassy shakes her head.

“She’s been a hopeless nomad since she left for college. Nearly every weekend she and her friends were off on some kind of adventure and she didn’t always tell people where she was going. So they just assume she skipped out for summer break. Aside from Thomas, I can’t say if anyone else knew about the shit she and I got up to in those woods.”

I pause.

“Why does Thomas know? Isn’t he connected to the mayors office for that town? I thought you couldn’t trust anyone there with the whole witch thing.”

She rolls her eyes as she unlocks the cabin.

“A sickly, fourty year old man is hardly backup.”

“No, but he’s a prominent member of the tiny community your parents are so worried about. Surely his co-sign-“

“Would make people question his sanity at best. At worst, they call for a demonstration, and history tells us how kindly the aftermath treats the truth.”

My teeth click shut and she shoulders the door open.

“Has he been here since?”

“No, he doesn’t want to take any visible action or make anyone worry- folks out here are fond of their stories and they spook easy.” Cassy pockets the keys and flips on the lights to reveal the interior. “Shut the door. We’re not going out tonight- you need any kind of warding before we go any further in.”

“Warding?”

“Just shut the door.”

I do what she says, because I don’t have a good reason not to. She tosses her black, studded backpack onto the grey and brown couch.

“You’re like me- at least a little bit.” She says as she plops next to her bag to start unlacing her boots. “Never could figure out how much - it’s hard to channel drunk if you’ve never accessed your abilities before. The way that learning any new skill would be hard drunk.”

I don’t bark at her, because really what’s the point. Instead I drop my own grey bag onto the sandy hardwood and motion for her to continue.

“If you really have been sticking to beer, it might be easier. I don’t have time to teach you to do shit but ground and seal your energy, but that will make one less thing I have to worry about.”

“What help am I supposed to be, again? Right now it just sounds like extra work.”

“I remember you being pretty scrappy when the situation called.”

“Those were other drunks - not whatever hellspawn E went on a playdate with.”

“Then I guess we’d better stick with your other specialty- sneaking around.”

“I’m not the one living a double life.” I’m doing an admirable job of keeping my tone low and my hands busy playing with the new pendant hanging about my throat. “So you wanna try that again, sugar?”

“You’re light on your feet, see well in the dark and locked doors are a suggestion. Get as mad as you want. You’re the one who decided to become a cat burglar carnie.”

“Those are two separate entries on my resume, and I don’t appreciate the stereotype you’re perpetuating by conflating them.”

She yanks her boots free one at a time and drops them to the floor with a thud. Eye contact holds steady through theatrically exaggerated movements, and I’ve decided to borrow the Cheshire grin that Jax uses to piss me off when I’m in this same mood.

“My point is I want to sneak around trouble and steal E back - ideally avoiding any sort of fight.”

“Sneak where? The woods?”

“Close. The mines.” She nods to the door and wilderness beyond. I expect her to roll on but instead she stands and moves closer to the door. The otherwise golden handle has a sooty dark handprint where I’d pushed it shut. I turn my palms up- perfectly clean.

“So…what does that mean?”

“That you’re new to his home.” She turns back towards me. “Lots of things can take on the face of a friend - most of them are tricksters at best and malevolent at worst.” A small grin. “Black typically means murderous intent.”

I roll my eyes.

“I don’t want to kill you-“

“The magic speaks louder than your protests. But I know you love your friends, so I’m not worried about it.” And clearly she’s not, given she marches right back by me to investigate the other three rooms. “Kitchen, bath, and a single bed trope.”

“I’ll take the couch.”

“I don’t recommend separating until we’re done here. It’s hard enough to ward one room, let alone two.”

“I thought the cabin was warded. Magic lying door handle?”

“Magic doesn’t lie, but people do.” She waves me towards the bedroom and I cross my arms. “Seriously? You think the bridge was it?”

“What’s going to happen, Cassy? I’ve slept out in these hills before-“

“Slept walked, Tasha.”

And it’s true, but it hasn’t been an issue these past three years.

“I told you, it stopped.” I tilt my head. “Is there a reason I should be worried?”

“It wouldn’t matter, you’re not going to listen. Sleep on the couch. I hope it’s enlightening.”

She closes the door behind her and I contemplate the chance she isn’t full of shit. Looking at the couch once more I huff to myself and bang on the door. Whatever had motivated me to swallow my pride and knock dies a swift death when she opens the door with the most self-satisfied of smiles and a flourishing wave to the interior.

“I need a blanket and a pillow.”

Her smile drops and I wonder for a moment if I’ll ever enjoy painting it on rather than ripping it away again. The next moment I march past her to grab the aforementioned items and sashay my ass right back out with a determination born more of stubborn will than better sense.

This time when the door closes there’s a zip of some kind that seemingly flashes through the slats of wood. I lay my hand on the surface and find it hot to the touch. Curious, I move my hand to the knob and a lancing pain sears up my arm to my elbow.

I hear her giggling behind the door.

“Good Night, Tasha.”

“Go to hell, Cassy.”

Satisfied with our good-nights, I throw my wad of brown, fuzzy blanket and single, floral cased pillow onto the nightmare of a couch and eyeball the door. The black marring the knob hasn’t faded, and when I approach to drag a finger over the area of discoloration, the smudge spreads where the pad travels.

A small, soft thud on the other side of the wood jolts me from my study of the phenomenon. I decide it best to double check all of the locks and put myself to bed, before all of this woo woo talk and folksy, ghost story bullshit can steal my sleep as well as my better sense.

