wriitingcautious

[wriitingcautious]

Something Outré

Bed-Stuy, 1976

“What’s wrong with it?” 

Two boys stood in an empty lot between tenements, shielded from street view by evening darkness and a battered chain-link fence. A spindly, barren oak swayed mildly in the wind above them. Eddison, scrawny and little and brown, had a stick the width of his forearm hanging from one loosely clenched fist, just looking for a reason to poke at the twisted, ashen figure before them.

“It’s a she,” Almer said. Broad and short and dark, he squatted even closer to the ground than he normally was to clinically examine the situation. The dirt under the woman was dry and crumbly, almost gravel. 

“Well, she’s ugly.”

“She’s dead, you bozo,” Al chided. “You want her to look like a beauty queen?”

Edd jerked his head up so fast it could have snapped his skinny neck, mouth in a tight “o,” eyes gleaming. 

“Is she really? That’s a dead body? No shit?”

“No shit.” He gave a glorious eye roll, truly one of his best ones. He practiced them in the mirror. “Can’t you see?”

“Well it’s not like I go lookin’ at dead bodies all the time! How should I know?” 

“She’s not breathing, for one thing.”

Edd mirrored Al, leaning on the stick as he got low, like a safari guide tracking scat. More gently than Al would have expected, Edd held his pointer finger under the gray nostrils and waited for the tickle of moving air. 

“Huh.”

“Yep.” He nodded sagely. “Dead for a while, too. She’s stiff as a board, gone into rigger more-tee.” The phrase “rigor mortis” was Latin, not French like Al thought, but having only ever read the words in his less savory library loans, Al didn’t know the difference.

Edd snorted. “Who’s Morty?”

“First guy to cut open a dead body,” Al replied primly, as though he had any idea what he was talking about.

“Oh, like Ben Franklin for the nasties.”

“Yep!”

They chortled as school boys do, for a bit. Then Edd pulled back and took the humor with him, fidgety.

“Should…should we tell somebody?”

Al considered, twirled his fingers. The woman must have been pretty, once, her brows high and arched, jaw delicate, lids round in a way that suggested she’d have big eyes like Twiggy if they were open. Someone out there must want to know what happened to her.

Then again, if Al were a pretty lady, he wouldn’t want anyone he knew to see him brought low like this, skin all the wrong color, lips chapped. Her spine twisted unnaturally. The fine cap of short black hair on her head was lifted a little at the edges, and Al realized it was a wig.

He must have spent too long considering because Edd jerked a little and smiled that smile he got when taken with a stupid idea.

“Wait a minute, you seen Walking Tall?” 

“The one with the wrestler?”

“No, the one with the gambler who got framed for murder.”

“Pretty sure that one’s called Framed. Saw it with my uncle Dennis.” 

“Whatever.” Edd hunched like he was going to shove Al before he remembered there was a dead body between them. “Point is, let’s scram before the cops come and pin this on us!”

Al didn’t think that made any sense, but then he remembered that the very same Uncle Dennis who took him to the movies once got arrested for standing too near a liquor store that got robbed the night prior, so then Al thought maybe it did make sense.

He took one last long look at the beautiful, screwed-up corpse, and then he sighed.

“Okay, let’s get outta here. My ma’s making casserole with sausage.” Edd barked a laugh.

“Bleh, your mama’s casserole tastes like shit!”

“You’ll eat that shit and you’ll like it, boy!” They were on their feet and meandering towards the fence now, so Al took the chance that Edd hadn’t before, and shoved him. They roughhoused like that all the way to the gap in the chain-link from which they’d entered and only stopped to wriggle back out. 

Pain bit into Al’s hand as pulled himself through the fence.

“Aw, shit!” He hissed. He’d cut himself on the metal, blood curling in his dry palm. As Al wrapped his hand in his tee and steeled himself to get cussed out upon returning home, Edd was leveling a protracted stare back inside the lot. 

“Look.” Edd smacked Al’s shoulder but didn’t turn his gaze away. 

“What? I’m gonna get tetanus, leave me alone—”

“Look, damnit!”

Still cradling his hand, Al looked. He squinted through the weeds and the darkness for the body—maybe one of the local possums had taken an interest? Edd and Al could both agree that possum-watching was worth stopping for.

“I don’t see anything.”

“‘Cuz there’s nothing to see, genius! She’s gone!”

Al did a double take.

“What the hell…?” Edd was right, for once. The patch of brown dirt under the oak was empty now. No sign of the body.

As Al peered through the lattice, the fence wobbled minutely in front of him. The air seemed to go still, all of a sudden. Al felt his skin prickle, a shiver that ran up from the base of his spine to the top of his head and pulled him like a marionette to look skyward. 

Balanced cat-like on top of the fence, staring down at the boys, was the body. She looked weightless and superlunary and predatory, wiry muscles in her arms flexed, poised to strike. To get from where she had lain to her new perch, she’d have to be lightning fast. Her eyes were open, bright and sharp and Al and Edd were trapped in the amber of them.

Then she moved, silent, like the whole world was holding its breath around her. The whole world, except for Edd, who screamed:

“Shit, fuck! Shit, c’mon!” He took off down the block. Al barreled after him and the last dregs of hopeful daylight fled at the sound of their sneakers beating the pavement. The saying goes that if a bear chases you in the woods, you don’t need to be faster than the bear—you just need to be faster than your buddy. This wasn’t the woods and the creature behind them was nothing so natural as a bear, but none of that mattered because Al was not faster than anything. 

They made it home, anyway, to Al’s. But even as the door was latched shut behind them and his mama came hollering out of the kitchen like the devil’s most fearsome foot-woman, Al still felt like they were being chased. Pursued. Al thought that if the body had followed them at all, it was the scent of his blood that she tracked.

Crown Heights, 2024

Almer was sitting at one end of the sticky counter in the corner of the music bar, which was tiny in size but mighty in decibels. When he got there, it was still a little light out, and the place was mostly empty save for the young-ish barman and a woman playing solitaire in the other corner. He’d been pleased to have a seat right by the big, open barn window, looking out into the paved garden with its plastic chairs and tables and twinkly-lighted gazebo as the sunset. He was utterly unaware, however, of just how prime his behind’s real estate was until the steel pan man started setting up and patrons began to flood the place, as if they’d been waiting for his cue. Now Al was squished between a guy who was far too drunk for dusk and a gaggle of young women who looked like they’d been drawn to blaring music, expecting a club, and were mildly perturbed to find live amateur musicians and a place inhabited mostly by geriatric locals. 

Al, while just about geriatric, supposed he was technically not a local, even though he was born and grew up just a neighborhood away; he wasn’t in with this crowd, didn’t have one of their sundry shades of lilting accents. The Trini patrons looked like they all knew each other, familiar arms thrown over shoulders, heads tossed back in raucous laughter. Hell, they almost looked related, with a motley of mixed features that somehow coalesced into something that identified them as a group. But Al was not one of them, and they ignored him unless he was ordering a drink. That was just fine by him. He was rarely in the mood for conversation, but tonight was especially suited to aloneness. Edd’s funeral had been earlier that day.

 (Edd drove himself into the ground in his later years and death was frankly a blessing for him; this didn’t leave Al any less bereft.)

Speaking of a drink, though: Al had been nursing the same glass of rum-and-coke-flavored ice water for the past hour, trying to keep his hold on the good view and gentle breeze. But he was tiring of the noise a little, and wanted a refill, and the girls were craning their necks like fashionable ostriches to see the band. He decided to be chivalrous and finally gave up his seat.

The space he left was filled almost immediately by bodies. Al elbowed his way through the throng to the bar. There, he saw another small cluster of young people: two men, two women. One of the men turned his head and Al's eyes caught on a flash of something that shimmered. 

The young man had sparkly purple and green eyelids like glittering fish scales, and fake lashes each as long as a small knife. A gold ring dangled under his nose from the septum. He lifted his drink to glossy lips and his nails were pink and sharp on the rim of the glass. 

Al tried to look away, succeeding only for as long as it took to order another rum and coke. Leaving the house all dolled up like that just wasn’t something you should do, as a man. It was embarrassing to be seen that way. Right? Right. The kid was lucky he didn’t go out looking like that to a Jamaican spot. Al knew from experience.

He looked up when the barman handed him his drink, and when he glanced back at the boy, he found himself watched in return. The kid himself wasn’t looking at him, but the two girls between him and Al were shooting not-so-surreptitious glances at him, lips curled in disgust. The boy looked edgy now. 

Ah. Al was caught staring—green-eyed, but there was no way for the kids to know that. He took his drink and fled. 

He thought about going home, but memories and regret and simple longing for his youth threatened to trammel him if he went without distraction. So Al wandered around to the garden and asserted himself into the thick crowd and overbearing noise. He found his place across from the entrance, partly under the gazebo, next to a crate that housed a few abandoned shot glasses. People were taking turns breaking it down at the front of the crowd to the whooping cheers of their friends. Smartphones were out, recording; one was on a tripod facing the band (Al didn’t even know they made those for phones). There was one, singular, very pleasant-looking white guy in a fisherman’s hat and loud shirt, leaning half-casual to one side, bobbing his head placidly along to the music. Bless him. 

Someone shouted right next to Al’s ear and he jumped, turned to look. A man was gesturing wildly between his spilled drink on the ground and a very inebriated woman who looked as contrite as one could manage in that state. She nodded along at his ranting, frog blinking, fizzy liquid dripping down her left arm, and soaking her blouse. 

