Gender: Female
Status:
Married
Age: 41
Sign:
Sagittarius
Country: United States
Signup Date:
August 25, 2018
|
|
|
|
02/10/2021 01:42 PM
|
LOSING MY RELIGION
THE NIGHT OF FEBRUARY 9th It was happening again. The apocalypse. The end of the world. The fat lady belting out one last bop before the universe blinked away. And for the umpteenth time it was up to Claire and Andy and their family to stop it. Claire and Andy stayed up late talking it through. They just stopped a plague of vengeful ghosts, or the something-something of the Witnesses as Grace the angel lady called it, and every part of Andy hurt. Exhaustion chewed her and swallowed her and sh*t her out, but there wasn’t any time to regroup from that. Because of course an evening of evil ghosts beating the sh*t out of you can’t just be an evening of evil ghosts beating the sh*t out of you, it had to be an omen for the coming apocalypse. She tried to convince herself that it was no big deal, that they could handle it just like they handled the last one--if anything, this would be easier, the last time around the whole multiverse was at stake, this time it was only their localized universe--but it didn’t make Andy feel better no matter how hard she pretended it did. The worst of it was that Andy felt so useless this time around. Not that she had a lot to do with the stopping of the last apocalypse--their daughters really did all the heavy lifting there--but she had a role to play. The Loa, the Voodoo gods serving as the deities for Andy’s religion, were intimately involved in defeating the dark under gods that threatened the multiverse. This time it was just one God, the one who liked to pretend he was the only one--capital G and all--picking a fight with a fallen angel, and Andy couldn’t feel less involved. She was raised a Christian, she knew the lore up to her gills, but she couldn’t stop a part of her from feeling like it wasn’t her fight, and that scared the sh*t out of her. Some heavy things were coming and what if she didn’t have it in her to help her family the way they needed? Her mind ran wild with those fears. Andy lay on the ground with Claire, talking it through with her wife while staring at the ceiling, though for a while she felt like she was the one doing most of the talking. Her wife always listened, though, was always there for her, and sometimes she would just let her go. Andy loved that about Claire, one of a million things she loved about her; and although she tried to limit her whining monologues, the apocalypse was looming and she allowed herself a little extra whining time without feeling guilty about it. “I just don’t understand,” Andy said. “I mean, I know the question ‘why us?’ never really has a good answer, but seriously this time: Why the f*** us? Why do we have to be the constant play-things for the cosmic a**holes. The last time, I understood. I wasn’t happy about it, but I got it. The Loa helped us have the twins and… yeah, you make a deal with a god, ‘dem da breaks. You don’t have to explain that one to me, but this time around I don’t get it. I don’t even worship this god, you haven’t been to church in like… a really long time. I feel like the universe just has it out for us, you know? “And I’m always trying to be such a good trooper about it. F*** that. I’ll put on a brave face with the kids but I’m done pretending like it’s okay for the universe to just jerk us around like this. I’m so sick of being the main character in some cosmic smut fiction where everyone I care about keeps dying or getting hurt or gets possessed. It’s bullsh*t. You hear that ‘Universe’? I’m done caring. And I don’t care what you think about it.” 
Light snoring answered her. Andy looked up and over to Claire, who passed out on the floor, mouth open and drooling a little. She huffed, but then smiled, not blaming her wife for passing out, it was super late and they had a helluva thirty-six hours. Sitting up, Andy went to grab a blanket and a pillow from the closet. She wasn’t like Claire, she didn’t have werewolf strength to be able to carry her to bed, but she could make her wife comfortable. She carefully lifted Claire’s head to slide the pillow under her, and she draped the blanket over her. She’d be down there herself soon enough, choosing to sleep on the floor with her rather than sleep in bed alone, but she went to do a last minute check on the kids instead. Andy slipped into the hallway and headed toward the nursery to check on the babies first. Once she saw that they were okay, the not-so-little-littles were next. She went deeper down the dark hall, but when she rounded the corner she jumped a little at the sight of someone standing at the other end of the corridor. She resisted the urge to scream. The figure, a woman with her back to Andy, had shoulder length red hair and Andy assumed it was Mia or Andrea, out of bed or maybe even sleepwalking. She took a step forward and opened her mouth to offer her some calming motherly advice, but when the figure turned around it wasn’t the face of a daughter staring back at her. The face was an empty swirl of darkness and light, cosmic energy flickering and twisting--the universe itself reflected back at Andy, and it rooted Andy’s legs against the hardwood floor of the hallway. 
“Who are you?” Andy said in a meek whisper. “What are you doing in my house?” The figure only stared back at her. It didn’t speak. It didn’t move. It just stared. “Answer me, damnit,” she had more vigor in her voice this time around. “Answer me or I swear I’ll scream and wake my wife up and you’re gonna wish you chose to talk with me instead of her.” “Get. Them. Away.” A voice spoke in Andy’s mind, the figure’s voice, a booming but feminine tone. Andy couldn't say exactly how she knew it was the figure but she knew. “What?” Andy teared up. “I don’t… I don’t understand.” “Get. Them. Away. The Vessels. Danger. His. Angels. Dangerous.” “Angels?” Andy asked. “The Archangels, the ones Grace was talking about? Who are the vessels?” “Twins. Get. Them. Away.” Andy froze, paralyzed by fear. “The twins… my girls… they’re…” “No. Help. From. Gods. No. Help. But. Yourself. No. Help. Jesus.” “I don’t understand, I don’t get it. You need to be clearer.” Andy openly cried now. “Please, this is my family. I need to know what you’re trying to say. I need to understand. I lied before, I care. I do care, I can’t stop caring, please, just tell me, just--” 
Andy shot up in bed, gasping, waking from a nightmare. Beside her, Claire sat on her side, asleep and snoring, one of the cats cuddled up against her. Andy caught her breath and panted. She didn’t really understand her dream, where it came from, or what it meant, but something inside her told her it was more than just a nightmare. Things were changing, the end of things… it was one step closer. And now Andy had more to worry about.