They’re just woods, for Pete’s sake.

Next Post

"I'll be real with you, I havent processed anything for the past hour or so."

[lilliths-story-studio]

Drew opens his door on the second knock. Jax is still in there with him, evidenced by the bark of my name and demand to ‘get my ass inside and make it make sense.’ I give one look back to Cassy, who’s lighting a new stick and watching us.

“Yeah, I can spare a couple minutes.” I follow Drew back into the enclosed space and elect to hover just inside the door. Much as I wanna make her wait and piss her off, that only hurts our goal.

“I’m going.” I say to Drew. “I guess Bigfoot has her cousin, and unless we find her, you’re stuck here.”

“Bigfoot?” Jax asks.

I shrug.

“Fuck, I don’t know. Something in those spooky ass woods.”

“Do ya’ll hear yourselves?!” Jax is doing a much better job of holding his temper than he used to. It’s doubtful that the rest of the county even heard him. “Bigfoot?”

“Look, I don’t have time to hang out for another demonstration. I just wanted to let you know what was going on.”

“Better than sneaking out like you did the last time you went with her.” I duck my head, looking anywhere but the old man. “Don’t come back crying this time.”

“Are you serious?” Jax waves off our leader and takes the step and a half towards me. “Tasha-“

“Drew’s telling the truth - she’s a literal witch.” It had just been beer, right? “I’m still coming to grips with it, so I’m sorry, you’re gonna have to spiral to acceptance on your own. For now, I only know one way to undo this…and that’s to play whatever game she’s cued up.”

“You think she’s lying?” Drew asks.

“I think she’s been hiding things since the day I met her, and I think that behavior doesn’t stop overnight.” I shrug. “But she’s also right, I don’t know anyone else like her, do you?”

For a moment, my boss says nothing. Then, he stands and moves to a cabinet next to his bed. Jingling and clicking proceed his turn to come towards me. Jax shuffles to the side, because Drew’s build and the confined space don’t give him a lot of options. A chain drops from his hand, a golden pendant swinging like a pendulum. Or rather, upon further inspection, a coin.

“I knew one.” He says, nodding to the piece and gesturing it towards me. “Mama - she always said there was a lot to the world I just couldn’t see.”

“Wait, your mom was a witch?” I ask. “I feel like this is one of those things you should have told me sooner.”

“Why the hell would I? I thought she’d gone ‘round the carousel.”

“I meant before I went to talk to Cassy. Like, if she might have had friends or something.”

“She did- they were all on the circuit with her until they weren’t.” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t even know where to begin looking for them now.”

He sounds so unlike himself, so lost. He doesn’t have an answer, and he so often does. I trade looks with Jax, who seems no less confused but a measure more concerned to see our leader so out of sorts.

“So what’s this, then?” I ask, gesturing to the forgotten trinket.

“An amulet she left me - it’s supposed to protect the wearer.”

“So why did you take it off. It was yours, right?”

He shakes his head.

“I don’t mess with the shit she got into - she sure didn’t choose the easy road, and I don’t believe in meddling in that direction. Only reason I kept onto it was ‘cause I know she’d want me to. If it can do you some good, I’m sure she’d like that better than collecting dust.” He presses the coin forcefully into my palm. “Take it, return it.”

Curious, I turn my palm up. A masculine face with the sharpest of beards, and some kind of plant on the back.

“What’s on it?”

He shakes his head.

“I’m afraid I never asked and she never said. She held it tight during trouble, and it always seemed to pass us by in the end.”

“Congratulations on your magic talisman- what the fuck do you mean you’re going into sketchy woods with a witch.” Jax demands, eyes flying between the two of us with half as much chill in his voice. “With your psycho ex.”

“I never called her a psycho.”

“No, I did! She’s holding a man hostage unless you survive her Bigfoot hunt. Do you hear you?” He scrubs a hand over his dark fade, an act that would see anyone else’s hands removed from their body.

“It’s not…ideal. But I’m fresh out of alternatives. You?”

“…bigfoot?”

“I fucking guess.” I shrug. “Just…help Drew with whatever cover he comes up with to keep everyone calm. I’ll work as fast as I can. But…if I’m gone longer than two weeks…” I huff a humorless laugh. “Go to Vegas. Try one of those nut job shows we pass all the time. Maybe one of them’s legit.”

“Hope for the ages.” Drew says, finally waving towards the door. “You said your goodbyes, get your shit and get out of my carnival.”

I flip him the bird and let myself back out, surprised when Jax follows me. He keeps uncharacteristically quiet while I slip into my unit, ignoring the other three inhabitants already snoring away in their bunks. I make quick work of a backpack jammed with clothes and nab my wallet on my way back out.

“You gonna follow me to her car?” I ask, turning to face my friend.

“You distract her, I’ll pop her from behind- we’ll make her let him go.”

“Sounds like a plan- can you rush her faster than she can cast?” Does she have to mumble shit like some alt-Shakespearean character, or is this more of a Bewitched situation? “Why are you so worried anyway?”

“Because I like your dumb ass and don’t want it dead.” He says.

“Oh.” I mean, I knew we’d hung out a few times. My mouth opens to a full beat of silence.

“…are you sure she didn’t break up with you? If this is your standard response time, she mighta gotten confused.”

“Shut the fuck up.” I roll my eyes. “Just help Drew. I’ll do what I can…and uh…I’ll miss you too.”

“She definitely dumped you.”

“Go to hell.”