A hand appeared as if from thin air, curling around the dry, right arm. Al’s eyes followed it up a sinewy appendage, curving over narrow shoulders and pointed collar bones, to land, inexorably, on a beautiful, horrible, familiar face.

The face was moving, speaking, coaxing the drunk woman, a few placating words spared for the man. Al heard none of it over the roaring in his ears. 

It was her: the gray corpse from that empty lot forty years ago, same cheekbones, same jaw, same brow. Except she wasn’t gray now, she was vibrant and vital and brown, grin sharp and shining like the crescent moon rising above, dark eyes glittering. Dark eyes?

Dark eyes. They flitted over Al’s (surely terror-stricken) face. It was so quick, but he could swear she recognized him, her lips twitching significantly before she gusted past him.

Was it really her? How could it be? Al always thought the pure silver pallor of her skin that he remembered, like matte face paint, was an embellishment made by time and many iterating nightmares, but he was sure that the thing he and Edd had seen didn’t look so alive, even when it ambulated.

The new, maybe-human thing guided the drunk woman towards a rusted metal side door, the crowd parting around them. She had long braids all down her back, colorful beads at the ends. Those things were always so noisy, clacking like rattlesnakes (bad enough on little girls playing double-dutch, but now grown women were wearing them too, apparently).

Al realized that he couldn’t hear the beads. The drunk woman’s heels scraped the pavement, but the silence of the body’s gait was loud, even over the calypso. 

Without entirely thinking about it, Al followed.

 Inside there was a dark little hallway, one door leading to a backroom from which the sounds of a busy kitchen poured, and a stairwell going down at the end. Red light pulsed softly from the bottom of the steps. Al descended.

He came down onto the unfinished cement floor, went around a corner, and there she was: the body entwined with that of the drunk woman, holding her slumped weight, mouth on her neck. The room smelt of bitters and iron. 

Al was vaguely aware of shadowy figures in the periphery, in amongst the kegs and fridges, their glasses sloshing with dark, red stuff. But he could not look at them, wholly enraptured by the center-stage tableau, the striking mise-en-scène (he knew his French from his Latin now, but it was only through a well-worn theater habit that he could remember the phrase in this moment). 

The thing was arched, embracing her prey tenderly. It looked warm—blissful. Her skin seemed to glow in the low light. This was not the desperate feeding of a hungry animal, the inevitable end of an alley cat’s hunt after two skittering, screaming little mice. Starving was antiquated. This was a feast for the sake of feasting, the glutting of oneself on wine and red meat and plump fruit for the sheer pleasure of eating. Modern.

The mouth unlatched itself from the throat with a shuddering sigh. The drunk, now unconscious woman was gently lowered to the ground. She might have still been breathing. 

The body turned her gaze upon him. Her eyes were full and dark and heavy, sated and blithe. Between two blinks of his own eyes, she was before him. 

“Caught you.” Almer trembled.

She swiped a rivulet of blood from her jaw with a long, bony thumb. The other hand took hold of his stubbled, lined face. The thumb swept across his lips, over his cheeks, wet and glittering. The watchers hummed with delight. He closed his eyes as red was smeared onto his lids, anointing him. He was decorated. He was beautiful. He was seen.

[wriitingcautious]

Bridge and Tunnel

Photo by Nathan Kesinger

Twilight rose above the mouth of the Holland Tunnel and then disappeared behind it as Shari drove. The tile swallowed up her mother’s silver Camry and made the Boyz II Men mixtape so loud that the car sounded like a bachelorette’s party bus, so she turned the stereo all the way down. From the passenger seat, Cristal reached a freshly manicured hand out to turn it back up.

“Calm down, woman!” Shari swatted her sister’s hand away. “We’re not at the club yet!” 

Cristal huffed, flamingo-like in her elegant long-ness and bad attitude.

“Haven’t you ever heard of ‘pre-gaming?’” Beltless, she turned in her seat, so that nearly half her skinny body was in the back and facing their little cousin Lindsay. “Linz, you heard of pre-gaming?”

Traffic slowed to a crawl. Just our luck, thought Shari. Then again, what was she expecting on a Friday night? Clear skies and open seas? As if.

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s what that means,” said Lindsay, neatly tucked away behind the driver, secure with her seat belt on.

She was pretty subdued, for being the birthday girl, quiet and modest in her knee-length dress and leather jacket. Shari had tried to get her to borrow her white spaghetti strap mini because she thought it would contrast beautifully against her dark skin. Cristal had scoffed; white would make her disappear completely in pictures! Then she tried to squeeze Lindsay into a dusty purple little number that was obviously too small. To Lindsay’s utter mortification, Cristal had given her ass an accusatory smack, and then decided to try on the dress herself, like See? This is how it’s supposed to look. 

After that, it took twenty minutes to get Lindsay out from behind a locked bathroom door.

So, not a great twenty-first thus far. But as her elder cousins and the primary witnesses to the previous decade or so of awkwardness, Cristal and Shari were determined to show Lindsay how to have a good time. Lindsay’s willingness to participate was irrelevant.

Cristal was on her knees in the seat now, draped over the head rest. She reached out and smacked Shari’s shoulder. 

“Shar, pass me the Kodak!” 

“I’m driving, Cris,” said Shari, all motherly terseness.

“Driving where?” Cristal demanded. “It’s bumper to bumper. Pass me the damn camera!”

Shari kept her hands firmly on ten and two, so Cristal slithered back into her seat.

With a huff, she leaned down to swipe blindly around in the footwell for the discarded camera. Out of the corner of her eye, Shari saw that a small squadron of frat boys packed into the Audi idling next to them was watching the whole production with hungry eyes.

“Ah hah!” Camera retrieved, Cristal sat up and fixed herself in a way that made it apparent she also knew about the Audi full of guys. She turned and shimmied all the way into the backseat, next to Lindsay. The other driver was leaning out of his open window, close enough that he could reach his hand into theirs, if he had the gall. He whistled appreciatively at Cristal’s wiggling.

Lindsay, who had been busy hiding her face as much as her hair would allow, was relieved when Cristal put her body in between her and the onlookers.

“C’mon, girl. Let’s get a picture!” Cristal crowded Lindsay into the corner and against the window, so that both their faces were cast in yellow tunnel light. But she didn’t raise the camera yet.

“Linz.” Cristal slung an arm around the younger woman. She leaned in real close so that they were in a two-person football huddle. “You know we’re gonna take care of you, right?”

She held Lindsay’s gaze and wouldn’t drop it. 

Lindsay hadn’t wanted to come out tonight. It was just the pressure to act her age, to do the kind of thing that everyone does when they turn twenty-one: go to a club, act affronted when they ask for ID, and then knock back tequila with reckless abandon. Shari and Cristal didn’t even have to have to bully her for long before she agreed; Lindsay just folded like a house of cards.

 She felt out of control and a little resentful, but if she said so, her cousin would get all pouty and disappointed, so she gave Cristal a tight nod.

“Good. Take some deep breaths and let go a little. We got your back.” Now Cristal held out the camera in front of them, put on her best pageant smile. Then, loud enough for everyone from McGinley Square to the East Village to hear, she added, “So stop being so uptight!”

Before Lindsay even had time to frown, the camera clicked. The flash went off. 

And then the lights went out. 

Cristal cried out and dropped the camera. Lindsay freed herself from Cristal’s now desperate hold.

“What just happened?” Lindsay sat up to look through the windshield, and then turned to the rear window. A bend in the tunnel and two sets of taillights in front of them, and behind them, a sea of pinprick headlights and faces washed in the pale glow of digital dashboards. Otherwise, the tunnel was black.

There were a few seconds of shocked silence before the honking started, a cacophony of displeasure and panic. But no matter how hard people laid into their horns, traffic didn’t move an inch. 

Shari shifted behind the wheel.

“It’ll be fine,” she mumbled, a sorry excuse for assurance. “Longest it ever took me to get through the tunnel was fifteen minutes. We’ll be moving soon.”

“This is crazy, though!” Cristal exclaimed. “Did the power go out or something? No one said anything about a storm tonight, right?”

“No, there’s no storm,” Shari reassured her. “City’s probably just being cheap.”

“Which one?” Cristal snorted, arms crossed tight over her chest. “Jersey or New York?”

“Both, duh.” Shari joked. The humor only barely lightened the mood.

Lindsay fiddled with the hem of her dress as they all prepared themselves for a challenging round of the waiting game. She just couldn’t calm herself, though. She was covered head to toe in goosebumps, even under her jacket. Something felt wrong.

“Hey, ladies!” Someone called out. It was one of the Audi boys, a clean-shaven, Abercrombie type in the back seat. They had their overhead light on. “You scared of the dark?”

Cristal perked up. She shuffled over to the right-hand side of the car to lean out the window like an overgrown puppy. If she had a tail, it would be swinging like a tree branch in a tornado. Lindsay rolled her eyes. Nothing could get between Cristal and  meet cute, apparently.

“No,” she giggled. “‘Course not!”

Against her better judgment, Lindsay peaked around Cristal to see the guy she was fawning over. 

His eyes latched onto her, blue and quick. He gave Lindsay a lascivious smile, cold gaze raking over her chest.

“Meeee neither,” he said, slow and deliberate. The guy was white. The collar of his polo was popped and his Raybans were in his hair. He looked like he had a bad case of jungle fever. 

Lindsay tucked herself back into her seat. 

People were getting out of their cars now. Some had cell phones flipped open and held out in front of them for light. Others were more prepared with real flashlights. A few dim, red emergency lights had flickered on, but they weren’t doing much.