|
|
|
10/28/2020 02:17 PM
|
THE SUN WOLF
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION 10/28/20 The dimly lit hall had a sour smell to it. A pungent cocktail of mildew and sweat and socks. Andy scrunched her nose as she walked through it, the smell lingering like a cloud she couldn’t escape. It slung to the egg-shell white bricks in the walls and the linoleum tile floor. It hid above the hum of the flickering fluorescent lights and on the bench down the corridor and the gum stuck under that bench. Jesus. Was this really the best they could do on such short notice? Was this place even safe? It didn’t smell safe. Andy trusted her people though, she trusted her family. Maybe the stench would keep all the bad people away. At the end of the hall, the bench sat unused beside the locked door. She turned to the left. The pale vampire with the bleached white hair who was meant to be standing guard—sitting on that bench, specifically—stood in front of a vending machine, shaking it when her Clark Bar caught on a jammed coil of metal. “Stupid, dang… Candy!” Linda Dalton shook the machine some more. Candy rained down into the basin but the stubborn Clark Bar she so desperately desired only got more stuck. “I see babysitting duty has you captivated,” Andy said with a wave. “Oh, hi Andy.” Linda shook the machine more. No luck. Claire’s great-aunt didn’t share many of the temperamental traits that made Andy’s wife so colorful, but keep her from her sugar-fix and the animal came out. “This darn machine thinks it's better than me.” Andy pointed to all the other candy bars that fell down into the catch. “Looks like you have your pick, Linda. Trick r’ treat came early.” “Help yourself.” She shook the machine more. “I want my Clark Bar.” “Clark Bar. Gross.” “Spoken like a kid who grew up eating sugar out of a bowl for breakfast.” One last kick and the Clark Bar fell, and Linda pumped a fist. “Yes!” She wasted no time reaching in, grabbing the candy bar, opening it, and taking a bite. “Sometimes I forget that you were turned into a vampire back in the 50s.” Andy went over, grabbed a Snickers, and pocketed it in her jacket for later. “You really need to get your candy game into the 21st century, old lady.” Linda smacked her lips as she obnoxiously chewed her old person candy. “You here to see him?” “He wake up yet?” “Nope,” Linda shook her head, fished a key out of her pocket, and tossed it to Andy. Andy caught it with two hands. “I think he’s faking though. You know if you think I’m old, wait until you get him up and talking. Fallon hasn’t been clear with the specifics but I’m pretty sure he’s older than her. Claire was saying he’s older than--” “The war,” Andy said, her mind flashing with conjured fairytale images of the schism between vampires and werewolves that split the supernatural world apart over 800 years ago, one that finally reached an armistice a short while ago thanks to her daughter Mia’s quick thinking and tough decisions. “I know what I’m walking into. I’m Andy Stoddard-Motherf***ing-Barclay. I don’t walk into situations without doing my research.” “That’s what you’re doing here, yeah? Research? You both had the same darkness in you. You want to know if he knows something you don’t? I don’t know if he’ll be talkative. That bitch that beat the ghost out of him… she did a number. You might be better off going back to your books.” “C’mon, Linda,” Andy went to the door and unlocked it. “You know better than most: people are just books that haven’t been written yet.” The smile stayed on Andy’s face even as she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. The stench from the hall didn’t come as strong in Darrow Dalton’s recovery room, but the spirit of it haunted that place. The room itself—square with plain gray walls. No windows—left much to be desired. An exposed toilet sat in one corner. In the other, behind a crudely installed privacy curtain, a handsome werewolf with shaggy blond hair, slept in a hospital bed. Slept might have been too kind a word for it. Coma was closer, though the science of it was complicated by the man’s lycanthropy. Cuts and bruises that were slow to heal lingered across his skin and he was plugged into IVs and all sorts of machines that beeped and booped. Despite all that, he did kind of look peaceful. When was the last time I slept that peacefully? Andy wondered. Pushing the curtain aside, Andy found a chair against one of the walls and she dragged it closer to the bed. She sat down facing him, kicked her feet up on the bed, and began unwrapping the snickers in her pocket. “I know you’re awake. You can stop pretending.” No response. Only the beeping of the machines answered her. “You might not have been in control of your body when you got your ass kicked, but I know your pride’s got more dents and bruises than the rest of you right now. You’re a werewolf, Darrow, the important bits healed a long time ago. The ego takes a bit longer. Another thing I know about werewolves… they get hungry faster than the rest of us. How satiating is that IV?” Andy held up the naked snickers bar, wiggled it, and tossed it at him. It landed on his chest, and a single green eye opened and looked at her. She greeted it with a wave and a smile. The second eye opened a second later and a bruised hand reached up for the chocolate bar on his chest. The werewolf sat up and took a bite of the Snickers. “How did you know?” He asked in an accent that was close to English but sounded stranger and older all at the same time. He chewed while he spoke. Obnoxious horse-chud smacks of his lips. “They called you the Sun Wolf back in the day.” Andy crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “Only badass warriors get nicknames like that. And badass warriors don’t like to get beat up. And badass warriors from olden times especially don’t like to get beat up by a girl. You’d rather pretend to be in a coma than have to address that with anyone.” He chomped down on another bite of Snickers. “Who told you they called me the Sun Wolf?” “I’ve done my research.” “So it seems. So it seems.” He finished the snickers with one last bite and wiped his chocolatey fingers on his shirt. “Do you know why they called me that?” “I know who called you that,” Andy said. “Your mother--” “Eh,” he held up a finger and wagged it, a ‘we don’t talk about her’ sort of wag. “That is not what I asked, Andrew. Do you know why they called me that?” Andy’s jaw tightened. “Please don’t call me that.” “Andrew?” “Andy is just fine.” He smiled some, chocolate on his teeth. “So you get it. They called me the Sun Wolf to mock me. That name wasn’t a warrior’s title, not until I forged it into one. I was a small kid, a runt. My sisters mocked me, said they were wolves of the moon while I was a wolf of the sun, sleepy and weak. Joke was on them, you see, what is moonlight anyway? The druids who made us wolves, they bound us to the moon as a symbol but the real power isn’t in the moonlight. Moonlight is but sunlight refracted off the surface of this planet’s satellite. They called me Sun Wolf to make me feel small, and I built a large legend around it.” “And how do you feel about where that legend has led to now?” Andy stood up and gestured around the room. Darrow looked down. Darrow, Claire’s ancient ancestor, had been living apart from everything for so long, no one even knew he existed until recently. When he first arrived not everyone trusted him, but he helped out with things and seemed okay. He was family after all. Family trusts family. Always and always. Then a darkness found its way to them, a dark and twisted soul from another universe, and it cut a path through the family, one that carved past Andy and now left its mark on Darrow. He hid it well, but Andy could the dent left behind on him. “I had her in me too, you know,” Andy said. “Klaire, that dark, broken version of my wife from a universe so horrible I can’t even imagine it. It was only for a short time but… I can still feel it. She made me watch everything, made me see and feel everything as she controlled me and left me helpless.” “Shame.” Darrow swung his legs off the bed and pulled different tubes and needles off his body. “Sounds horrible. I don’t remember a thing.” “Bullsh*t.” “Bullsh*t to your bullsh*t.” He stood up. “I’m telling the truth.” “She wants the people she hurts to feel it, to hurt with her, to feel as awful as she feels. That’s what she’s about.” Andy’s voice got a little louder. “She wants her daughter back.” “So apparently you remember some things.” Darrow slow-blinked. Caught. He shook his head. “It’s not just like riding in the back seat of a car,” Andy said. “You feel what she feels. Urges. Desires. Goals. She had you longer than she had me. You know what she’s planning, what scheme she’s up to. I know you know it. And you know that she’s coming back. One way or another she is coming back and she won’t stop until we stop her.” “You don’t need me, just find that wacko French woman you sent to kick her ass when she was in my body and you’re fine--” “It’s not that easy,” Andy said. “My family is at risk. Your family. How can I even be sure she’s not still hiding in you somewhere? How do I know that we can trust you and you’re not still working with her?” “I was never working with--” “When she escaped she was in your body. She wasn’t just lying low the whole time. She plotted. Planned. It’s what she does. She wants Maggie. She’ll be back for Maggie. I can’t stop her if I don’t know what’s coming.” “Okay, okay. Enough, alright? My head is throbbing.” Darrow held up a hand, signalling that he needed Andy to call off the hounds. Andy waved her hands and refused. “No! Look, I know what you’ve been through. I understand how crazy this is all for you, and I respect that you just spent a couple of weeks with someone else in control of your body and you got beaten half to death by someone half your size, but my family is at stake here. I liked your story about your name—Sun Wolf—like it better than the version of the story I read. You weren’t some runt kid, Darrow, you were the pride of your mother’s eye, a favorite of the pack. You won battles and wooed lovers, you were loved and famous and favored, but when sh*t got real, when the nights got dark and everyone had to huddle together to deal with a problem coming in the morning, you’d be gone with the dawn. The Sun Wolf: couldn’t be counted on when needed.” Andy stepped closer to him. He wouldn’t look at her but her approach forced him to at least turn in her general direction. “You care about your story, Darrow,” she continued. “You want to shape it, shape it into something better than what they have written down. You want to take the name they gave you and make it your own. I sympathize.” She shoots him a look, and guilt for using her dead name flashes across his face. “Now’s the time to turn the ship around. The sun’s rising here and your family needs help. You can run and prove the stories right or you can turn the page and rewrite the legend of the Sun Wolf.” A pause lingered in the room like the stench from the hall. Darrow faced the wall again, staring at it for what felt like the longest time. Eventually, though, he turned back to Andy and his green eyes met her blue. “I know everything,” he said, tears in his eyes. “She wanted me to know. She wanted me to see…” “See what, Darrow?” “That you can’t stop her.”
|
|
|
03/11/2020 08:17 PM
|
OK, BOOMER
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS AUGUST 6th, 1967
The sun shone bright in a cloudless sky making everything pop into life like the image on a color tv. A red and white checkerboard picnic blanket was spread out on the green grass, and Karen Hicks sat on her side—her yellow skirt blossoming around her legs—as she stared lovingly into William Barclay’s pretty eyes. The two of them had been going steady for a couple months now, which, to a teenager was a lifetime. Back in the Spring, Will was just a cute boy who smiled at the right time and looked the right way at the drive-in, but now… now Will was Karen’s entire world. She was crazy about the guy, flat out head-over-heels, nothing is going to change my mind crazy about him. It was her sixteenth birthday today, and there was no place where she would rather be.