“I might- tell me all about it after you get back and we’ll see if I wanna go with next time.” He makes a disgusted noise and pivots back towards his own unit. “I ain’t doing hugs. Bye.”

I watch him until he disappears inside, chest oddly tight. The tension doesn’t ease as I start back towards my ex, taking in the colorful tents and listening to the incessant scream of cicadas. This won’t be the last I see of the beat up cars, sun-faded rides and melting pot of lovable misfits. I won’t let it be.

Next Post

Prompt #1181

"I feel like this is one of those things you should have told me earlier."

[lilliths-story-studio]

“I told her to park away from our lot and I would send you to her.”

It’s not a direction I’ve been given, but an exhausted observation that Drew makes as we return to the carnival encampment. Just past our bunkhouse and the smattering of individual cars, trailers, and tents that create our mobile City of Broken Whimsy, Cassy’s forest green Ford Taurus sits between Drew’s tan pickup and a beat up, red SUV that Bethany will skin her alive for so much as bumping.

Bethany’s still gone with the bar crowd, but the three disasters that I had been playing cards with are gathered not but three feet from what’s apparently turning into a spectator sport. The girl in question sits defiantly at the wheel with smoke drifting out her window, looking straight at my friends who are being none too subtle with the pointing and talking.

“You should laugh, it might make her cry.” I say, coming to a stop next to Jax.

He doesn’t look at me.

“She what you were running from when you came back?”

While Bartley and Olivia had only joined our crew in the last couple of years, Jax and I had started running with Drew about the same time. We hadn’t been close in those days- he’d joined up with a few of his friends that had trickled away from this type of work by the time I’d gotten back.

“I wasn’t running.”

“You were running.” Drew cuts in. He ignores the look I shoot him, instead coming around to face the four of us.“I’m going to go to my trailer. So will everyone else standing here. And Tasha’s going to take care of business.”

That was the intention, it’s very much the reason I marched this way on Drew’s heels. My feet are less than interested in my initial intentions the second I meet her eyes through her windshield, however. Even at this distance, the impulse to back away is both omnipresent and infuriating; I hadn’t run from her, goddammit.

“What’s going on?”

I turn my focus back to Jax, who hadn’t taken the direction as readily as Olivia and Bartley.

“Something that has nothing to do with anyone but these two.” Drew says steadily, and any hint of the emotional turmoil I might have glimpsed at the edge of the treeline is buried under business-as-usual.

“He’s right.” I say, waving Jax off. “She’s the ex I left. I didn’t particularly want to talk to her, but it seems she wasn’t inclined to accept that answer.”

“So get rid of her, don’t give her what she asked for.” Jax isn’t talking to Drew, but to me.

“I’m gonna take care of it, damn.” I force the roll of my eyes. The anxious knot in my chest has pulled tighter, cutting an airy quality to my tone that I care for not at all. “Go finish your bottle or see what your roommate is up to.”

He doesn’t laugh, doesn’t take the bait.

“Ya’ll hiding something.” He says finally, looking to Drew. “It’s not like you to let her hang around.”

Drew’s shoulders square in the way they do when rank must be pulled.

“Take your pissing contest to the boss’s trailer or something.” I start towards the car and the woman in it. “I’ve got enough on my plate without your macho tug o’ war.”

Jax calls after me. I ignore the sound of my name. I’ve locked my faded grey onto her cold coffee and the only thing in my mind is bringing this to a close. Cassy unfolds from the car, a Virginia Slim sitting between her fingers as she closes the door and leans against her vehicle.

“Are you finally ready to talk?” Her tone is so goddamn reasonable.

“No, but you clearly don’t give a shit what anyone else wants.” I snort. “Ain’t a damn thing changed.”

“Like you get to say that to anyone.” She chuffs. “I can smell your breath, you know.”

“It was just beer.” Seriously, this bitch too?

She makes a sound too similar to what Drew did for my liking.

“Why are you here, Cassy?”

She doesn’t immediately answer, instead taking a long pull from her chosen vice. I use the time to check if our audience had yet dispersed, because I’ll be damned if I give her theatrics an actual reaction. Sure enough, Drew and Jax are disappearing into the boss’s quarters.

“I need your help.”

“Yep, you said that.” There’s a small, brown pebble sticking out from the otherwise endless grey and white under my feet, and I kick it away with my left foot. “And I told you no, so you cursed my boss.”

“Don’t be dramatic, It’s just a binding. I’ll lift it when I bring you back, once business has settled.”

Now I give her the dignity of restored eye contact.

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” She winces, like she’s embarrassed to be saying it. “That man doesn’t leave unless you do. I’m sorry, but my cousin is in trouble and no one believes me.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe you.”

“Do you remember Evelynn?” She looks me over. “Any of the times you were sober, anyway?”

How many times is she going to mention that?

“The one you went camping with all of the time?”

She falters.

“We weren’t camping.”

Of course they weren’t.

“She lied. Shocker.”

“We were protecting our damn home while you were too fucking gone to remember your name.”

“From what? The invasive vine you guys were losing your minds over.”

“It’s a species we still can’t identify and it’s draining the nutrients from the plants we do know belong there.” Her arms cross, jaw working as she swallows. “And no.“

She takes another long drag off of her cigarette, and I wrinkle my nose as she blows out the stream.

“When did this start?” I nod to her cancer stick.

“Your second year washing away in a bottle.” She flicks the ashes. “I just didn’t smoke around you cuz you didn’t like it. And now I don’t care.”