“Hey, I think I got a light in the glove,” said the Audi driver to the guy riding shotgun. 

“You heard that?” asked Cristal’s new paramour. “We’re prepared.”

“We got a couple of boy scouts, then,” Cristal crooned. “Ain’t we lucky, girls?”

“Let’s make a trade.” It was the driver now, shooting his shot. “You can have the flashlight in exchange for a little company.” 

Popped Collar opened his door in invitation.

“Seriously?” Shari mumbled from the front. 

“Oh, come on. We’re keeping you company from right here!” Cristal argued with the tepid ferocity of a girl playing hard to get.

Lindsay wondered for a moment if her cousin was really crazy enough to hop in with these strangers. She also wondered how they expected her to fit. Slight as Cristal was, the Audi was already at full clown car capacity, with two other dudes in the back seat next to Popped Collar.

Shari reached up to turn on their overhead light.

“Don’t need it,” she smiled, tight and deliberate, with the aggressive placidness of a girl who was really not interested. 

“Aw, what’s the big deal? Hey, how about your shy friend?”

Lindsay froze. 

Someone in the Audi scoffed.

“Really? You want the ‘uptight’ one?”

“Okay,” Shari interjected. She started rolling up the windows from the front seat controls. “You’re done!” 

“Hey!” Cristal protested. “I’m talking to them!” 

“Yeah, you were. Now you’re done!”

Cristal jammed her finger against the window button, lowering it again. She got it a quarter of the way down before her finger slipped and Shari got the upper hand. Cristal made a frantic attempt to fight the window’s ascent with her own button, making a noise high in her throat like a little kid gearing up for a tantrum.

“You are such a child!” Cristal whined.

“I’m the child? How am I the child here?”

“You—”

Cristal never got to finish that thought.

A sound bounced off the tile walls, above the idling engines and low radio static. 

From the New York end of the tunnel, a mile off, there came a disjointed chorus of screams.

No one spoke. No one even breathed. Then the frat boy slammed his door shut and made the girls all jump. 

Cristal let Shari roll the window all the way up. 

“What the hell?” 

“This is just getting crazy now.” Shari craned her neck to try and see something, but they were still at the bend.

“What the HELL?” Cristal exclaimed again. 

There was more shouting now, closer and less unintelligible, but no less panicked. Someone just around the bend was saying, “Turn back! Turn back,” but the tunnel was packed like a tin of sardines and the Jersey entrance was half a mile away.

Lindsay wrung her hands in her lap. The chill under her skin was worse now—she was almost shivering. 

“Hey,” she started. Her voice cracked. “Hey, Shari. Turn the radio on.”

“The RADIO?” Cristal screeched. “What for?” 

“Maybe they’re saying something on there, duh!” said Shari, catching on. She fumbled with the dials. “This is an emergency.”

“Damn right, it’s an emergency,” Cristal muttered into the back of the passenger seat where she’d pressed herself up, as if it could shield her. “Wish they’d turn the damn lights on.”

The music came on again. Cristal squealed at the sound of “End of the Road,” which was pretty typical, except this time it was because Shari turned the dial too far. 

“Sorry, sorry!” She scrambled to get the volume to an acceptable level and then flipped over to AM. 

Nothing. No late-night radio, even. Just static.

FM, now. The city had just put that in this year. Brand new transmitters.

They waited, flipped through a few more stations. Kept waiting. Still, empty air.

Shari flopped back into her seat and groaned. The groan morphed into a cry.

“What the HELL is going on?”

People were deserting their cars, jogging past the Camry in the half-dark.

“...Should we get out?” Lindsay asked.

“HELL NO!” Both sisters shouted her down, agreeing for the first time that night.

Lindsay sniffed a little, fighting back tears. 

She hadn’t wanted to come out tonight. Why didn’t she just say no? 

The screams pressed closer.

In the car, the sounds of their breathing were amplified. 

“Everyone shut up!” Shari yelled as she shot up in her seat, even though no one was talking. She waved her hands at the radio. There was a soft noise coming through. It sounded a little like clicking. Lindsay thought it might be a machine. Like, maybe this was the government trying to communicate through morse code.

Shari turned up the volume. The sound became throatier and more chirpy, like a cricket with a frog in its throat. The noise was irregular, cutting in and out of the static. Listening more closely, it seemed organic.

Lindsay could see the boys in the Audi, still as stone, glued to their own radio.

Then, the screams from the end of the tunnel were in the car with them. The throaty sound was overshadowed by it, but even louder than the screaming was the sickening crunch crunch crunch, like bones snapping.

It was hard to hear over the speakers, but the noise outside of the car was getting louder too. A sound like metal scraping against metal, a train pulling into a stop too fast, grew with it. 

Before anyone could say anything, everything else went dark: the overhead, the dash, all the flashlights, phones and every single hazard light in the tunnel went out. 

The fall of darkness hushed the wave of sonic horror for a moment. Cristal filled the silence with a wail. 

“Oh my god, oh my god!”

The thing was, Cristal was afraid of the dark. Shari had always made fun of her for it. Lindsay was glad she never joined in, because now her pupils were straining painfully against the empty, lightless space. It felt both like the car was pressing in on them, and also like they were completely exposed. Trapped, sitting ducks. It was enough to develop a new phobia.

“Those guys,” Cristal stammered. “They have a flashlight, right?”

Lindsay could almost hear the gears shifting in her head, shifting lanes from "stay put" to "RUN LIKE HELL." There was the scrabbling of her nails, and then the kathunk and the car door opening. 

“Cristal, what the fuck?” cried Shari.

“I’m gonna see if they still have light!”

“If they had light then we would SEE it, dumbass!”

Blindly, Lindsay threw herself in Cristal’s direction, hands grasping. All she got were fistfulls of air. With a scrape of sequins against upholstery and a slam of the door, Cristal was gone. 

The two remaining girls sat in shock for a moment. They could faintly hear Cristal’s voice over the din, fist pounding against the other car’s door.

“I should go after her—”

“No!” Lindsay grabbed Shari’s shoulder. “Don’t go out there!”

“She’s my goddamn little sister, I have to!”

“You don’t need to put yourself in danger because she’s doing something stupid,” Lindsay rationalized. She surprised herself with her coldness. Maybe it was survival instincts, or maybe it was cruel revenge for every slight Cristal had made against her, but Lindsay didn’t feel any obligation to take a risk on her cousin.

Shari was more conflicted. She groaned and banged her head against the seat. At least, that's what Lindsay assumed the thump was, since she couldn’t see.

“God, she always does this shit.” 

After another moment of marinating in the din of noise, Shari smacked her hand against the wheel in frustration. The horn wailed, long and loud.

“Damnit, I’m going out there!” 

“No! She’ll be fine. She’s fine!”

“There’s no way they let her in,” Shari shouted back. “There’s nothing for her out there. If she’s fine, why hasn’t she come back yet?”

Lindsay didn’t have an answer for that. Instead, her brain supplied her with the realization that she couldn’t hear Cristal’s wailing anymore. Either she was in the Audi, or…

“You’re just too much of a damn baby,” Shari scoffed meanly. “I’m going. Deal with it.”

Before Shari could even unbuckle her seatbelt, though, something crashed into the driver’s side window.

The vague shape of limb, even darker than the abject darkness of the tunnel around them, shot into the car. Shari screamed, long and loud and pained. The sound of metal wrenching and twisting rose above Shari’s wails and Lindsay’s panic. 

Then Shari’s screams were outside of the car. The sound drifted further away, until it was just part of the cacophony. 

For a moment, Lindsay was perfectly still, blind and nearly deaf from the noise, except for the ringing in her ears and the pounding of her own heart. Then she threw herself into the footwell. She curled into herself, knees tucked to her chest, and willed herself to be invisible. 

Something clacked and skittered above her. She couldn’t tell if it was outside the car or in. 

She lay there for what felt like hours, barely breathing. Her eyes strained to adjust to the dark, but there was simply no light to take in. Then she remembered Cristal’s camera. The light from the flash would be something, at least. 

Lindsay reached out slowly, grazing her finger tips against the carpet. Then she crawled her hand up the seat to search there. 

The chittering got louder. Lindsay went stone still, arm raised awkwardly. Nothing happened, and she let out a breath. She resumed her search and, finally, her fingertips touched plastic. She rolled over onto her back, quiet and gentle as she could, and took a picture. 

The flash went off. Lindsay screamed.

Cristal heard it from four cars down. She’d heard Shari’s screams, too, and they had paralyzed her, turned her legs to jelly and made her drop to the asphalt. She’d barely registered the pain as she scraped her knees bloody. 

The boys in the Audi hadn’t let her in. In a moment of petty pridefulness, she chose not to get right back in the Camry with Shari and Lindsay. The heat of that embarrassment would be too much. So she’d started walking, Jersey-ways, in search of an emergency exit. 

Now she was curled up in the ground between two big tires, the tread of one brushing against her bare arms. The knowledge of what her sister sounded like in the throes of abject pain skewered her. She breathed heavily against the panic, tried not to lose herself to tears, but the idea of letting her mind just wander away from the horror sounded very, very appealing. 

Before she could float away completely, a sharp on her backside and someone crying out above her pulled her back into reality. Someone had tripped over her prone form. From the sound of his loud cursing, she thought it might be one of the Audi. She wanted to grab at his ankles and beg for help, but he was stumbling somewhere ahead of her now and she was too scared to move, or even call out.

That might have been the smartest thing she’d done so far, because there was the sound of that metal screeching, and then the man screaming, and then the crunching bone sound from before. Except now it was so, so close. She could hear now, that the noise was also wet.