“Happy birthday,” William said with a voice as soft as his smile.
“You already said that,” Karen replied.
“So?” He asked. “Is there a limit on the number of birthdays I’m able to happy?”
Karen giggled. “As a matter of fact there is, and you reached your quota.”
“I did?”
“You did?”
“And what’s my quota?” William asked.
“Two per birthday,” Karen said matter-of-factly, “One in the morning and one in the evening time to go along with a kiss goodnight.”
“So I gotta wait until next year to wish it again?” he asked.
Karen blushed. “You going to be around for my next birthday?”
“I’m going to be around for all the birthdays,” He leaned in and kissed her and Karen smiled brighter than that technicolor sun. When the kiss was done, William leaned back and brushed some hair out of Karen’s face. “Does that scare you? The idea of me being around that long? The idea of being stuck with me?”
“Why would it scare me?” Karen asked.
“I don’t know,” he rolled over onto his back and looked up at the blue sky, “We’re young. Lots of folks would think it’s a foolish thing to do to paint out the path of your life when you’re so young.”
“My parents got married when they were fifteen.” Karen played with one of the buttons on William’s shirt. “By their pace I’m already behind the eightball.”
“Don’t expect me to pull out a ring right here and now and ask you to be my wife, Karen Hicks,” he said with a smile. “If I gotta wait a-whole-nother year to wish you happy birthday again you gotta wait for a ring.”
“Stop it,” Karen laughed and gave Will a little shove. “You’re not as funny as you think you are.”
“Oh yeah?” William grinned. “That’s alright, I only want to be as funny as you think I am.”
William put his arm around Karen and she rested her head on his chest, her golden curls bleeding into the sunlight that bleached his copper shirt. For a little while the two of them just lay there, enjoying the sun and the quiet and the shadow of an occasional bird flying high overhead. William’s heart thumped in his chest against Karen’s ear and the percussion soothed her. Her heart synched up with his and beat at the same pace beneath her breast. They were in unison, connected by love in that moment that felt like it could stretch on forever.
“I’m not scared of anything,” Karen said after the lingering quiet.
“Nothing?”
Karen shook her head. “Nothing.”
“You’re braver than me,” William grinned, “I’ll give you that. I’m scared of loads.”
“Like what?” Karen asked.
“Well, aliens, to start,” he pointed up to the sky. “You can laugh but I’m serious. Little green men coming down here in their pods with their laser beams. ‘Take me to your leader,’ you really trust Johnson to be able to handle that? Get out of here. We’d be toast.” Karen giggled a little and William smiled along with her. He waited for the laughter to die and the smile to fade before adding, “I am afraid of that actually, of the people in charge, of the people pulling the strings. I’m afraid of this damn war. It’s been going on since middle school and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to end any time soon. People keep dying over there and I’m afraid that it won’t be over until it’s my turn to go and die for no reason.”
Karen adjusted herself to get a better look at him. Will tugged grass up from the dirt and tossed it toward his shoe aimlessly. He shared something, he made himself vulnerable, and it was hard to tell if he did it on purpose or if it slipped through. But there he was, raw and out there for Karen to see, and Karen sucked in a deep breath and threw herself out there, too.
“Maybe I spoke too soon,” Karen said.
William looked at her. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “Maybe there is something I’m afraid of. Maybe I’m afraid of what the future looks like. I read books about what the past was like as if it’s going to crack some code and answer things for me, like I can look at my parents and see what’s waiting for me ahead. A house, kids, hell, maybe even a job, the world’s changing quick, but I don’t like not knowing a thing. I like living it, I like the moment, I like having something I can hold on to. I like this birthday,” Karen put her hand on William’s chest. “I like having it with you, but I don’t like not knowing what my next one will be like. I don’t like not knowing if I’ll ever hear another ‘happy birthday’ from you again.”
William sat up some and looked Karen in the eyes. He took her by the hand and squeezed her fingers as they were both out there, raw for one another.
“I love you, Karen Hicks,” he said softly.
She smiled and said back, “I love you too, William Barclay.”
“Happy birthday,” he said, and before Karen could get her laugh or her protest out, he leaned in and kissed her again, smashing their lips together as they rolled on through the technicolor grass, leaving their fears behind on the blanket.
|
|
|
02/10/2020 03:35 PM
|
RERUNS
Chucky and Tiffany is filmed in front of a dead studio audience.
The front door opened with a loud squeak and Chucky spilled into half of a brightly lit suburban style, retro looking living room, like the set of the Brady Bunch or something. A splattering of applause came from nowhere and it made him almost jump out of his trench coat with a bit of fright. When was the last time he, Charles Lee Ray, the Lake Shore Strangler himself, felt fright?
“What the hell is this?” He said, looking around for the source of the cheering.
“Hell,” Tiffany sat, sitting in a chair by the connected kitchen, filing her nails and done up like a housewife from the sixties. “You were right the first time.”
The invisible studio audience laughed and Chucky flinched again. “We’re in hell?”
“Worse,” Tiffany said. “We’re in Jersey.” Again, phantom laughter echoed around them.
Chucky crossed the set-like living room and hurried over to Tiffany, his wife, his… what the hell was all of this? How did he get here? “Tell it to me straight, Tiff,” he said. “What the [BLEEP] is going on here? Wait, was I just bleeped? Am I [BLEEP]ing being censored? What the [BLEEP]! You can’t [BLEEP]ing censor the Chuck. [BLEEP]- [BLEEP]- [BLEEP]!”
“Your language isn’t fit for broadcast,” Tiffany said, stirring more laughter.
“Fit for broadcast,” Chucky grabbed his hair. “Are you listening to yourself? Broadcast? BROADCAST!? What are you talking about? When did this happen?”
Tiffany blew a bubble with some chewing gum. “We’re in syndication.”
The audience laughed and Chucky kicked the couch. “I’m going to kill you, you bitch!” The audience cheered loudly at that, and Chucky furrowed his brow. “What the [BEEP] is that?”
“You said your catchphrase, doll face,” Tiffany said, going back to her nails.
“My catchphrase? I don’t have a catchphrase.”
“Sure you do,” Tiffany said. “All great sitcoms have a catchphrase.”
“Do not.”
“Do so,”
“Do not,”
“Do so,”
“Would you shut the [BLEEP] up! I’m going to kill you, you bitch!”
The invisible audience erupted with cheers and laughter, whistling and hooting and hollering. Chucky fumed, sighing and falling onto the couch, head buried in his hands. He struggled to think about the last thing he remembered. How did he die this time? How did he end up back here? All thoughts of life were futile, though, all he had was death and hell.
“Charles,” Tiffany was no longer in her seat but was pulling dinner out of the oven. “I think the roast might be a little overdone.” The meat she pulled out was charred and indeed smoking. She turned to face him and smoke bellowed up from it, blotting out her face. “Maybe we can fix it with a little bit of catsup.”
The laugh track kicked in.
“That’s it,” Chucky got up, stormed through the kitchen and went right through the back door. Maybe something out there would give him some relief from this torture. Backyards sometimes had things worth stabbing, but when he went through the backdoor he came right back in through the front door, spilling into half of a brightly lit suburban style, retro looking living room, like the set of the Brady Bunch or something. The audience clapped and Tiffany was back in her chair, filing her nails as she was before. “What the hell?”
“Hell,” Tiffany said. “You were right the first time.” The studio audience laughed. Chucky grumbled and stormed back toward the kitchen. “I hope it’s okay, but I invited Fido over for dinner.” Chucky stopped in his tracks.
“Who the [BLEEP] is Fido?” Chucky asked.
“He’s our ethnically ambiguous neighbor,” Tiffany looked back at him as the audience laughed again. “Meant to keep the show from feeling too white for the woke audience, but his role is downplayed enough to not make the racists in fly over country uncomfortable.”