“I don’t seem to recall partying alone.” Because I hadn’t been. This bitch had gone toe to toe every step of the way. “But whatever. So what were you two perfect saints protecting us all from, then?”

“We’re not the only things in those woods, Tasha.” Her lips thin. “They’re much, much older than us. As are most of the inhabitants.”

“The ants and beetles?”

“The fucking trees, Tasha.” She bites. “The soil, the energy-“

“The vibes? Seriously?”

“Where the fuck do you think cryptic lore comes from?”

“The isolated and easily spooked?”

“Or the dumbass night wanderers who are lucky they don’t have stories to tell. You have no idea.” And the way she just watches me after she says it has me digging at the blank spaces from those three years.

I shake my head- I’m not letting her bullshit get to me.

“So why ask me for help?”

“Do you remember how small that town is? How open minded they aren’t to elements they don’t understand? How well do you think they’ll accept a witch among their numbers?”

She isn’t wrong- my first meeting with her parents had become a sort of onboarding for how we were expected to behave and present in the community, lest it make the locals uncomfortable. Or, the godless skies forbid, make the pair of them look bad to their peers.

No. I can’t imagine witchcraft going over well with that locale.

“That still doesn’t explain you coming here.” I cross my arms. “Why you need my help, specifically.”

“I need someone I can trust to watch my back. I have to find her, I know where she went…but I don’t know what happened or what has her.”

“You trust me to watch your back?” I raise a brow. “Did you hit your head?”

“I have collateral.” She smiles. “If I die before I lift the binding, good luck finding someone who can undo it. Do you know any other witches?”

“That’s fucked up, Cassy.”

“It wouldn’t have happened if you had just listened.” Each line has gotten more aggressive, and by this point she fair shoves her cigarette into her mouth and breaths like it’s an inhaler.

I don’t know if that’s true or not, but on the flip side, I don’t know if that’s true or not.

“I know Eve found some clue regarding a friend of hers that disappeared in those woods when we were kids. When she brought it to me…I told her the lead felt too risky, she went alone. That was two weeks ago.” When she finally looks back up at me, there’s a fire in her eyes that can only be admired or feared. “She’s my family. I have to get her back…but going alone would be suicide.”

“And what do you think I can do?”

“…more than you think.” She says softly. “Do you still sleepwalk?”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?”

“Just yes or no.”

“No. Turns out, it was stress induced.” I’d offered more sincere smiles to entitled assholes and law enforcement than I give her now. “Got rid of the problem, and got rid of the problem.”

“Finger pointing. Took all of twenty minutes, proud of your restraint.” Her smile is less genuine than mine, and it’s the first moment I consider she doesn’t want to be here any more than I want her here. “It wasn’t stress and I think you know that.”

It was stress, it had to be.

Unless it was magic?

I shake my head.

Magic? I’m a realist…but I’ve seen the proof.

“If I go with you, you release Drew, the crew, and the carnival immediately- and you don’t set foot in or around another one of their events.” Her eyes narrow and I hold up a hand. “I’m not done. If I help you fish your cousin out of whatever backwood pit of hell she’s stumbled into without dying, I want your word that you and I will never cross paths again.”

There’s a laugh from her that’s more disbelief than celebration.

“You think with our history I’d trust not to cut once your friends are free?” She shakes her head. “I’ll release them when the job is done- if we die, then I guess they’re staying here. But if we’re successful and we get to my cousin, you have my word that I’ll lift the binding and do everything in my power to never look at you again.”

“So if we fail they’re just stuck?”

“I’ve learned better than to leave you the option of failure- you’re too fond of it.” She finally drops the spent cigarette to the gravel. The chain hanging from her torn, black shorts jingles like bells as she grounds the butt under her toe. Once she’s satisfied that no glow remains, she refocuses on me and holds out her hand. “Deal?”

I grind my teeth to dust. Everything about this is too much, too big, too ridiculous…and entirely too real. I look back at the carnival.

“Fine.” What choice do I have? I smack my hand into the palm of hers, ignoring the searing shock that lances up to my elbow from the impact. “Deal.”

Now I just need to not die.

Next Post

Prompt #722

There was a fire in her eyes that could only be admired or feared.

[lilliths-story-studio]

I follow Drew to the edge of the carnival grounds because what the hell does he mean we’re staying? I don’t stomp, because I’m not a child, but I can’t deny that every bone in my body wants to demand a straight answer.

The very tree line that Jose had promised to send me sprinting towards sprawls wide right before me, darkness swallowing anything I could hope to see past the first couple lines of rich, brown bark. My boss checks to ensure I haven’t fucked off back to the bunks and maintains eye contact as he plants his palms firmly against air.

“It’s impressive mime work.” Seriously?

The look I’m treated to could melt tungsten, then he uses the leverage to push his feet back, sliding. My pulse stutters, an involuntary laugh skipping up my throat.

“You’ve been practicing.“ I clear my throat.

“Check the palms, then, Tasha.”

I do, because this is a neat trick, but it doesn’t explain why my ex-girlfriend has convinced the man to trap us here to help with her fucking problem. His palms are the same shade of white mine had been earlier in the day, when I’d been using the rope to distract myself from Cassy’s presence.

“How are you doing that?”

In the next three steps his face has come level with his palm and his nose is smashed flat in line with those hands, like leaning into a window pane.

“Do you remember Grand Junction now?”

I don’t know about the damn town he won’t leave alone, but the ringing in my ears is back.

“What’s going on, Drew.”

“Your ex.”

What?