 Cristal whimpered, and then shimmied to her left to hide under a car. It wasn't a very effective cover. Something furry tickled her leg and she wailed, kicking at it. When it felt like she got one good jab in with her heel, she scrambled out from under the car and began to crawl away. She scraped her arm on the concrete of the emergency walkway, realized what it was, and got up and hopped the fence real quick. Once on the walkway, she stayed low. 

Footsteps are coming up behind her, too fast. They would trip, too. She just kepts crawling and tried not to think about the boy. Tried not to picture what might have happened to him. Or what might happen to this next person if they also make a scene. Staying down and shutting up for once had gotten her this far, Cristal wouldn’t be announcing her presence. 

They tripped. They cried out. Cristal recognized the voice.

“Lindsay!” Cristal whisper-yelled. Something in her that had been iced out by the terror thawed suddenly. Thank God Lindsay made it out of the car. 

This whole stupid night was her idea. She thought it would be fun, good for Lindsay to come out of her shell. If the fucking tunnel monster didn’t kill her, the guilt surely would have. 

Cristal took Lindsay’s hand in a vice grip and kept her low to the ground with her, other hand feeling for a door. Lindsay said nothing as they crept forward, just whimpering very softly.

She didn’t get to feel the door, or even see it, because she heard it before anything else. The nearest exit door was open, and someone was shouting commands through a crackling megaphone somewhere above them. 

“This is the New York City Fire Department. Evacuate the tunnel. Come towards the sound of my voice!”

They crawled hurriedly towards the sound. Cristal found the door frame. It swung inwards and Cristal almost caught her fingers in the hinges while feeling around. 

Suddenly, a light came from above, bringing the stairwell in the emergency alcove ahead of them into stark illumination. 

Cristal turned to smile at Lindsay. Immediately, her eyes were pulled to the junction of the wall and ceiling above Lindsay’s head. She saw the thing. It was one of many, crawling around the tunnel in her periphery. The thing was like a giant spider, mostly legs, but the legs moved almost like seaweed underwater. Floaty. One was reaching towards Lindsay. 

Cristal screamed and yanked Lindsay towards her by her arm, but the leg-tendril-thing was suddenly faster. It shot out and wrapped around Lindsay’s shoulder. Then another came for her knee and pulled her off her feet. Cristal held on as tight as she could to Lindsay, who was in the air now and being dragged away from her. 

Her hand, slick with sweat, slipped down Lindsay’s arm. Lindsay caught Cristal’s hand with her own just in time.

Cristal saw another creature out of the corner of her eye, scaling a truck, prowling towards them and making that throaty clicking sound. A tendril danced towards Cristal’s leg. She screamed, tears in her eyes.

Suddenly, Lindsay’s hand went slack in hers. It happened so fast, Cristal barely had time to comprehend that Lindsay was being pulled into the dark. 

“RUUUUUUN!” Lindsay called, her voice fading fast into the chaos. Cristal blinked through her tears, into the abyss. In the half a millisecond that her eyes were closed, she realized that Lindsay just let go. Cristal was going to keep holding on, predator thing be damned. She wasn’t going to let go of Lindsay.

But Lindsay let go of her. And she gave her an order, in no uncertain terms. Cristal chose to listen to her cousin for the first time that night. 

She vaulted herself into the emergency alcove and kicked the door behind her. 

A dark leg slipped through before the door shut. Cristal threw herself bodily into the door, again and again. The metal-on-metal screeching rang out just on the other side until the tendril finally retreated. 

Cristal slumped onto the ground. There were people coming down the stairs now, fighting against the small but mighty tide of people fleeing upward. Cristal stayed laying, and let herself sob like a child. With the promise of rescue so close, she let all the noise around her fade away, retreating into a place in her mind. In that place, a radio crooned softly:

Come to the end of the road 

Still I can't let go

It's unnatural

You belong to me 

I belong to you

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Out of the Mouths of Babes

In a sparse and poor town, there was an old coal mine. The town was once rich off the products of the mine, but all the men had died of black lung and all the business had gone elsewhere. In the town lived a widow and her daughter, and in the mine lived a mercurial old witch woman. The widow brought her daughter to the mine witch and asked for a blessing—some great windfall that would free them from their poverty. The witch pressed her coal-blackened fingers to the lips of the young daughter and said, “Out of the mouth of this babe shalt thou reap wealth.” The girl opened her mouth to ask what the witch had done, but instead of words, a string of pearls came forth. She cried out for her mother and with the cry came a handful of sparkling jewels.

The widow cried too, but hers were tears of joy. Now she could pay off her late husband’s debts and finally escape this broken down old town. She gathered up the treasure, took her daughter’s hand, and ran all the way home. That night, the girl screamed a litany of diamonds.

The widow sold her home for pennies and bought a new one for millions, many miles away and many acres bigger. When her daughter coughed up roses and lilies and baby’s breath, she waited for them to dry and made bouquets, which she placed in every corner of the new house.

One day the daughter fell ill, her throat raw from high cleavage and thorny roses. Her mother locked her in her room to cough and cough all by herself, and only came to see her when it was time to harvest. After many days bed ridden, the daughter turned her head to her mother, who was by her side with a bucket for catching rubies, and began to wretch like never before. The mother knelt and waited, eyes gleaming, for some new and untold riches to befall her. Instead, a toad the size of a man’s fist dropped into the bucket. A fat rat followed, and then a thick snake. The moment the snake could see past the girl’s teeth, it lunged forward into the waiting arms of her mother. It bit her fiercely on the neck, and the widow died.

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First They Came for the Aliens

Photo by Jeswin Thomas

The New York Times

October 31st, 2023

First They Came for the Aliens

By Jacob Ragnolf | 11:50 AM 

The introduction of this new kind of life to Earth reignites old questions about personhood—but did those questions ever really go away?

On January 13th of this year, Earth was invaded. That is, if you ask Republican Congresswoman and former Texas Governor Rebecca Demetrius. Fewer than twelve hours had elapsed before Demetrius released a statement decrying the lack of action from her home state’s current governor, and explicitly supporting the locals who responded immediately. “People are calling them a violent militia,” Demetrius said at a press conference, after being asked about the storming of the UFO landing site in Amarillo. “But I call them average Americans. Because in America, when we see a threat to our country, we do something about it.” 

However, if you ask the Association for All Civil Rights, January 13th was simply another day on which our concept of personhood was challenged. 

I spoke to Ellen Lobo, a representative of the AACR, about Demetrius’ statement. 

“I think it’s pure hypocrisy…How can a vampire who’s seen so many decades of bigotry against non-humans be so closed-minded?” 

Lobo also speculated with me about what kind of legislation the future might hold for the extraterrestrials. Currently, President Mann and his cabinet are debating whether or not our laws should apply to the Martians. Should an Earthling be arrested for assaulting a Martian? How about killing one? Should they be able to vote? Are they owed life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do the aliens have unalienable rights?

Less than a century ago, these protections were called “human rights.” They excluded all other creatures, undead or living, from protection under the law because of the fear and prejudice rampant in the dominant human population. Humans used to wave pitchforks and torches at anyone different from them. They didn’t see us as people. Having grown up as the lone werewolf pup in a predominantly human neighborhood, I still have to wonder how well-integrated our country is. The readiness with which humans and (for lack of a better term) less “woke” non-humans came out to profess their hatred of our new neighbors raises questions about the stability of our civility. 

We have vampire congresswomen and werewolf Op-ED writers but we’re not done—not with securing our own rights and not with fighting for the rights of others. Our new neighbors, mercurial and unknown to us as they may be, are in need of advocacy, too. To paraphrase the eminent activist Victoria Sanguinista’s 1986 speech: They may not be humans, but they are people.

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Atenia by Jay Requard (2023)

The old king is dead, and a new queen-regent rises on the right of her young son to be king. Fransica de Veard's seizure of the throne is swift and violent, and she rules tyrannically for fifteen years. The people suffer.

A rebellion forms in the underbelly of Atenia. Teenage Haidra’s father Arverin is a part of it, and when he is taken, she fulfills his duties to the rebellion in his absence. She joins a band of mages and follows them onto the warpath, burning bridges and cutting ties with any hope for safety and anonymity. The dissidents must weather the iron fist of the queen-regent’s knights, the chaos of an unstable kingdom, and a people conditioned by a decade and a half of oppression. 

Atenia is an intriguing high fantasy with a lot of good ideas. The exploration of the ways that living under tyranny can tear apart families, friendships, and communities is ambitious and, for the most part, accurate. Distrust is sewn, and a desire for self-preservation often leads to bloodshed. The magic system is also easy to wrap your head around. One might even throw in a few extra imaginary points for the general cool factor, especially with that spooky, incorporeal apocalypse preacher in the sky. 

While those aspects of the novel are enjoyable, it would not be honest to say that Atenia was a very gripping read. The characters lack a certain spark, and the prose isn’t doing much more than the bare minimum. It’s fast-paced in a way that doesn’t suit the genre. We don’t get enough time to get to know the protagonist’s character, or the character of Atenia beyond its fear under Fransica's reign. Moments that should be full of drama and betrayal fall flat from a lack of proper characterization.

Not a bad novel by any means — certainly competently written — but not exceptional either.

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Snow's TTRPG Class: Lesson #1, a reading list of experimental rpgs

"Go ahead, put anything here," Tumblr says. Well don't you worry, Tumblr. I will put anything here. Just wait and see.