“Tiff, what are you [BLEEP]ing talking about?” Chucky screamed.
“Gotta keep the ratings up, dear,” Tiffany said. “It’s almost sweeps week.”
“I’m going to kill you, you bitch!” The audience cheered and Charles stormed off, trying to repeat his exit through the backdoor and escape this self-aware sitcom nightmare. He walked out the backdoor and came right through the front, spilling into half of a brightly lit suburban style, retro looking living room, like the set of the Brady Bunch or something. The audience cheered for him. Chucky took a breath to contain his anger. It took almost a minute before he could calm himself down. “Honey, I’m home,” He sighed.
“Of course you are, darling, this is a rerun.” The audience laughed as Tiffany filed her nails in her usual chair.
Chucky plopped himself down on the couch and rubbed his temples. “Tiff, how long have I been here?”
“Sitting on the couch?” She squinted. “I don’t know, like three or four seconds.”
The audience laughed.
“No you--!” Chucky calmed himself down before getting too heated. “That’s not what I meant. How long will we be trapped like this?”
“Hard to say?” Tiffany paused her nail filing. “Roughly twenty-two minutes without commercials, for four or five seasons if NBC doesn’t cancel us first.”
“Oh brother,” Chucky buried his face in his hands and melodramatically whined, “I’m going to kill you, you bitch,” and the audience cheered and laughed at the line delivery. He kept his head buried, waiting for the next joke, waiting for the next piece of hell to come his way, but he didn’t have the strength to feed into it anymore. But, as he sat there with his head down, the room went quiet. Tiffany kept her trap shut, the audience stopped laughing, even the ambient noise drifted away. Looking up, everything was frozen like someone hit the pause button on a VCR. Tiffany was stuck in place, caught at an unflattering angle mid-blow on her nails. Chucky stood up and furrowed his brow.
“What the f*** is happening now?” he asked. “F***… I said f***. They let me say f***!”
“They didn’t,” a deep voice spoke from the front door. “I did.”
Color came back into the room. In fact, the room itself shifted and shaped into something new—dark and red and yellow. Chucky stood up from the couch and faced the tall man with the dark skin standing a few feet from him. He was sharply dressed, handsome, and everything about him made Chucky lower and raise his guard all at the same time.
“Who the f*** are you?” Chucky asked.
“You know who I am,” he said, his voice as deep as a crater. “You’ve called my name enough.”
Chucky sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Damballa…”
“How many deaths is this for you now?” Damballa, the voodoo god of the gods, stood there and smiled. “How many hells have you seen, sweet Charles?”
“Not as many as I deserve,” Chucky admitted. “Because of you.”
“Because of me,” Damballa nodded. “You’ve begged for my power and I’ve answered.”
“Is that why you’re here now?” Chucky asked. “Here to bail me out of Hell? Again.”
“Not for free,” he said.
“Hate to break it do you, Balli, but… I’m a little light on the coin here,” Chucky laughed and padded his empty pockets.
“I’ve gifted you my endless power,” Damballa said, as he drew a gnarly curved dagger with a handle of bone out from behind his back. “Now it’s time you pay up.”
“What’s that thing?” Chucky pointed.
“The Damballa dagger,” The Loa said. “Made from a bone of my forgotten father. A god killer.”
“God killer?” Chucky smirked and raised an eyebrow.
“You gotta do what you do best, sweet Charles,” Damballa said, handing him the knife. “I’m gonna need you to kill for me.”
“Name the god,” Chucky said. “And get me the hell out of here.”
“Saturday,” Damballa said. “It’s time to kill my brother Saturday.”
Chucky grinned and turned the dagger over in his hand. He never killed a god before. This was going to be the easiest debt he ever paid off.
|
|
|
01/30/2020 03:31 PM
|
QUESTION PROMPTS
CLAIRVOYANT PROTECTOR: “What did you expect?”
Ever since Andy first heard of the Warren’s world famous haunted museum as a kid, she dreamed of getting a peek inside. It took a few decades and a lot of convincing but today was finally the day. Lorraine Warren unlatched the last lock on the big wooden door with all the spooky warning signs and protections and she stepped into the museum first. Andy followed, an excited and toothy smile on her face, and when Lorraine flipped the light on the smile lost its elasticity and reformed into unimpressed lips.
“What did you expect?” Lorraine asked, seeing the disappointment on Andy’s face.
“I… uh… I don’t know,” Andy confessed. The room was smaller than she thought it would be and kind of cluttered. She had been warned not to touch anything but seeing as there wasn’t much room to walk around she wondered how she could manage to not accidentally bump into something. She kept her arms pressed to her chest. “It’s nice, honest… I guess I just thought that if you’re going to call something a museum… I don’t know, glass cases, maybe some plaques or something. This is really more of a haunted closet.”
The two women shared a pause and a couple of pairs of lingering eyes before they both broke and started to laugh. Andy didn’t really take a look around. They laughed on the way out of the room and went to have some tea.
NYCTOPHILIAC: “Who did this?”
“Who did this?” Raven asked from somewhere behind Andy. She couldn’t quite see where the young magic demon girl was because Andy was pretty preoccupied with the mirror.
“I did,” Andy said, “Technically.” Andy leaned over the sink and carefully applied some makeup over a bruise below her left eye. It stung when she touched it but she powered through it, swallowing down her winces and pain so she could clean herself up nice for the benefit she was meant to host at the shop, DejaVoodoo, later that night.
“Well, it was sort of me,” Andy continued. “It was sort of you too. Though not really. You see, I knew you’d be coming to the thing tonight so I moved some of the more annoying magical objects out of the shop. Sometimes the more haunted objects at the shop get temperamental around… demon girls. Again, no offense to you, I was just taking precautions. I didn’t know you were stopping at the house first though so when you walked in an enchanted cookie jar I was storing here flew off the shelf and… well, here we are.”
“How do I look?” Andy asked, turning around. Most of her black eye was covered up. “Don’t tell Claire. But seriously, let’s get going before something else gets angry and flies at my face.”
[B]UTCHER: “Why are we whispering?”
“Shhh,” Andy held a finger over her lips and talked in a hushed tone as she crept through the cemetery with James. “You’re being too loud.”
“Why are we whispering?” James whisper-shouted back.
“Are you kidding me?” Andy twisted her face up with frustration and panic, annoyed that she had to explain this to a slayer as experienced as James. “We are sneaking into the lair of a Zombie God, a lair on the other end of this graveyard. Do you know what a graveyard is? It’s a place full of dead people. Do you know what dead people are when they’re around a Zombie God? They’re not dead people… they’re just sleeping!”
Even though she kept her voice to a whisper, the whisper-shouting was too much. The ground shook some as the dead started to wake. Corpses crawled through the dirt and grass, yawning and stretching and looking for breakfast.
Andy sighed. “F***. You brought an ax or something, right? We’re going to need it.”
CLAIRE: “What’s that smell?”
Claire’s nose was twitching before she said anything. Andy always noticed the twitch first. Her wife stood at the edge of their backyard, on the other side of the fence, with her hands on her hips and her head raised high as she caught the scent of something in the forest ahead of them. By the looks of it, it wasn’t a pleasant stench.
“What’s that smell?” Claire asked.
“I don’t smell anything,” Andy admitted. “But I don’t got a nose like yours, Legs. Let’s follow it and see where it takes us, Toucan Sam.”
They walked through the woods for ten minutes before stopping between two trees. Claire pointed to the ground, a patch of earth that didn’t have any grass growing on top of it, and she was adamant that the smell was coming from there.
“Uh oh,” Andy said, and before Claire could get too concerned she quickly explained, adding, “Remember when the twins were still babies and we got our first visit from Chucky in Texas? Well…”
Fifteen minutes later they were back at the spot with shovels. It didn’t take much digging for them to find the rotting remains of a Chucky doll that Andy buried there more than six months ago. It was a toxic mix of plastic and rotting flesh and now that it was exposed to the world Andy could smell what Claire was smelling. She covered her nose with her shirt and looked away.