I feel my jaw work, my brow furrow, but my eyes are still looking at his damningly flattened nose.

“Don’t you think it’s odd she didn’t bother you the last two years we’ve come through?” He uses the invisible wall to push himself back upright. Past his shoulder several yards, I watch Jax and the trio finally stumble together out of the party tent and towards the bunkhouse. “But suddenly she needs you, specifically, for help.”

“I think you confuse me with someone who cares.” The reply is automatic.

“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” Oh…oh he’s getting mad mad.

Shit.

“But I can come and go fine.”

Why can’t he? This trick can’t be real. But how do you smash your nose to your face against nothing but air? I wave my hand through what had been a solid barrier for him.

“That’s because she didn’t bind you.”

The ringing’s giving me a migraine and my stomach has begun lodging its resulting complaints in the form of a sour swirling.

“What do you mean bind?“ I shake my head.

“I mean what I just showed you Tasha. I mean unless you go the fuck home with her, I don’t get to leave.”

“Why-“

“Because you wouldn’t talk to her and I HAD to! Because that fucking witch threatened my carnival and I still tried to say no!” It’s the first time I’ve ever heard him yell at me - well, second. But I was hearing colors the last time this happened. “Tasha! What the fuck hap-“

“I told you I don’t remember!”

“Three years?? I knew you had a goddamn problem, but you don’t remember three fucking years?”

“There was nothing worth remembering!”

“How fucking convenient for you.”

Silence falls between us. I can’t catch my breath and the threat of tears is clawing its way steadily up my chest, lips twitching in directions I’ll be damned if I let them finish. But damned I may be, because my fight is a loosing one.

I look into the woods. Can I just disappear in there?

“Tasha...” The fight has drained from his voice, but I can’t look at him.

He’s seen me pathetic enough. It seems like all he’s ever seen.

Needles prickle along my skin and the water I’ve been fighting to keep in my body leaks from the corners of my eyes. I swallow the lump in my throat, then again when it aches but refuses to sink back into oblivion.

“Fine.” I don’t want to see her.

“What do you mean, fine?”

Fuck, I don’t want to see her.

“I mean I’ve been a piece of shit, but I’m not gonna make you pick up my bill.” I’m not her. “Where is she?”

Next Post

Prompt #1169

"I think you confuse me with someone who cares."

[lilliths-story-studio]

The only sucker at the table is me.

We’ve set up a table in the ‘gathering tent’ that Davis, Drew’s right hand, always set up on the far side of the single, cramped bunkhouse. It’s a small game, given no one else had wanted to join this time. Half the crew had gone to hit the bars and the other half had elected to call it a night before launching into what promises to be a busy weekend.

The crowd from Cassy’s neck of the woods always flooded this event.

I can’t focus on the game to save the paltry hundred I had to spare. Olivia sits across a black card table from me with the left corner of her perfect Cupid’s bow ticking upwards. She’s fanned a straight flush across the table, bothering with Bartley and Jax not at all in her gloating.

Probably because they had both tapped, while I’d been too busy circling the same damn issue in my head to pay attention. Frustration laces through my limbs and my measly two pair is dropped face up. Irritated with myself, I rake a hand through the mess of bottle-black curls, pour the rest of my lukewarm beer down my throat with a grimace, and shove the last of my cash across the table to the somehow-still-perfectly-red manicure that the woman is tapping along the top.

“You’re playing like shit tonight.” Bartley says, raising his own can of Busch to his mouth with a wrinkle of his hooked nose.“Who the fuck did the beer run for this shit?”

“Davis.” I sigh, tossing my empty can into the black trash bag holding casualties from the last two hours of drinking, bullshitting, and going broke. “Because Olivia likes the shit and he wants in her pants.”

“Who doesn’t?” The woman in question asks on a snort, a cocky smirk tugging at her stop-light red lip but a hard glint in her eyes.

“That’s why I told you not to send his ass.” Jax says, pulling a bottle of tequila from the cooler otherwise swimming in bad beer to his right and plopping it onto the table. “And why I always bring something of my own. Ya’ll welcome.”

Jose’s amber hue promises to erase the problem in my boss’s office. Experience promises he’s a liar and I’ll just be an emotional wreck wandering into the woods that surround the area to wail like some lost spirit.

Probably not a good idea.

“Not me.” I sigh, pushing to my feet before I trust the first promise over the second.

“Bitching out?” Jax asks, brow raised.

I’d be lying if I said I don’t nearly plop my ass back into that chair to show the brat who he’s talking to. Instead I slant him the flattest look I can muster.

“Like the last sad motherfucker that saw your sorry ass naked.”

“That was intimidation in the face of perfection.” He pops off the lid to the bottle and lifts it in cheers, before swigging like a middle schooler sneaking his parents stash and passing to Olivia.

“That was the cross fade wearing off.” She says before wiping the mouth of the bottle and following his example.

I’m grinning at the girl as she lowers the bottle and continues the communal pass.

“I knew I liked you.”

“Keep dreaming, Kitty.”

“You should be so lucky.” I raise a brow. “How old are you, 20?”

“Fifteen last May.”

Her birthday is in June.

“Well then, I’m afraid you’re gonna need to get to bed. Kids shouldn’t be out this late.”

“Go fuck yourself.” She winks and I shake my head.

“Nothing else around here worth my time.” I blow her a kiss, and then turn to leave as Bartley pushes the bottle into my hand.

The curl of fingers around glass is automatic, the weight of the bottle familiar. I swallow and consider a sip- one sip.