I wrote this article: https://nerves.games/2023/07/26/snows-ttrpg-class-reading-list/

It's got some words in there. Go check it out. OR, just look this list of games and read them. It's your first assignment. These are all games that I think have pushed on the boundaries of TTRPGs and most of them I would consider experimental. They are in alphabetical order.

Adventure RPG (in Need of Translation), Mameli – https://better-legends.itch.io/adventure-rpg-in-need-of-translation 

Apollo 47 Technical Manual, Hutchings – https://thousandyearoldvampire.com/products/apollo-47-technical-manual-an-rpg 

Care for Hecuba, Libre – https://bigstuffedcat.itch.io/care-for-hecuba 

Clay Creatures, Sinclair – https://s-jared.itch.io/clay-creatures 

Disk Horse, Geist – https://fm-geist.itch.io/disk-horse-1-off-to-the-races 

Don’t Lose Your Mind, Baugh – https://evilhat.com/product/don-t-lose-your-mind 

Everyone is John, Sullivan – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/271276/Everyone-is-John 

Feedback, Slattery – https://adira.itch.io/feedback 

Flying Games, Dragon – https://possumcreekgames.itch.io/flying-games 

Freebase, Thron & Shaughnessy – https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1411822901179.pdf 

I EAT MANTRAS FOR BREAKFAST, Mison – https://mariabumby.itch.io/i-eat-mantras-for-breakfast 

kill puppies for satan, Baker – https://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1370/08/1370081361036.pdf 

Lady Blackbird, Harper – https://johnharper.itch.io/lady-blackbird 

Paranoia, Costikyan, Gelber, and Goldberg – https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/224392/Paranoia–First-Edition 

Plot Armor, Black – https://oriondblack.itch.io/plot-armor 

Print Weaver, Morrison – https://nlmorrison.itch.io/print-weaver 

Teen Witch, Adler – https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/variations-on-your-body 

Ten Candles, Dewey – https://cavalrygames.com/shop/ten-candles-pdf 

This Discord Has Ghosts in it, Jobst & Vass – https://willjobst.itch.io/ghosts 

Unusual Esoterica, Unpleasant – https://axesorcs.itch.io/unusual-esoterica-series-1 

We Are But Worms, LaBresh – https://riverhousegames.itch.io/we-are-but-worms-a-one-word-rpg 

Wisher, Theurgist, Fatalist, Moran – https://afarandasunlessland.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/wtf.pdf

If you didn't read the article: this is not a list of best rpgs, or a list of great starter rpgs, or a list of my favorite games! It's simply a list of experimental games that I think pushed the bounds. I think if you're in my internet house (which you are while you read this, welcome in, get comfy, we've got fresh-squeezed water) you should read these and have opinions on them, even if your opinion is "lol, lmao, this is trash." But this is school so you have to put it in a complete sentence of you get an F. Minus.

Bye,

Snow

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Are you a passionate book reviewer?

Free access to hundreds of books pre-launch. Sign up to become a Reedsy reviewer and earn $25 dollars for your first review.

Okay, now that the corporate copy is out of the way:

I'll warn anyone who might be interested in the above offer that most of the library is of middling quality. If you can tolerate writing that has clearly never crossed paths with an editor, then great! This will be perfect for you. If you're like me (meaning, kind of an asshole), then getting through a book your supposed to review might be a bit of a slog.

Reviewers are not directly paid for their reviews. You likely won't see much profit past this initial $25 offer. However, the fact that you're doing free labor means the barrier to entry is pretty low! Just have a few decent length Goodreads reviews in your back pocket and you'll likely be accepted into the program. This is an opportunity to generate some content, maybe get some relevant experience for a real job, with a CHANCE of being tipped $2 or $3 per review thrown in.

By the way, I also get $25 for every reviewer who signs up and posts their first review through my link, so if nothing else, you're doing me a favor~~

Good luck and happy reading!

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Monarch's Bane, by Bowyn Olsen (2023)

Captain Vann Ge’Bulra’s predicament is an engaging one. He is a prime example of a soldier; by the books, and one hundred percent committed to his cause and empire. To a man who is accustomed to the battlefield, being assigned to protect Avreya Shin'Lotha, who is more socialite than politician in his eyes, feels like a downgrade, even though it's supposed to be a promotion. He learns that his reassignment was brought on by an attempt on Lady Avreya’s life, which makes things a little more interesting, but Vann still butts heads with the bureaucrats and his new, less-than-competent coworkers. Then after a second attack that leaves their battleship stranded, he discovers Lady Avreya’s possible crimes against the monarchy, and it pulls his sense of duty two ways. The captain’s unalloyed service is put into its own treasonous Catch-22: do his job and protect the woman whose service he has been pledged to, or turn her in for the good of monarchy.

Monarch’s Bane delivers on the promise of the premise. Political intrigue, plasma rifles, and a sibling rivalry with intergalactic consequences; everything offered by Olsen is present. What you see is what you get. 

The sisters’ relationship is interesting, twisted by their childhood spent being groomed for power. The world of the novel is rich and unique on board the battleships and off.

My problem comes from the representation of other cultures in the novel. There’s a critique of the imperialist war-mongering present, for sure, but there is still a subtle lack of awareness in referring to the victims of the monarchy’s conquest as “tribals,” and a very un-subtle ignorance in associating them with cannibalism. Then there’s also the issue of some…interesting…dialectical choices for some of the soldiers, from which a direct line of inspiration can be drawn to outdated characters of Black people. 

Otherwise, it’s an easy-to-read military thriller with deep space and far-away planets as a backdrop. If that sounds like your cup of tea, it could be worth a read.

[wriitingcautious]

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown | Jo's Pretty Bad Book Reviews

Summary:

Professor X impersonator ropes Harvard dweeb-ass into solving the murder of an eminent physicist. Pre-nuclear apocalypse shenanigans ensue; i.e. the Pope’s assassination, a nightmare of a media frenzy, and a tourist-y little jaunt around Rome.

CW: SA

TL;DR: Good action scenes, a little het for my liking, but a fun read.

Okay, for real this time:

In this prequel to The DaVinci Code, Robert Langdon is once again coerced into catching a bloody murderer with an ominous calling card. This time, the victim is an Italian priest turned nuclear physicist who, with his adopted daughter Vittoria, was developing subatomic technology with the ability to create matter from nothing — and also level an entire city. The tech was stolen by the physicist’s murderer, and Langdon and Vittoria must spend the next 24 hours scouring Vatican City for the missing bomb, as well as hunting down the culprit before he kills again.

Big warning up top: As is the way of many male authors, Dan Brown felt the need to put the female lead in danger of violent SA at the climax. Her attacker is the primary antagonist, the Illuminati’s Hassassin (who, by the way, feels kind of racist, being characterized solely by his evilness and his Middle Eastern-ness). It’s all very 2000s, and not in a fun, TLC way. 

My next gripe is with the text’s self-importance. It grapples (read: tussles awkwardly) with big questions about religion and science; faith and skepticism. It’s dorky as hell.

However, when I take off my angy-blinders, I have to admit that there's an erudite little thrill to following Langdon down the Path of Illumination. I didn’t guess any of the twists beforehand, and I was certainly engaged by the bits of history I wasn’t already familiar with (w Great Castration, look it up). 

Robert Langdon is likable, Vittoria Vetra is vivacious and cool, and the Mickey Mouse cameos are primo comic relief. These are unalienable truths.

And maybe it’s just because my own current aspiration is to be an author of some campy nonsense, but I have an appreciation for the formula that goes into very mid thrillers. So, if you’re on the look-out for an exciting read with some weak philosophy, then Angels and Demons is for you.

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Book Reviews Incoming!

Picked up this bad boy at thrift store in LA ^^^

Hi, I'm Jo! I like sci-fi, fantasy, political thrillers/spy novels, and horror, so that's what I'll mostly be reviewing.

I don't know if I have interesting takes, but I've got some things to say, and sometimes I'm even funny(?)!

TBR (to be reviewed): Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler.

[wriitingcautious]

i think the resurgence of vampire media sans the Inexplicably Sympathetic Confederate Soldier Vampire is neat and should be continued

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Hey you!

Know of any queer books?

I’m going to be posting books featuring queer characters and/or by queer authors on my ig and tt @conbryanwrites!

Please fill out this form to help me find books to post about! (Authors can totally rec their own books!)

Please reblog so more readers and authors can see!

[wriitingcautious]

How to Become a Wizard (As Told by Warlocks)

"Granite will turn to magma, and the air will hang heavy with ash and shimmering heat."

Photo by Movidagrafica Barcelona

To become a wizard, you must be an exceptionally good student of the arcane arts. 

Locate the required tomes from your university’s archives the moment you receive your syllabus. Set your pocket watch two minutes early so that you are never late. Always bring a pen to class.

To become a wizard, you must give it your all and then some.

If you are a woman, you must give even more.

Do not make the mistake of trying to befriend the only other female student in your Intro to Evocation class; she has already forgone the frivolity of a social life. She will not speak to you with anything other than animus. 

Participate in all your classes with the utmost zeal. Raise your hand after every question, and provide a thorough and unexpurgated answer to all of them. Disregard how much it annoys your classmates. 

If you take a class in Theology, be meticulous in the study of the god you are assigned, even if that god is Kossuth of the Cleansing Flame, who is cold and primordial and not well documented. 

If the other girl from Evocation happens upon you in the library, engaged in the aforementioned research, she might, inexplicably, sit across from you. 

You must permit this intrusion, even as the sight of your cold and vexing classmate makes your hair stand on end. 