“Yeah, this one’s my bad. Let’s… let’s burn it or something,” Andy gagged. “F***, this is gross. Let’s burn it.”
CODE RED: “What was that noise?”
Standing behind the front counter of DejaVoodoo, Andy put on a friendly smiling face for the redheaded customer who stopped in and had a sh*t ton of questions to ask about the day-to-day of running an occult shop in the heart of Texas. Andy was happy to answer any and all questions, making sure that the smile never left her face, for this wasn’t just any customer… no, this was an Avenger. She had no idea why an Avenger was at her store, but she wasn’t about to ruin this by not smiling.
The Avenger was midway through asking another question when something growled from the storage room behind Andy.
“What was that noise?” Natasha asked.
“It was nothing,” Andy kept the smile on her face. “Oh, wait, did you mean that noise? The one that sort of went Gwraaawlll, that one? Oh that’s… yeah, that’s nothing.”
The growl repeated itself. Andy kept smiling.
“Absolutely nothing,” she repeated. “Actually, it’s kind of not nothing, but it’s not like an Avengers level thing so to you it’s probably a nothing.”
The noise happened again.
“I mean, while you’re here if you want to help out… it’s really nothing but this nothing has sharp teeth and claws like swords, you didn’t happen to bring the Hulk with you, did you?” she looked around her, and she punctuated it all by refueling her smile.
AVERY: “Have you tried it?”
“Have you tried it?” Avery asked as the two of them sat at the counter, squinting down at a mess on a plate that little Karen called ‘Magic Pizza’. Andy’s lips pursed into a frown and her eyes were two slits, like the sight of the monstrosity on the plate threatened to make her cry. Karen was so proud of her magic pizza, a dinner she made for everyone in the family, and the idea of the little one making dinner for everyone was adorable and cute, but staring down at it, Andy wasn’t sure if she should take a bite or drive a stake through its heart.
Magic Pizza consisted off cold pizza crust with more or less whatever Karen could find in the fridge at the time. There was a coating of chocolate syrup as a base, and the dish sported a series of toppings like pickle spears, Dorito dust, Pop Tarts, and something that looked like Twizzlers.
“She’s going to be back any minute,” Andy said, her voice flat. “I… I don’t know what to do. I always thought of myself as a good parent but if I put that thing in my mouth I’m going to have to go find some traffic to run into.”
Andy slid the Magic Pizza closer to Avery. “She made it for you, maybe you should try it first.”
BLACK WIDOW AND HARBINGER OF DEATH: “What am I supposed to do with this?” (You both chose the same quote so you’re getting a crossover)
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Both Luna and Andy’s detective Valkyrie friend Tamisin said at the same time when Andy handed each of them a chainsaw.
“Look,” Andy sighed. She was already coated in blood and tired and had no energy to explain herself anymore. She paced on the other side of the barn and dropped her own chainsaw down on a workbench with a loud thud, and grabbed a container of gasoline to fill it up. “I really don’t have the time, energy, and/or patience to go through what a Deadite is. All you need to know is this; deadites are evil and deadites are out there. You want to survive tonight, you rev up those bad boys in your arms and you dismember everything that moves on the other side of that door, do you understand?”
Gasoline spilled everywhere. Andy didn’t seem to mind. She screwed on the gas cap of her chainsaw and spun around. “You’re either ready now or you’re already dead. That’s how this goes. Just follow my lead.” She pulled back the cord and the teeth spun up, spinning the chainsaw to life. “I vote ready now. Let’s go kick some ass.”
MORNINGSTAR: “How long will it take?”
The seat that Lucifer sat Andy in across from his desk squeaked every time Andy shifted ever so slightly, which meant it was squeaking a lot because Andy fidgeted tons whenever she was sat down at a business meeting, and she fidgeted even more when said business meeting was with the devil. She cleared her throat to try and mask the latest squeak when she shifted her weight over to her left side, and she kept focus on Lucifer and the conversation at hand.
“How long will it take?” Lucifer asked.
“I’m not sure that’s an easy question to answer,” Andy said. “My shop isn’t really in the business of tracking down personal items. DejaVoodoo is like an antique store for supernatural stuff, things come to us, and when we go out searching for something it’s usually not very specific.”
Lucifer had contacted Andy looking for a specific item, hoping it would be something that could be found at her shop. It wasn’t something she currently possessed, but that didn’t mean it was an impossible get. The amount of money Lucifer was offering was enough to hold her interest but it was more his endorsement of the store that she was after. If she could get the Devil talking about how great her store was it would be a boom for business.
“I’m not saying it can’t be done,” she held up her hand to emphasize her point, “All I’m saying is we can’t put a deadline on this. “You’re asking me to find you the skull of a dead god… that’s going to take some time. It might take a lot of time, actually, but if anyone can find it for you,” she hitched a thumb toward herself, “It’s Andy Stoddard-Barclay.”
SPOOKYF***ER: “Says Who?”
“Says who?” Ruairi barked.
“Says me!” Andy shouted back. Ruairi had been doing some occasional business with DejaVoodoo on and off for a while not, but the two of them never quite got along. Andy always suspected that the things Ruairi bought from Andy were probably used for nefarious and dubious purposes, and she certainly didn’t have faith that the items he traded to her were acquired in a wholesome way either. Most of their interactions ended in bickering, though this argument had a little more fire to it.
“Look, I had enough of this,” Andy dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “I don’t know what sort of demonic sh*t you’re up to this time but I’m out. I’m not overlooking this sh*t anymore, bud, it’s done. You want to cause mischief and mayhem you can go and do it yourself, you’re not going to have me playing patsy to your sh*t anymore. Go on, get, get out of my shop, don’t make me exorcise you. Seriously, you’re gone.”
|
|
|
01/24/2020 12:25 PM
|
COME TO MAMA
ZED-MART CHICAGO, ILLINOIS UNIVERSE DESIGNATION RB-00T
ONE YEAR AFTER THE KASLAN COMPANY BUDDI DOLL INCIDENT
Life was meant to be different. Karen Barclay survived great trauma, she was nearly killed in an impossible scenario involving murderous toys and her son’s Buddi doll Chucky who hung her by the neck in the Zed-Mart warehouse to act out a fit of simulated jealousy. There was a glimmer of hope on the other end of that trauma, a chance that things could change. They didn’t. First there was Mike and a potential romance hidden somewhere in the handsome detective but with his mother gone and the craziness settled, there weren’t many reasons for him to come around. Soon, he stopped altogether. Then there was Andy. Karen fooled herself into thinking that a near death experience would bring her closer to her teenage son, but when the dust cleared he only withdrew more.
After the hospital, after the failed lawsuits, life just went back to normal. The news cycle moved on and normal came back. No, not normal, worse than normal, because things were definitely worse now. Life snapped back into place like a rubber band but the rubber band had been stretched too far. It hung loose now. Karen was back working at the Zed-Mart and she still struggled with bills but now she had hospital bills on top of everything else that kept her underwater before, and Andy’s therapy bills, too. Her romantic life was going nowhere like before but now it was even worse, Karen couldn’t even look at another man without thinking about Shane—his lies and his death—it was normal but poisoned, melting out from around her, and the only thing Karen could do to hold herself together was lie, lie and pretend that everything was okay the way it was.
“Next,” Karen called out. She was working the counter on this shift, a closing shift—the worst shift—and her line was starting to thin for the first time all day. A woman with swollen shoulders and a body the shape of an egg teetered up to the counter on tiny feet that were pink and puffy around the ankles. She slammed her phone down on the counter and sniffed snot back into her runny nose. “How can I help you?”
“It won’t work,” the woman said, voice like a coughing donkey.
“What won’t work?”
“It,” she pointed down to the phone with a finger that had the nail chewed down to the quick. An app was open, the Kaslan App and there was an error screen up.
“Let me see what I can do,” Karen put on her best polite face, using a smile she saved for customers she loathed, and she picked up the phone. It had a cracked screen but the two buttons worked and when she checked other apps they worked fine. There was no need for updates and it was running fast, it was just the one app that wasn’t doing much. “It looks like the problem is with the app itself, not the phone.”