“Tasha.”

I turn towards Drew and instinctively shove the bottle at Jax like I’d done something wrong. The look that my boss passes from the bottle, to the bag of cans, then back to me, makes me wonder if I had. He certainly looks disappointed.

“Can I speak with you?” He looks to the pile of cans again. “If you’re in a state for it.”

“I’m not drunk.” I roll my eyes, walking away from the table. There’s a bit more saunter than usual to the gait, so okay, maybe I’m not perfectly unaffected. But there’s no stumble to my step, no streaking of lights in my vision, and there’s only one of any of these idiots.

Not drunk.

I don’t know if he’s satisfied, but he waves me to follow him regardless and I don’t see any reason not to. Like I haven’t been burning this entire game to ask him why the fuck he had been bothering with my ex. Jose’s allure fades in the light of an answer.

“I thought you weren’t drinking anymore.” He doesn’t slow his steps, moving past the bunkhouse towards his personal trailer.

“Beer, Drew. It was just beer.” Who died and made him dad, anyway?

“That’s a slippery slope you’re starting on, girl.” He sighs, and this time he stops. I can’t bring myself to make eye contact when he turns, instead studying the window pane on the bunkhouse next to me. “Don’t do that shit again, don’t go back down that road.”

“Again. Just beer.” The window is filthy.

“For now.” His lips thin and he starts walking again.

Nothing else is said until we get to his trailer. My stomach knots as he grabs the handle. Is she in there? She’s not his type, he doesn’t dip in that type of trouble, really I should know better. But…

But what if she is?

I hesitate at the steps long enough that Drew gets into the trailer and then doubles back to check on me. I don’t answer the furrowed brow, just shake my head. I’m being ridiculous.

Sure enough, three steps up and onto earthy brown linoleum later, there’s no sign of the woman. It’s a quick search, given even the boss’s more spacious trailer barely has room to change your mind between the sink, the table, and the elevated bed at the far back.

“You’re still in love with her.”

My spine stiffens.

“I’m not.”

“You are.” He says, settling into the furthest of two chairs at the table “Tell me you weren’t about to take a sip of the not beer to try and take the edge off.”

“How about you tell me why you brought the bitch in when you said you were gonna chase her off.”

He raises a brow at my defensive tone. I bite my lip, and neither of us acknowledges the proof in that alone.

“She’s a force, that one.” He sighs.

“I told you.” I answer, finally closing the door behind me. I walk to the empty chair, covered in the most obnoxiously patterned faux velvet cushions. How do you make something so busy in entirely neutral tones?

“So why was she here?”

He watches me for a moment, weighing me. Frustration bubbles anew, and it’s everything in me to force my legs to fold, to slide into the seat, and wait. I’m not the loose cannon he thinks I am, goddammit.

“What happened in Grand Junction?”

“The fuck does that matter?”

Okay. Semi-loose cannon.

“Because it does.”

“Ah, that’s a ton clearer. Glad I fucking asked.”

“Hey, I’m not the one you should be angry with.”

“You brought her in and now you’re asking shit I told you to leave alone. Who else should I be angry with?”

“How about yourself. Whatever the shit is you asked me to leave alone brought trouble to my door, Tasha.”

My volume has risen. His hasn’t.

“How? Her problem is her problem.”

“Except that you got involved with something while you were there that has made her problem my problem.”

“How?” I shake my head. “I can throw her like a sack of flour, so how the hell is she a problem for you?”

“Not everything is brute strength.”

“Because I’m a muscle house.” I reply with a flat tone, poking at the jiggle to my pale arm.

“This isn’t a joke, Tasha. That girl…” he furrows his brow as he looks to me. “I need you to tell me if anything unusual happened in that town.”

There’s a ringing starting in my right ear, and whatever buzz I had achieved is officially on its way out.

“Unusual how?” The ringing is getting louder. I push the thumb of my left hand into palm of my right, just between my thumb and forefinger. “I developed a sleepwalking problem and wandered into the woods a lot. That count?”

It’s true, but offered as a joke. The episodes had stopped as soon as I’d gotten out of that relationship and back on the road. Problem solved.

“That’s it?”

“What else would there be?” He waits. “Look, I don’t remember a ton after that first year, okay?”

He sighs.

“Of course you don’t.”

I swallow around the lump in my throat. What the hell can I say? Not a damned thing, apparently.

“Well, whatever happened out there, she’s here. She’s staying until I get this sorted out.” His eyes rest on mine, hard as granite and half as warm. “We’re all staying here until I get this mess sorted out.”

My blood runs cold.

“Excuse me?”

Another beat, and then he raises to his feet.

“Follow me. Maybe seeing why we’re stuck will jog your booze-soaked memory.”

Next Part

Prompt #1191

"Hey, I'm not the one you should be angry with."

[lilliths-story-studio]

Drew is, hands down, the best manager I’ve ever known. He’d inherited this carnival from his father when he was twenty. It and the band of misfits pulling it across the country are his and have been for the last thirty years. A point he’s made clear to every idiot stupid enough to bring real trouble to our tent flaps. So it doesn’t surprise me to find the man falling into step as I weave away from my unwanted visitor.

“That looked comfortable.”

“Felt even better.” I say, checking my watch.

Felix the Cat smiles up at me like a psycho, one paw pointed to the five and his tail stretched up to the three. Only ten minutes- the conversation had seemed so much longer.

“Wanna talk about it?” He sounds as comfortable as I feel with the idea.