“Kossuth?” She may inquire. “How…ambitious.”

“I’m always up for a challenge,” you must reply. And if the other girl’s opaque silence goes on for too long, you may prompt her, “Is there something I can help you with?” 

“Do you ever think of appealing to a god like that?” She’ll ask. “One who answers prayers with irreparable destruction?” 

“Depending on who gets the top grade on our midterm, I just might.”

She will consider you, for a moment, before replying,

“Indeed — if that horrible little half-elf legacy gets anything better than a C, I will smite him down myself.”

A laugh will erupt from you, unbidden. That half-elf, who is rowdy and unscholarly, but dreadfully, dreadfully rich, has been getting on your nerves since the first day of class. 

You will look at the other girl properly for the first time.

Over the following weeks, develop a truce with her. Study with her. Let her help you perfect your cantrips. Organize and reorganize your spellbooks together.

Promise each other that you won’t hold a grudge, no matter who gets the highest grade.

On the day of your Evocation midterm, you should arrive feeling confident.

Because you practiced, every one of your spells will be flawless. So will hers. Really, there won’t be any competition, except between the two of you. 

The spirit of one month ago will haunt you, briefly. It will tell you that you have to beat her. It will tell you to resent both her and yourself if she comes out on top. 

You must ignore it. No grade is worth throwing away an ally in a battle that’s already stacked against you. You’ve made each other better. Leave the lecture hall with both your heads held high. 

The following week, you will discover that the horrible half-elf, despite his inane behavior and utter lack of skill, got the highest grade in the class. 

To become a wizard, all you need is a donation to the college. Apparently.

But if you are a woman, you need more.

At twilight, meet your friend in that crumbling, empty dorm hall with the faulty lock. Produce your candles when she produces the chalk. It is imperative that you come prepared with that magic word (the one that was certainly not meant for students to stumble across while working on a Theology project, but that you found nonetheless).

When the rune circle is drawn and the wicks are lit, say the word. Kossuth’s True name. 

When dawn breaks over the university, it will be with the power of a thousand suns. Granite will turn to magma, and the air will hang heavy with ash and shimmering heat. This day will be remembered as the Dawn of the Cleansing Sun, and everyone will know your names.

To become a wizard, you must give it your all and then some.

But to become a warlock (which is a lot more fun), you must give them fire.

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The Proposal

"That wasn’t a lie, so much as a belief not well explored. "

Photo by Eneida Nieves

Thebine was running late. 

Her meeting with the Arch Mage Professor Arin Igivar was scheduled for noon, which was usually the time Thebine woke up. But there was no pushing it back, so Thebine pushed onward, through her pounding headache and bleary eyes. 

She stumbled hurriedly through the winding halls of the Academy, passing classrooms and offices until she reached that of Professor Igavir, who taught her class on thaumaturgical history. Thebine gave a soft knock on the heavy wooden door, wary of her headache. She then moved to knock louder, cursing the Professor’s aged ears, but his throaty voice chastened her.

“Come in!” Igavir called to her. She entered.

The walls were lined with shelves, nearly spilling over with ancient texts and bound scrolls. Professor Igavir sat at his desk in dark, stately robes, but his white hair stuck out like dandelion fluff. At least Thebine wasn’t the only one who hadn’t bothered with a comb today. 

“Sit, sit,” Igavir commanded with a wave of his liver-spotted hand. She obeyed, trying to mask her breathlessness from all the running. 

“I do hope your proposal is a good one,” said the Professor, one finger holding the yellowed pages of a tome, like he wasn’t planning on looking away from his reading for too long. “With all the time you’ve had to work on it.”

“Thank you again, for seeing me today,” she replied, giving him a weak smile. Thebine was supposed to propose her research topic to him two days ago, but she had been ill (read: hungover) and had to beg Igavir to reschedule her appointment with him. “I think you will like my idea.” 

That wasn’t a lie, so much as a belief not well explored. 

Thebine began to explain to the professor her interest in a project of the highly-celebrated mage Eureka Hammerstone. He perked up at the name. Eureka was one of few women to achieve notoriety in mage academia, thanks to a drastic change in political beliefs to some views that better suited her male colleagues. But the project Thebine wanted to research was earlier than that. It took place in Eureka’s place of birth, a financially poor, but magically rich village called Midgar, which was surrounded by an enchanted forest. 

At the time, Midgar was home to a decent population of druids. Industrialists from a neighboring city had migrated to the village with promises of economic growth, if they agreed to give the industrialists access to the forests. Hands were shaken. Alas, as anyone who knew anything about the nature of industrialists would guess, they took advantage of this agreement. The forest was used as a magical power supply for other unwelcome developments. 

The druids of Midgar fought back, with the assistance of a faction of the Mage Society, which Eureka was the head of. She led a group of (mostly female!) mages to battle alongside the druids. Alas, magically animated vines and branches would eventually succumb to the industrialist war machines, but the Midgar locals had still put up a valiant fight. 

Thebine paused her explanation to take a breath. The professor’s brow furrowed so deeply that it began to overtake his dark eyes, but he said nothing. 

Thebine had set about working on her proposal on the day of her initial appointment, after excusing herself. She had started on the rum to combat the headache from the previous night’s drinking, and was drunk by the time she decided it was a very funny idea to propose a research paper on a revolt aided by a since de-radicalized colleague of her stuffy old professor. Now, sitting in front of said stuffy old professor, flushed and exhausted, Thebine was no longer laughing. 

She took Igavir’s silence as a cue to continue, moving on to her list of potential sources. Her list had only one item, but Thebine didn’t really think that was her fault. She had sobered up by the time she made it to the library, it was just that little was written on the Society of Mages’ involvement with the revolt. Censorship and historical revisionism, Thebine labeled it. 

There was, however, one book on the subject that mentioned Eureka Hammerstone, and Thebine brought it up to the professor. Then, flying by the seat of her robes, she suggested that Igavir get her in touch with Hammerstone for an interview. 

The professor sighed. Thebine had been rambling on for a good while, and Igavir had been tapping his finger impatiently on the open page of his tome the whole time, like he might get back to it any minute now. He finally shut it.

“No, no.” The professor stood, straightening his robes. “I believe the good Ms. Hammerstone would decline to have that interview.”

Thebine did not respond, only sat very still as Igavir hobbled over to one of the overflowing bookshelves. He pulled out a text. 

“I understand why you, as a woman, would take interest in Eureka,” said the professor, like he was humoring something unreasonable with his “understanding”. Thebine clenched her fists. “But I think you would do better by the point of the class if you instead wrote about her take on the history of invocation. The focus on perspectives of famous and well-read mages was noted in the syllabus, after all.”

Thebine had read the syllabus, had seen that part of the course description. Unoriginal regurgitation, she had labeled it. And Thebine still thought that, but shame roiled in her stomach all the same. 

“Sure,” Thebine's voice was soft and trembling as she accepted the book. “I think I will do that.”

Thebine left the office, her dreams of writing a spiteful, academically revolutionary essay dashed. She walked back out into the early afternoon air, and threw up in the bushes.

[wriitingcautious]

writing tip #3382:

you’ve added words to a document before and you can do it again

[wriitingcautious]

Playing God

"The bandages underneath were fresh, but that did little for the smell."

Photo by Thomas Willmott

Aunt Carolyn sent her chauffeur to take Sonny to Park Slope. He never liked his family's blatant displays of wealth, but for this one, he was grateful. Riding in the backseat of a Lexus was highly preferable to taking the train, where he'd have to slum it in the elevator with crying infants and their mothers, or hobbling down the streets of Brooklyn with a cane he ordered off Amazon.

Sonny also didn't mind visiting a relative's house, because he couldn't imagine it being worse than if they came to him. When she died, Mom's humanitarian lifestyle left him only enough to last one year at their place in Queens, and Sonny's desperate hustling after high school was barely cutting it. The place was in disarray. His childhood home was rotting.

It mirrored him too much for comfort.

The whole "seeing his family" part was the one downside. If it had only been Aunt Leila at home (they were converging at her place), it could have been bearable, but the whole gang was going to be there. The Incorrigible Quintet.

Leila was the one waiting on the front steps of her brownstone. She and the chauffeur helped Sonny out of the car and up to the door. Both polite enough to not mention the smell.

"Thank you for coming, hon. This is really important," she smiled that smile that was too nervous to stick around for long, but he still appreciated the kindness.

Aunt Leila was his favorite because she was the most like Mom. They were both on the creative side, and both could at least put up a facade of humbleness. She made more money than most artisanal glass blowers could ever dream of, but no one would guess it just by looking at her.

You couldn't pick the rest of his aunts and uncles out of a crowd at the Met Gala.

Leila guided Sonny into her living room, then scurried downstairs to the ground floor kitchen, murmuring something about beef wellington.

Aunt Carolyn was perched at the edge of the leather couch, like a bird ready to take flight at any sign of danger. She tossed her yellow feather boa over the shoulder of her cheetah print fur coat as her heavy gaze settled on Sonny.

"Oh, nephew. You've arrived."

"Hey, Aunt Carolyn," Sonny's voice came out hoarse and weak. Not wanting to hold eye contact with her for much longer, he nodded to the rest of the room. "Aunt Lindi, Uncle Pat, Uncle Michael."

Uncle Michael's grin was almost as flashy as the Rolex on his wrist. "How ya doin', Sonny-boy?" He didn't get up to give him that hearty pat on the back; the one that Michael used as greeting for everyone, except the seventy-six year old Carolyn. Another blessing, since both she and Sonny were liable to fall over from it at this point.