“Okay,” the woman said. She paused to suck a breath down her throat, refusing to let her nose participate in the breathing process. “So fix it.”
“I think you misunderstand me,” Karen said. “The problem is with the app. We… we don’t actually control the Kaslan app here. We sell the phones, and… stuff. The app is third party.”
“I don’t care how many parties you’re having, I want my damn thing to work,” the woman barked.
“I understand, and I get that it’s totally frustrating but—”
“I don’t think you get jack and or sh*t, little missy.” The woman scooped up her phone. “Where is your manager, I would love to speak to your manager.”
Karen sighed. “He’s by the coats.” There was no point in fighting her. The angry customer marched off, pouting and huffing and puffing and as she left Karen said, “Thanks for shopping at Zed-Mart,” and flashed another fake smile toward the woman who already had her back turned.
The rest of the shift went just about as smoothly. Almost every customer brought an attitude with them, like it was a crime to shop at Zed-Mart in a good mood. The cranky lady with the faulty app got Karen written up, so that was fun, and on top of all that Janice left early with a stomach bug which meant that Karen was forced to close up solo. It was a sh*tty cap to a sh*tty day and all Karen wanted to do was get home, get ignored by Andy, and watch Queer Eye on the couch with a pint of mint chocolate chip.
Till counted, doors locked, lights off; by the time Karen finished closing up her back ached in three places and her feet barked. The shoes she wore were old, something she had since before the incident, and they pinched around the toes. They made everything else hurt too after a long shift of being on her feet. So when it was all said and done, and Karen left out the back—stepping into the back alley into the cold Chicago night—she was spent beyond belief.
The cold bit at Karen’s fingers but she didn’t jam her hands in her coat pocket. Her keys were folded up in one hand, poking through her knuckles, and her other hand clutched her pepper spray. She didn’t take chances anymore. Everything that happened that night one year ago, everything that happened with Chucky, it didn’t break Karen, but it made her cautious in a way she was never cautious before. She walked down that dark back alley on her way to the employee lot, her brisk step motivated by the cold and the dark and her desire to pick up McDonald’s for her and Andy on the way home, but she didn’t make it to the edge of the Zed-Mart building before discovering something strange.
Trash blew in the wind, swirling and dancing through the air. But Karen didn’t feel the wind. It wasn’t a windy night at all, yet the trash still danced. Newspapers blew and spun through the air down the alley ahead of her, swooping up almost ten feet before coming back down. Somewhere far away thunder cracked but there weren’t any clouds in the sky. The hairs on the back of Karen’s neck stood upright, but if asked she would have no explanation for what was going on or why it even scared her. Then her ear tickled. There was a laugh, was that a laugh? It was like she heard it in her head. She spun around and no one was there. When she turned back the trash stopped dancing.
BOOM!
More thunder. Still no clouds. Something laughed again but it was more distant, more hollow this time.
“KARRRRReeeeen,” a voice blew down the alley like the wind, but Karen couldn’t tell where it came from. She looked both ways. How did it sound like it was coming from both directions. “Come play, Karen, let’s have some fun…”
Not taking chances, Karen rushed to the Zed-Mart’s back door, fumbling for her keys, running away from the strange voices and noises and feelings of the alley, rushing away from it all. She made it a few yards or so before a bright green light glowed beneath her and she dropped through a whole in the ground, swallowed up by the light and disappearing from the alley, from Chicago, from her universe.
The light was gone. Karen Barclay was gone. The alley was quiet again.
TEMPORARY APARTMENT OF CHARLES LEE RAY DALLAS, TEXAS UNIVERSE DESIGNATION PRIME
Bleary eyes opened up. Karen was on the floor, a hard and unforgiving floor that made her already sore back ache even more. There were water spots staining the ceiling above her. She was… inside. What? How did she get… where was she?
Sitting up, Karen’s head swam. She held the back of it, feeling a bump from where she landed, and some of her dark hair came out, sliding between her fingers. Someone… someone had snipped it off. The room she was in smelled like vinegar and plastic. It was a mildewy apartment with no furniture or anything. It was just a bunch of empty space. Karen wiped the hair off her fingers and onto her slacks and that’s when she noticed that she wasn’t wearing her Zed-Mart vest or the clothes she had on in the alley. She was in an ill-fitting suit—black blazer with a white shirt and striped pants that matched the jacket.
“What the f***?” she whispered to herself.
“Finally,” a man’s raspy voice echoed out from the other room. “She wakes. I was starting to think you were going to sleep all day. F***, you sleep long. You didn’t hit your head that hard, what’s it made out of, pudding?” Panic flushed through Karen. Her eyes darting, searching out an exit but only a bathroom was behind her. The exit had to be around the corner, on the other side of that voice. “A part of me thought I should get this all done with before you wake up, get it over with, y’know? But then I thought, naaaahhh, f*** that. You may not be my Karen Barclay, but you’re a Karen Barclay, and even though you look different a Karen is still a Karen, and there’s nothing I like more than making a Karen suffer.”
The voice walked around the corner and panic flooded Karen’s heart. She scurried back across the floor and hit the wall hard. “Chu… Chucky.” she sighed. This doll was different, older looking, plastic and rubber like a cabbage patch, and taller too. And his face was almost… human, but it was still Chucky.
“Ahhh, so you know me,” he shrugged, a very human shrug. It was only now that Karen saw a kitchen knife in one hand and a voodoo doll looking thing in the other. “I’m not used to this whole parallel world nonsense thing but I figured if it’s good enough for Andy it’s good enough for me.”
“Andy?” Karen cried. “You didn’t--”
“Relax, toots, I’m not talking about your Andy I’m talking about my Andy, jeez, settle down,” Chucky said. “Can you shut your trap for a second? Gosh, women are all talk-talk-talk-talk-talk.”
Karen shot to her feet. Maybe there was a window she could climb out of in the bathroom. She scurried for the bathroom but then cried out in pain and dropped to the floor, clutching her leg. Chucky stabbed the voodoo doll in the leg with the knife and when Karen looked back she saw some of her hair tied around the doll’s neck.
“Can’t have that now, Karen,” Chucky said. “Now stop… stop and listen. I need you to hear this and I don’t want to hurt my new body too much, alright, babe. Now will you listen. LISTEN!”
Karen rolled over onto her back, eyes trembling with tears. Chucky smiled, teetering closer to her on his short f***ing doll legs.
“Your kid and me, haha, f***, Karen, we’ve been going at it for some time now over here,” Chucky said. “Thirty years, thirty f***ing years Andy Barclay has been a thorn in my side causing me nothing but trouble time and time again. But times are changing, now it’s time for the Chuck to cause a little trouble again.”
“What the f*** are you doing to me?” Karen cried.
“This isn’t about you, bitch!” Chucky bent one of the arms on the voodoo doll backward and Karen screamed out in as her arm snapped back and broke.
“I aint’ no bargain bin rip off, lady,” Chucky shouted. “The Chucky of your world is some Tiny Terminator bullsh*t, but you’re dealing with the genuine article now. You might not look like her but you’re still a Karen, you’re still the mother, and I can’t think of a better way to f*** with that little brat than wearing me a Karen suit.”
“What are you talking about?” Karen held her damaged arm, unsure of what was going on.
“It doesn’t matter,” Chucky shook his head and tossed the knife and voodoo doll to the side. “It’ll all be done in a minute, toots, just stay still and keep it down. I got neighbors.”
Karen screamed as Chucky charged her. She flinched, expecting the worst—there wasn’t much she could do to fight back in her condition—but when Chucky reached her there wasn’t an attack, or lashing out, or anything like that. He put his small plastic hand on her forehead and… and he started to chant.
“Ade due Damballa!” Chucky said, and suddenly what little light that bled into the room through some distant window went away. Darkness came in, and thunder rolled outside. “Give me the power I beg of you! Ade due Damballa! Ade due Damballa! GIVE ME THE POWER I BEG OF YOU!”
Thoughts drifted to Andy. Karen had no idea where she was, what was happening, or what was going to happen. All she could do was think of her son. That’s when she slipped away. The room fell out from under her and Karen dropped down somewhere dark, falling into some great sunken place where the world was just a tiny light floating above her. Thunder echoed. Chucky laughed. Karen kept slipping.