“Like you ain’t already heard it all.”

“You did cry quite a lot.”

“Do I need to cue up some Randy Travis?” I grin at him.

“You want me to leave you here?” A sandy brow raises over eyes the color of olives.

I know he’s being an ass, but my steps falter anyway. His do too, brown Docs grinding to a stop. I try to recover a smile and the rhythm, but he shakes his head and holds up a wide palm.

“Go help Jax set up the midway booths. I’ll make sure she’s left.”

He doesn’t wait for a response, but then he’s never been the type to hesitate. He just pivots and changes his direction, and I do the same to mine.

At the very least, the directional change improves the smell. The lot the carnival is using sits right alongside the towns rodeo arena, where more than a couple of the cowboys are walking out their horses. Just across the street sit the livestock facilities, where yet more cowboys and ranchers are loading in the assortment of animals to be competed over the weekend.

When I find Jax, he’s haphazardly chucking baseballs looking to be crafted around the turn of the century into red barrels that had clearly been fought away from an angry bear at some point. His eyes are the most striking shade of honey I’ve ever seen in my life, and if they weren’t attached to a man, I may have made some bad choices on the power of them alone.

“The fuck you doin’ over here? Thought you were dressing the pay table.”

“Every table is a pay table.”

“Long as the suckers have the cash, that’s right.” His enthusiasm is infectious, a smile wide as the Mississippi is long. Cackling at his own perceived cleverness, he throws me a fist bump.

Jax is and will always be about the money first.

“Drew sent me over, he’s chasing off an unwanted.”

His dark brow arches and I shake my head.

“Long story. What do you still need done?”

He doesn’t say anything at first, just crosses arms he does stupid amounts of math and measuring to maintain, and looks at me. It’s another full minute of stony eye contact before he blows out the single most dramatic breath of air to have ever filled a human lung. His production earns exactly two slow and exaggerated blinks.

“Ugh, never mind. You’re boring me. Go set up the ball popper.”

“Standing right here in front of me.”

“Off duty, sugar. Go be useful to someone.”

“One of us might as well be.”

He flips me the bird and I return the same gesture with a kiss on the tip.

Ball, in this case, means balloon. The stall is already lined up two booths down, right next to the ring toss. The next two hours is lost to the arrangement of latex, darts, rings, and milk bottles while Jax scream sings Prince’s entire Purple Rain album through the midway.

“She was useful after all.” Jax says, hoisting himself to sit on the lip of the ringtoss booth.

I chuck one of the rings at his head and he snatches it from the air smooth as silk with a series of tsks.

“Why so defensive, it was a compliment.”

“Can you be more annoying?”

Mistake, he starts grinning like the damn Cheshire.

“Sure, you want me to show you?”

“I want you to go drink paint.” I hop over the lip of the booth, feet touching ground in time to see Drew come around the corner.

But he isn’t alone.

All of my good humor fades in a second, because the woman next to him is the one he was supposed to chase off. Every line in my body tenses, but to my surprise, they don’t stop anywhere near me. No, Drew guides her past the mess of quick-build booths and into the long trailer at the back of the rides that serves as his office.

“Who’s the broad? She doesn’t seem his type.”

She’s not. She’s a short, willowy figure that even my five-two had been able throw over my shoulder following bouts of mouthy. Drew, however, had always strayed towards more full figures - wide hips. Cassy is certainly not that.

“Broad, Jax? When did we get to the 1920’s and how do I get back to ‘95?”

It’s a weak shot, but I’m still staring at the firmly shut trailer door.

“Easy, you tell me what’s going on.“ A beat. “You know her. She the unwanted?”

I scoff.

“Guess not.”

Another beat, and then Jax’s veiny ass arm is thrown around my shoulder and I’m being bodily hauled in the opposite direction.

“Bitch, this midway is done and so am I. Let’s get the rest of these lazy assholes and get lit.”

I put up a token of resistance, mostly in the interest of regaining my stability. It’s on my lips to shoot him down, but the words catch on my tongue. What would I even do otherwise? Stand there? Wait to ask my boss what the fuck he was doing?

No.

“Betcha we can sucker Bartley and Olivia into a game of poker.” I offer a grin and forced conspiratorial laugh.

The effort earns me a mussing of the hair.

I told Cassy myself that our business was separate, and Drew’s not the type to bring trouble into the circle. She’ll be gone by tomorrow, we’ll be leaving in five days, and this whole weird round of bullshit will be over.

Next Part

Prompt #1189

"Can you be any more annoying?"

"Sure, you want me to show you?"

[lilliths-story-studio]

I love traveling, and there’s never been a better gig for it than these carnivals. Town after town, the days blur together into a patchwork of late nights of tragedy and magic for couples and families across the country. Chaos on tour, I’ve called our group- Drew’s never corrected me.

It’s a Thursday, heading into another weekend in another small locale. Rather than anticipation or even the tired apathy inherent to any form of employment, I’m outfitting the ticket booth while steadfastly ignoring the pit widening like a gulf in my gut. I’m threading the red and blue banner and praying to any force inclined to listen for the next five days to race along without incident.

I should know better than to petition anyone up there.

No one’s listening.

I smell her before I see her; cherries and sugary sweet vanilla thick as morning fog between hills. I’d love to say the choking fit that takes me is all indignation and oxygen deprivation…but more than I like to admit is fabricated to cover a rush of emotion wrapping its jagged fingers about my throat.

I didn’t expect to still feel this much.

“Cassy.” Her name tastes like ash; hadn’t it been honey once?