Pat, without a smile or greeting, motioned towards the little dining table a few feet away.

"Take a seat, Sonny. We have a lot to discuss."

Sonny obliged, hobbling over to a chair, and turning it towards the group before easing himself, painfully and slowly, into it. Everyone watched this, and did a poor job of hiding their discomfort.

"So," Sonny started. He hadn't taken off his coat, and he was sweating just a little. "Am I...in trouble?"

"No!" assured Lindi and Michael.

"Yes," said Pat and Carolyn.

They all turned to each other, glaring. Aunt Carolyn won the staring contest.

"Not the kind you might be expecting, but yes. You are in a great deal of trouble."

Sonny blinked.

"What kind of trouble?" He tried not to let eyes linger too long on Pat, the lawyer of the family, lest his fear of litigation somehow manifests itself into reality. As if he was important enough to sue.

"That's the question we need your help answering." Aunt Lindi's voice was high and reedy, but steady enough it was clear that she knew something. From the way she was looking at him, it couldn't be good.

"Please," said Aunt Carolyn, scanning his slumped body. "Show us what's wrong with you."

For a moment, Sonny paused. What did they know about his condition? It was new-- terrifyingly, unnaturally sudden--and he hadn't been in contact with the family in months. Sure, it was obvious he was hurting, but it seemed like something they all knew about beforehand.

Sonny appraised his aunts and uncles, and, getting expectant stares in return, he moved to roll up his pant leg.

The bandages underneath were fresh, but that did little for the smell. Gingerly, he peeled away the dressing.

Death's odor filled the room. The aunts and uncles put handkerchiefs over their noses and hands over their eyes. Maybe it was just the sight of it, but having Sonny's ailment exposed seemed to make the stink so much worse.

From the base of his foot to just below his knee, Sonny was rotting. Some kind of necrosis. It was only skin deep, but Sonny was beginning to worry it wouldn't stay that way. It didn't spread fast at first, but within days, Sonny's entire leg became black.

"Oh God. What--why," Aunt Lindi gawked and clasped the diamonds on her neck. "You...need to have that checked out!"

Probably. Yeah, the state of his leg was scary. Scary enough for Sonny to take all his sick days at once and become a veritable shut in.

But he couldn't go to a hospital.

The beeping, the tubes, the blood. The clipboards, and the yelling, and the fast, fast, fast way everybody moved. He'd been twice in the last five years, once for each parent. That was enough.

"I...haven't gotten around to it yet."

"You just can't afford it," said Aunt Carolyn. "That's the issue."

"Well, now we know why." Pat gestured to Sonny's leg.

"Figures it'd be Sheryll's kid to get that end of the stick." Michael shook his head sullenly.

"I'm sorry, can someone please tell me what's going on?" Sonny's tone was a little sharper than he meant it to be, but he didn't like it when the family talked about his mom. If it wasn't outright antagonistic, it was passive-aggressively critical. Sometimes the latter was more insulting. "Do you all know something I don't?"

This time, no one was eager to answer him.

Carolyn took the reins again. "Our family has a decorated history, as you know. Every single one of us has been successful in all areas for generations." She seemed to be considering her words carefully. "This hasn't always been the result of...natural talent. We are born capable, yes. But..."

Carolyn looked at Sonny like he was supposed to understand something, but he didn't. He couldn't wrap his head around why she was saying all this to him, the orphaned twenty-one year old working three jobs with no hope for higher education and, therefore, no future. At least, not the kind that was expected of him.

"Did your mother really tell you nothing?" asked Pat, incredulous.

Sonny just shook his head.

Carolyn took a deep, steadying breath, which unsettled Sonny. He had never seen her act unsure.

"Many, many years ago, our great-great Uncle Isaac Moore, your great-great-great uncle, became involved with a...group of gentlemen who had a particular religious persuasion. None of them were poor by any means, but they saw so much more for themselves--truly ambitious men, they were. So, they found someone who could give that to them, and they struck a deal."

Sonny blinked at her.

"What? Did they, like, make a deal with the devil?"

The silence that followed his question was deafening. Michael tugged on the collar of his paisley satin button down. Pat tapped a snake-skin oxford clad foot. The light bounced off of Lindi's diamond encrusted dress as she shifted.

Sonny chuckled a little. "You're joking, right?"

"I don't tell jokes, nephew," declared Carolyn.

Pat spoke up.

"Yes, our family's success is all thanks to that deal. It's likely that most of us wouldn't be where we are if not for that agreement."

"Uh," Sonny couldn't believe he was entertaining this concept, but he felt like there was one really important question to ask. "What did...the devil get in return?"

"We're getting to that," said Pat. Again, all eyes on Sonny's leg.

"Great-great-great Uncle Isaac was told that if anyone in our family was to denounce the gifts given to us, it would all fall apart. No more success, no more riches," said Carolyn. She sniffed a little. "The most dreadful outcome."

There was a bit of weighty pause before someone else took the mic.

"Also," said Uncle Michael, carefully. "Eventually, somebody in the family line would get the short end of the stick."

"Yes, thank you, Michael," Pat remarked snidely. "We all love the stick metaphors."

"What does that mean?" Sonny demanded. He was starting to put it together, but he wanted someone to just come out and say it.

"We weren't sure about that," said Aunt Carolyn, motioning towards his still undressed leg. "Until now."

"What are you all talking about?" His voice quieted to a breathy whisper.

"Sonny," Lindi's tone was very soft. "You're cursed. By the devil."

Sonny sat back in the dining chair. He had no words. He almost laughed again.

Were they for real? It was true that every member of the Moore family succeeded in some way. Carolyn with her fashion design, Michael with his casino chain, Lindi with her jewelry business, Pat with his career in law. Leila with her artisanal glass blowing. Even his mother, with her painting. It could be described as unnatural. But, was it supernatural?

"We all thought it was strange that you were doing so terribly in school, even from such a young age, and after what happened to Sheryll..." Pat gave a tight grimace.

"I thought she might have, you know..." Lindi wiggled in her seat. "...gone through with it. Denounced everything, and that's why that happened to her."

"I nearly thought it, too. Foolish girl."

Sonny was feeling very cold all of a sudden.

"Is that how you talk about a dead woman?" He muttered, just loud enough for everyone to hear.

They all looked at him.

"Oh, dear nephew," said Aunt Carolyn cooley. "Had she let her ethics get the better of her, you would be a dead man."

The disbelief was wearing off. This may as well be the case; why wouldn't he be cursed? It made about as much sense as anything else about this week, and about his family.

Sonny was possessed by a different emotion entirely.

"No!" he pointed a shaking finger at Carolyn, making her start. "You just said that if someone denounced the deal, you would all just stop getting lucky. You just wouldn't be so rich. I might be dying now, because none of you wanted to struggle. To work. You have no idea what it's like--"

Sonny paused to catch his breath. No one interrupted him.

"Denounce it. Right now. You've seen my leg, and no one needs a doctor to tell you all that it's going to get worse. I'm probably going to die. So if any of you care, if any of you have an ounce of empathy for your own flesh and blood, denounce it all. Do it."

Sonny waited, but all he got was blank stares.

It comforted him to know that his mom was nothing like these people. Even if she hadn't denounced anything, the fact that everyone thought she could have still made her a better person. Thinking about the way she died--an unlikely car crash at 25 mph in light traffic--plenty of people who thought Sonny wasn't around to hear speculated that it might not have been an accident. The only caveat was him, in the backseat. But maybe she'd been trying to save him from an unknown terrible fate.

Messed up, but better than what he had left: the people in this living room with him.

Pat was the first to speak.

"We don't know if that's how it works."

"Sorry, kid. If we throw it all away, and you don't get any better, that's a lose-lose," said Michael. "No man would bet on that."

Lindi piped up.

"Your leg...but any of us could pay to get you the best medical attention--"

"No." The icy rage was gone. Warmth returned to all limbs not suffering nerve damage. But that didn't mean he wasn't still mad. "I don't want anything from you people."

Carolyn raised an eyebrow at him, but before she could say anything, Leila came up the stairs with a tray of food.

"Alright, everybody. Let's--" Leila got one look at Sonny's leg and flipped out. She dropped the tray, sending both beef and wellington scattering across the hardwood floor.

"You know," Michael cleared his throat. "When I was younger, I did think about denouncing. Seemed like the right thi--"

"Oh, shut up, Michael," sneered Carolyn.

"Yes, please," Pat imported, rolling his eyes. "You don't have a moral bone in your body, you lying casino rat."

"You're one to talk. You don't need to take every case, but you still represented that CEO guy who killed two kids, and won the case for him!" Lindi's voice was shrill with indignance.

"Don't get all high and mighty, Lindi." Carolyn interjected with a dismissive wave. "At least he knows what he's doing. Have you ever stopped to think about where those diamonds you push come from?"

Sonny turned to Leila, who was still gawking at the blackened skin.

"Aunt Leila, where's your bathroom?"

Feebly, she pointed toward a far door. He thanked her, and hobbled off to redress his leg.

Sonny locked the door behind him, and put the toilet cover down to sit. He wasn't sure if bandaging was the right way to care for necrosis, but he was getting good at it.

Then, suddenly, the light went out. Sonny couldn't hear anyone from the living room complain about it (they had completely devolved into bitter argument), so he figured the bathroom bulb had just blown.

But then the mirror started to glow red.

Slowly, as his leg required, Sonny stood up. He shuffled in front of the mirror.

It wasn't his own face looking back at him.

It was a man, but he was deathly pale. His eyes shone crimson. He was hairless, except for a small, black goatee.