***
“Holy f***ing sh*t… holfy f***ing sh*t it worked,” Charles Lee Ray cackled a little in front of the mirror. He tossed his hair, his new hair, Karen’s hair, and he struck a pose. This was the best f***ing plan he ever came up with. After the failure of the great Nica experiment, he needed a new flesh suit for his ringleader responsibilities, and what better flesh than the flesh of a Barclay. Chucky licked his new pretty lips, stepped over the empty doll he left behind, and left his apartment. Thunder continued to boom outside, the gods not pleased by Chucky’s latest trespass.
The hallway sparked as light fixtures dangled from the ceiling. The building had been struck by lightning in the process of the ceremony. Neighbors poked their heads out of their apartments, worried and confused. Chucky ignored them all and continued on his way out the building.
“Andy, Andy, Andy, you don’t know what’s coming,” he mumbled to himself, chuckling a bit. “Come to mama.”
|
|
|
12/27/2019 09:18 PM
|
FACE YOUR DEMONS
Andy vibrated with rage, and it fueled her.
“Gahhh!” Her battlecry. She screamed as she ran through the ash fields of hell and drove the purring blade of her chainsaw into the rocky flesh of the dead thing in front of her. It cut through the chest and slipped out the back, a metal tongue lapping black and red blood into the air off a chain whose teeth were gunked up with bits of flesh. Andy perched her shotgun on the shoulder of the demon, spun around—heel in the ash—and fired a blast from her boomstick at the foe closing in behind her. The blast took off its head. Dozens and dozens of bodies were already scattered among the fire trees around her, but more closed in, more rushed toward the woman who ventured into hell to find her wife, merely flesh waiting to be cut down.
She fought for an hour, fought hard until every muscle screamed and every bone threatened to snap under the pressure of her rage. The violence was cyclical and endless, or so it seemed. Infinity found a sudden end when Andy’s roaring and overworked blade cut through the thick neck of a demon—severing the head—and the body fell only to be followed by silence. A hundred stony corpses were scattered around her. Ash drifted down from a gray sky and coated them like snow. Andy panted, catching her breath, and she waited. It wouldn’t be long now. The fastest way to gain an audience with Shaitan the Taker of Souls, queen of her own slice of hell, was to make a sacrifice. The hundred or so corpses littered around her were enough, apparently. Matted hair coated in blood obscured Andy’s vision, but it wasn’t enough to hide the Queen’s entrance.
Thorns reached up out of the ashy hellscape, stretching up toward the hidden sun of the sky like fingers. They twisted together, knotting and netting and taking shape until they were more than just a simple thicket of thorns, until they were a throne. Andy stepped forward and the ash fell heavier. The ash piled on the throne—falling from above—and the pile soon took shape too, until it wasn’t a pile of ash at all but a mirror reflection of Andy sitting there. Shaitan, the Taker of Souls, once went by another name, and she once went by another body, Andy’s body. Once she was Mia Allen. Now she was more.
Shaitan’s hair was darker and her eyes were fire orange, but the rest was a copy of the woman standing before her. The largest exception to this was the fact that Shaitan’s right hand was missing and a festering nub was left resting on the arm of her thorn throne. Shaitan stared at Andy. Andy stared at Shaitan. That’s how it remained for a while as the silence lingered. The Taker of Souls didn’t speak until she elected to.
“There are easier ways to contact me,” Shaitan said, her voice carrying like thirty voices speaking through one pair of lips.
“Nothing is this direct.” Andy was still out of breath. “I couldn’t wait for you to answer when you felt like it so I figured I’d come to you.”
“It’s dangerous, you know,” Shaitan said. “Hell is not a place one should tread lightly.”
Andy looked left and right. She was surrounded by corpses, corpses she worked hard to turn into corpses, and she shrugged. “I think I’m treading okay.”
“Why are you here?”
“My wife,” Andy said. “She was taken from me, killed, and Avery, my daughter—the strongest witch I know—wasn’t able to bring her back. I came to find her soul. I came for you to show me the way.”
“That’s who you’re here for, not why,” Shaitan said, the voice slipping into something more relaxed. There was more Mia in her than demon. “There is always a deeper why. I suggest you figure that out before you get where you need to be. It will be easier that way.”
“That mean you’re going to point me in the right direction?”
“You’re already heading in the right direction,” Shaitan said. Andy blinked and the demon queen was gone, the throne was gone, the ash fields were gone. She turned around, chainsaw blade dragging across soft dirt, and she found that she was in a dark forest now. It was colder here, a colder layer of hell, cold enough for Andy to see her breath. The trees were closer together here, thicker, darker, and hooded figures stood in the shadows of their branches.
There were over a dozen of them, tall figures with pointed hoods and faces hidden by darkness. They faced Andy but didn’t flinch when the blood soaked girl approached with a chainsaw in one hand and her shotgun in the other.
“These are the pathfinders,” Mia’s voice echoed in Andy’s head even if Shaitan was gone. “Guardians of the various soul prisons. Defeat the one standing in the way of you reaching your wife and you will be reunited with her soul.”
“Defeat as in kill?”Andy asked, but nothing responded. She was walking toward them now but they weren’t moving. She didn’t know which one was the pathfinder she was meant to defeat, she didn’t even know where Claire’s soul was being held. This whole thing was a living nightmare. One moment all was normal, the next Claire was killed by an enemy she was meant to have peace with—Inetkaes, the Red Queen, ruler of the vampires—heart ripped clean from her chest. Andy always said she would go to hell and back for Claire and now she had the chance to prove it. She didn’t care what challenges waited ahead of her. She was bringing her wife home to their daughters, she was going to set things right, and once they were back home, they could prepare for the war that was to come.
Andy stopped a few paces away from the pathfinders and the cloaked figures turned around. All but one faced away, and the once still facing Andy stepped forward. Andy asked, “You’re the one?” and the pathfinder nodded. She shrugged and pulled the cord on her chainsaw to give it life. The engine hummed but when she tilted her head back up, the pathfinder was gone, they were all gone, and so was the forest.
Everything around Andy was different. Hell was funny that way, always shifting. Andy stood in the middle of a dance club—an empty and abandoned club. This was her club, Inetkaes’ club, she knew it even if she had never been there. It was a distraction and it worked. Andy didn’t notice that she was no longer coated in blood or that her chainsaw was no longer purring. She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her either.
“She was thinking about you, you know… in her last moments she was thinking of you.”
Andy spun on her heels, that fiery rage burning up again when she heard the voice. She aimed her shotgun at the pale woman with the red hair walking over to her, a grin on her face. “This is a trick,” Andy said, after thinking about it for a second. “You’re… you’re not her, you’re not Inetkaes. You’re the pathfinder. This is my test.”
The Pathfinder disguising themselves as the Red Queen smirked and squinted. “Aren’t you clever, aren’t you—”
BOOM! Andy pulled the trigger and fired a buckshot at the woman. At that range it splintered her skull and blew off half her head. The Pathfinder flopped back, dead, but nothing changed. More footsteps came behind Andy. Another Inetkaes walked out, carefully holding onto the railing as she navigated the stairs in heels. Andy started the engine of her chainsaw again.
“You are a feisty spirit,” the fake Inetkaes said. “I see why she married you. I see why she died for you. I should thank you. Claire’s suffering is… well, it’s easier to manipulate because she has such powerful connections to those who are still vulnerable. Once we grow bored with the reruns of past trauma, once we make her spirit numb to those she already lost, we will do the same to you. The Andy-shaped hole in Claire’s heart is a torturer’s wet dream.”
“Keep her name out of your f***ing mouth,” Andy said, spitting through gritted teeth. Her eyes were red and tearing up, and she still had the shotgun aimed at the pathfinder’s head. The demonic spirit wearing Inetkaes’ face smiled.
“You can’t get to her, Andy,” the pathfinder said. “She’s dead. She’s here. She’s ours… finally ours. Not even the angels can reach her this time. Do you know what was going through her mind when she ripped her heart out? The Red Queen’s mind, not Claire’s… do you want to know what she was feeling?”