I don’t bother to turn and look.

“Tasha!” Bright as a bell; her voice anyway. “It’s been too long.”

Three years, but who’s counting.

“Agree to disagree. What do you want?”

Knots worked through the first two corners, I rotate the banner to reach the other holes. Is her brow folding in the middle? I imagine so, given the small puff of breath behind me. The two moves had always gone together.

“Excellent customer service.”

Two taps against the gravel.

She’s getting irritated.

I sigh, stepping away from the mess of rope to face a twenty-six year old boogie man in chunky black boots. Her hair’s longer - bluer. A navy color she’d bitched about wanting all four years of our relationship, but never committed to.

“Finally made up your mind.” My head bobs, like I’d been waiting on the answer. And I suppose after the aforementioned years, I had been.

“We never had the money.”

I chuff a laugh and look down to my feet. Black box-store sneakers have turned near tan. Rope and vinyl pool across my right toe, spilling onto the rocks and dust that cover the lot we’re building on.

I can’t bring myself to meet those coffee colored pools. The cup’s long gone cold.

“You’re right we didn’t.” I shake my head, draw in a long breath. “What do you want?”

“To talk.”

“Mission accomplished. Hope it’s not a long drive back.” I turn back to my work, effectively dismissing the conversation.

“Tasha, don’t be like this.”

I kick the banner off my toe.

“We both know why I didn’t settle down in Grand Junction. Now, you didn’t drive two hours just to have a cute little conversation.” She’d do a lot, too much, and more past that- including the aforementioned drive from the town I never want to see again to these underdeveloped fairgrounds.

But not for a few measly words.

“…I need your help.”

I laugh.

Loud, disruptive, barking laughter that draws no few eyes from the rest of the fair-under-construction. Eyes she visibly flinches away from, and because I’m not a good person, I laugh harder.

“You don’t have to be cruel.”

My laughter cuts on a snort.

“And you don’t have to be here. Go home.”

“You aren’t even going to listen?” Her tone is shaking- another minute and I know it will be in tatters. I wrap the rope about my hand, let the tan bite in and drain the color from the fleshy pink below.

One. The rope is scratchy. Two. My chest is tight and my pulse is climbing. Three. The sun is hot, a black tank top was a bad choice today. Four. The gravel crunches beneath my feet as I drag my foot backwards. Five. Her perfume sours on the air as I draw in a deep breath.

“I got work to do, and sounds like you’ve got a problem to get to work on. And neither of these things has anything to do with one another anymore.”

I turn in her direction once more, leaning my shoulder against the ticket booth, and meet her eyes.

Red. Puffy. No faint twitch at the corner of the lip, an old tell I’d looked for to best know when she was faking. The brown isn’t cold - it’s empty. Like someone had dumped out the liquid and the color was all stained porcelain. I swallow and snatch the banner back up, tighten my fingers around the mess of vinyl like my last thread of sanity. Had they been like that before I laughed?

Desperation remains, hanging around the corner like a specter while she scrapes her eyes over me, darting about in confusion, like she’s looking for a latch.

“You’ve changed.” She concludes when she comes back up to make eye contact once more. “It’s never been like you to turn someone away.”

“Everything alright?” Drew’s voice breaks across the lot, reaching us clear as a speaker in spite of the distance. He’s a broad shouldered man, turned fully in our direction.

He’s also the poor asshole who had to help me clean myself up when this rodeo in blue and bad memories had finally come to a close. When I’d begged to get back on the circuit and away from…

Her.

His interjection shakes me free of the cloying emotion threatening to send me backwards.

“Yeah, fine.” I call back, holding her gaze. “She just came to say hi.” I wait, because you can’t run with carnies without developing some measure of dramatic timing. “And goodbye.”

The way she’s searching my face, you’d think I was the three-year ghost. Her arms are crossed and her lip has curled at the left corner. When she speaks again, her voice has indeed devolved into the tatters I knew were on the horizon.

“I miss the old you.”

I’m even slower in my overview of her person than she’d just been of mine. For all that I couldn’t look at her two minutes ago, I make certain to visibly weigh and measure every inch I see now. The tug of lips over teeth I bestow in the end could only be called a smile if you’ve never seen one before.

“The old me is gone for a reason.” I push away from the booth and turn away from the woman. “Go home, Cassy. There’s nothing for you here.”

Next Part

Prompt #1190

"I miss the old you."

"The old me is gone for a reason."

[lilliths-story-studio]

What follows are stories crafted through prompts that intrigue me.

Like many a writer, I tend to worry too long with perfection and freeze at the keyboard. Each entry is written on a two day maximum timeline, allowing days off and life being life, with only the writing and editing I can do in that time.

The goal is to avoid stall out.

As such, everything here is a true project zero. Nothing is submission-ready and things like pacing, format, quality character development and consistency will likely have to be fixed. It’s scaffolding at best. If publisher-ready is what you’re looking for, this won’t be the blog for you.

When a full story is complete, I’m planning to compile it in an easier-to-read-start-to-finish format, do proper edits with outside eyes and any constructive feedback I’ve gotten, and then upload that.

But the purpose of the blog itself is to practice and let imperfection be okay while I just get a story together.

Additionally, I hope that other writers/creatives might find camaraderie and permission to be imperfect along the way in seeing parts someone else’s messy process. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Such things have helped me.

Prompt Project Zero- Contemporary Paranormal setting

First Post/Story Start-Content Warning- alcohol abuse/addiction