"What the--"

"Sonny Moore. A pleasure."

Sonny was distantly aware that he couldn't hear the arguing anymore.

"Who are you? How did you get in the mirror?"

"I'll give you three guesses." The man grinned wide to show off his pointed teeth. "Just kidding, let's not waste time. I'm Satan."

Sonny just stared, mouth open.

"Sonny, I have something very important to tell you. I let your family know about your condition, but they don't have the full story."

He was beginning to feel cold again.

"The necrosis, it's unpleasant, I know. I had different tastes back in the day. Here's the thing; you're not going to die when all your skin falls off and organs decay."

"I'm pretty sure I need my heart to live." The only concepts Sonny could manage to express were basic biology.

"Sure, your body needs it. But not your soul! Think of the rotting as a butterfly shedding its chrysalis." Satan stepped a little closer, and it seemed that if Sonny tilted his head a little, he might see the man's nose poking out from the glass. "I'm here to make you an offer."

"I don't want it."

"Hear me out, now. This possibility of a Moore not having the same grandiose fortune, it was never meant to be a curse. If I was capable of giving blessings, that's what I'd call this. You have a special opportunity.

"Should you choose to accept it, I can give you immense power. Once all that gross flesh comes off, I'll take your soul and transform it into a vengeful, freezing wind, capable of mass destruction!" He waved his hands a little, like he was trying to convince a child that math was exciting.

"You want...my soul?"

"Well, yes. But you'd still have perfect autonomy, I promise!"

The devil frowned, almost pouted, as Sonny's expression did not change from dumbfounded shock.

"Listen, buddy, I know what you're going through. All your life, you've suffered. Your dad's cancer, your mom's crash, and now these insufferable blockheads? Terrible luck. I didn't do that, mind you, you just didn't have the same safety net as the rest of your family. Real sorry you ended up getting the 'short end of the stick.'"

Satan's smile softened. "But I can help you right all those wrongs. You can end them all; your family, your horrible managers, anybody that's ever made you feel like you don't have control. You can control them. Doesn't that sound fun?"

Gears were just starting to turn in Sonny's head again, but the rising cold making his fingers feel frostbitten and the intense way his leg was beginning to itch were fighting for his focus.

"Don't resist, Sonny," the devil's voice was syrupy-sweet, the way it must have been when he convinced great-great-great Uncle Isaac Moore to take the original deal. "You've worked so hard already. Just let loose, it'll be so easy. I can even make your skin fall off quicker, so you don't have to be in pain for too long."

Sonny had a strange vision of his potential future: a skeleton, swathed in blankets of icy wind, clean of flesh and blood. No longer a Moore (no longer a failed Moore), but an entity. A force of nature. Rather, supernature.

Skeletons also didn't have to worry about bills.

"You could see your parents again."

This got Sonny's attention. His eyes widened as Satan's eyes gleamed.

"I could do that for you, if you let me have your soul." Sonny thought of his mom. What she did. What she might do if she were in this bathroom.

"Can I..." Words felt leaden on Sonny's tongue.

"Yep! Whatever you want kid."

"I...denounce your gifts."

The space on his forehead where the devil's eyebrows might have been shot up. "Anybody in the family can do that, right? Just because I didn't benefit, doesn't mean I don't have a say."

"That would be correct..."

"Okay. I denounce your gifts."

Satan sucked his teeth for a long time. He looked Sonny up and down.

"Alright. Well played, kid," the devil chuckled. "You should ask your Uncle Patrick about law school, I think you'd fit right in."

Satan raised a pale, bony hand, and snapped his fingers, like a genie. "Congrats. You just killed a generations-long agreement. I respect it."

The strange visage of the Prince of Hell vanished. The mirror ceased to glow red. The light turned back on, and then Sonny's leg gave out.

He lay there, cheek feeling quite warm against the cool tile of the bathroom floor. His skin no longer itched. It was unlikely that the damage could be undone, but it seemed that the rest of his flesh chrysalis was going nowhere. The spread would stop.

Someone must have heard him, because footsteps were coming closer.

The bathroom door opened and there was shouting. It was likely that someone would call an ambulance for him, which sucked. But he took solace in the fact they would regret trying to help once they realized what Sonny had done.

It was fine, knowing he would have to go back home to the same house he couldn't care for, to the same bills, and the same jobs. It was fine because he had taken control of something much better; he had played God by playing the devil.

[wriitingcautious]

Vampire Police Department: Murder on Mermaid Avenue

"Don’t stay in one city for more than ten years, and don’t come back until everyone you knew is dead."

Photo by Yonghyun Lee

This is an excerpt from a dorky murder mystery draft à la James Patterson, except the protag is a vampire cop. Please enjoy this nonsense.

“So, you two know each other?”

Shiloh didn’t hear Faye. She was too busy panicking.

Helen Rice, softball starlet, captain of the chess club, and valedictorian for the graduating class of ‘84 at Walton High School, stood there, gaping at Shiloh.

“Yes, I believe we’ve met.” Helen smiled that award-winning, yearbook photo smile and extended a hand. “Shiloh Schumacher! Is that really you?”

Until that moment, Shiloh thought she was good at hiding from her agelessness. In her twenty years of looking twenty-seven, not one person had caught on. But that was because she followed the unofficial vampire code: don’t stay in one city for more than ten years, and don’t come back until everyone you knew is dead.

Even though Shiloh had only been away for two and a half decades, she had been drawn back to the place of her birth and her death. New York.

Now she was facing the consequences, in the form of her high school frenemy.

“Well, yes. But not the one you know.” Shiloh went for the lie. It was a rough one, but it would have to do. “It kind of feels like we know each other, though, with how much my mother talked about you! Helen, yeah? Helen Rice?”

She took the woman’s outstretched hand.

“Copperfield. Helen Copperfield. I married in '97. Are you sure we don’t know each other?”

“No, you went to high school with my mother,” said Shiloh, with the most natural laugh she could muster. “She’s shown me all the pictures. You look exactly the same!”

“So do you! The same as your mother, I mean.” Helen narrowed her eyes. “You’re both named Shiloh?”

“Yeah! Ever seen Gilmore Girls? It’s like that.”

“Sure,” Helen replied tersely. It took a little too long for Helen to drop her hand.

“So!” Faye stepped in, glancing anxiously between the two women. “I guess we don’t need names, but we could do with some titles. Shiloh, this is our new captain. Captain Copperfield, this is the detective on hiatus that I was telling you about.”

Helen grunted in response, still staring Shiloh down.

“Good to be back!” Shiloh chirped. “And good to meet you.”

Hoping against hope that the conversation was over, she tried to make a move for her desk.

The captain quickly slid in front of her, limber for her age.

“Oh, you’re not getting away that easily,” she smirked. “We have things to discuss. You as well, Detective Thorton. Where’s your partner?”

“She’s, uh…” Faye scanned the precinct for someone who wasn’t there, fiddling with the hem of her pea coat.

Then, the elevator dinged and Dulce Lafitte tumbled out of it, crew cut first.

Seeing the trio of women looking at her with varying levels of desperation, Dulce’s brown skin blanched.

She marched up to them, straight as a rod.

“Sorry I’m late.” She shot a glance at Faye. “Had business to attend to.”

“Detective Lafitte, I suggest you save your extracurricular activities for when you’re off the clock.” Captain Copperfield advised in a tone that implied it was not a suggestion, but a threat. Shiloh would expect nothing less.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Helen turned on her heel and returned to her office.

The three detectives shared a look of worry between them before following her in.

Shiloh was used to seeing the captain’s desk covered in candy wrappers and click-pens that were all running out of ink. Helen was much neater—papers orderly, not a crumb of food in sight. Some people never change.

Faye was whispering to Dulce, trying to catch her up on the morning's events. Helen fixed them with a look, and they quieted, flushing like bashful children.

“So, Shiloh Jr.,” Helen grumbled. “I trust your little vacation went well?”

“A vacation? If I had known that’s what it was, I wouldn’t have spent so much time lazing around in a hospital bed!”

“Amusing,” said Helen, looking unamused. She reached into her desk and procured a gun and a badge. Shiloh’s gun and badge. “Do you want to tell me why you went to a crime scene without these?”

“Well, I wasn’t there in an official capacity. The caller was a friend of mine.”

Helen sighed like an exasperated school teacher.

“Don’t do it again.” She slid the gear across her desk. Shiloh took it.

“Yes ma’am.”

Helen sat back in her desk chair, staring at Shiloh. Analyzing. “Anything else, ma’am?”

“Yes. I’m putting you on this case with Lafitte and Thorton.”

“The thrift store case?” Shiloh thought Helen would be stricter than their old captain, and put her something she wasn’t connected to. At the very least, she thought she would have to fight for the case she needed to be on. Was she really so lucky?

“Yes. The exsanguination case.”

Maybe life under Captain Copperfield wouldn’t be as stressful as Shiloh thought.

She suspected there was more Helen wanted to say, but she dismissed them.

Once outside the office, Shiloh breathed a sigh of relief. She sucked the breath back in when she saw how Faye and Dulce were looking at her.

“Okay, what the hell is going on with you?” Faye demanded shrilly. “You’ve been acting weird all day!”

“Weird how?” Shiloh feigned offense.

“Weird like you’re hiding something! First the thrift store owner, now the captain; how do you know everyone?”

“Do you really have the same name as your mom?” asked Dulce, as on point as ever.

Shiloh gave her a tight smile.

“Don’t you worry about my mother,” she said. “How about we get to work?”