“GAHHH!” Andy charged forward and brought the purring blade of the chainsaw down into the pathfinder’s face, splitting the skull in two and spraying blood left and right and up and down. Andy’s rage fueled her. She cut through the head until the body went still and she cut some more. Footsteps moved behind her again and another came out.
“There it is, the great undoing,” the pathfinder said from the lips of her third Inetkaes duplicate. “What do you think you’re going to achieve?”
BOOM! This time the shotgun blast cleared through the chest. The body fell, another came out. Another blast from her boomstick—after a quick reload—took that one down too, but only for another to appear.
“Rage drives you,” it said. “Drives you to death, to despair, to war…”
“Stop!” Andy charged, her shotgun empty. She dropped the boomstick and used two hands to hold the chainsaw high over her head and took off Inetkaes’ head with a clean sweep. The head popped off and blood spurted like a fountain.
“What will be left of you if you get her back,” the pathfinder asked, stepping out again in another body. “Another chance will just be wasted on the rage.”
It was too late now. The rage took over, and Andy saw stars. She rushed toward the newest body, stepping over one that had already been slayed, and she gutted it. Another came and another fell, and another, and another, and another, until there were so many dead and dismembered corpses that Andy couldn’t find the ground anymore. The room drowned in blood. She screamed and flung her chainsaw through the air at the next Inetkaes that walked into the room and it caved her head in. Falling to her knees, panting, Andy was surrounded by corpses, the result of her rage, and the emptiness followed.
Andy fell to her knees and the bodies surrounding her morphed and shifted into something new. The faces changed. No longer was she surrounded by the blank dead gazes of Inetkaes staring back at her, but the faces were more familiar. Claire, Mollie, the twins, Mia, Avery, Dani… she was surrounded by her family, her friends, her everything; she was surrounded by death. Shuffling back in a panic, Andy’s face trembled with fear and regret and pain. “No, no, no no no no no,” She crawled back until she couldn’t crawl back any farther.
This was what the rage led to. This was the war she carried in her heart, the future carved into her by her pain and suffering, and immediately she knew it was wrong. She couldn’t bring Claire back and carry the rage at the same time. She couldn’t keep the cycle of violence going. And once she let it go, once she allowed her heart to beat without the steady percussion of hate and rage the bodies disappeared, the blood vanished, the weapons melted away. Andy climbed to her feet, standing on shaky legs, and she found a door that appeared. It opened and a blinding light shined through. The glow filled her with love; the glow of Claire’s soul. She smiled. She went to it. She brought her wife home, and she left the rage in hell.
|
|
|
11/06/2019 03:15 PM
|
GIF PROMPTS
JADE: SUPERNATURAL CHEERS
On the outside it seemed normal, ordinary even, like any other bar. In fact, when Andy stepped out of the cab and looked up at it she wasn’t sure why Tyler took them so far out of the way to get a drink. “I don’t get it,” she said. “This is the special place you’ve been talking about? What was wrong with the pub down the street from the hotel? Or the hotel bar for that matter? You know I’m not a big fan of working too hard for a drink? What, do they got a happy hour thing going on or something?”
“It’s not the drinks that are special, Barclay,” Tyler said. “It’s the people. This place, it’s owned by a Succubus, the bartender is a friend of mine, a witch. You know Cheers, the show Cheers, ‘thank you for being a friend,’ that sort of Cheers? Well, this is supernatural Cheers.”
It clicked inside Andy like a light switch flipping on. Her face relaxed and she muttered a soft, “Oh,” that turned into a smile. Drinking was one thing, but drinking some place where you didn’t have to put your guards up, some place where a drinker could be themselves… there was something special about that, and when Andy followed Tyler inside, she did so happily.
“Okay, but I get to be Rhea Pearlman.”
CLAIRVOYANT PROTECTOR: DAD JOKES
“Don’t humor him,” Lorraine Warren’s warning was firm but lightened by a smile.
Andy sat at the kitchen table in the Warren house, nursing a cup of tea with Ed on one side of her and Lorraine on the other. She was visiting for the weekend, a long overdue visit to two people who were kind to her as a child. Foster kids grew up with an assortment of stand-in parents, but even though Andy never actually lived with the Warrens, she always thought of them as being the closest thing to a set of parents outside of her mother or even now her step-father Mike. That made these visits special, that made Ed’s barrage of bad dad jokes special.
“Did you hear about the kidnapping at school?” Ed asked, setting up his joke.
“No,” Andy shook her head, doing her best to match Lorraine’s firmness and not crack.
“It’s okay,” Ed said. “He woke up.”
Andy buckled a little bit and her effort to contain her uncomfortable laugh manifested into a snort. She smiled and laughed and looked at Lorraine with apologetic eyes. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it’s just so stupid.”
SPOOKY FVCKER: CREEPY CRAIGSLIST
Running an occult shop like DejaVoodoo was not always easy. The hardest bits of it, Andy found, were acquiring new rare objects to stock the more peculiar sections of the store. She had many contacts in the supernatural community and that was where she acquired most of it. Sometimes she didn’t need to get involved at all, but sometimes things happened to be a little shadier than others. Sometimes you ordered in bulk from a seller than you were accustomed to doing business with and sometimes you sat in a car in an empty parking lot with some spooky f***er you met on Craigslist.
Andy was the buyer, the seller was a man named Ruairi Moriarty. The item in question was a dagger, a very particular dagger that Andy had been trying to find for a while now. She didn’t know how this guy had it, and she didn’t really want to know, all she knew was that she would drop as much money as she had to in order to walk away with that treasure.
“Let me be real with you for a second, Ru, can I call you Ru? I’m gonna call you Ru.” Andy sat in the driver’s seat. He sat in the passenger seat. “Let me be real with you, Ru. I would give my left tit for this item. That being said, I don’t think my wife would be happy. She would also not be very happy if I paid too much, so we’re not here talking about what I am willing to spend for this, we’re talking about what my wife is willing to spend. You haven’t met my wife but… trust me, we’re both going to want to make sure she’s happy.”
Andy pointed through the windshield to the tall blonde sitting on the hood of the Camaro at the other end of the parking lot.
“She’s the tough looking werewolf over there making sure you don’t try anything funny,” Andy said. “So… you have my price. Do we have a deal?”
CLAIRE: TROUBLING DREAM
The house wasn’t anything Andy recognized. Maybe it wasn’t even a real house, just walls conjured together from different things slipping through Andy’s subconscious. That was how dreams worked, wasn’t it? It didn’t have to be real to feel real, and even if the location was strange it felt genuine in the moment. Andy moved down the dark halls, heart racing in her chest, and she choked on fear.
Rounding the corner, Andy’s eyes opened wide and she clutched her hands over her mouth to contain the shock inside. Ahead of her were her children, all of them, including Wyatt, floating there in the room, blank expressions on their face. They were lifted by a cool blue light and they hovered in the darkness lost in some sort of distant trance. Andy went to charge but she couldn’t move. All she could do was watch and stare and keep from screaming as he children suffered.
Then she woke up.
Maybe it was the scream that woke Claire up too, or maybe Claire was already awake, but before Andy could tell that she was fully out of the dream Claire had her in her arms, holding her, soothing her, and telling her that it was all going to be okay.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Andy said after she had calmed down. “I know it’s just a dream but there’s this feeling coming along with it. This tickle in the back of my skull. Something is after our children, Claire. Something wants our family.”
Rose petals fell from the ceiling, drifting down like crimson snowflakes from the ceiling. Andy looked up in awe, fear in her eyes, but when she reached to turn on the light the roses were gone, and Claire and Andy sat in their empty bed staring at one another, unsure how to move forward. Unsure of what was happening to them.
MOLLIE: FARTS
Andy entered the kitchen expecting it to be empty, so she was a little startled to find Mollie in there having a late night ice cream snack. “Whoa, you scared me. I thought you might be your sister. Andrea’s normally the one sneaking down for some midnight snackage.” Going to the freezer, Andy grabbed an ice cream sandwich and joined Mollie at the table. As soon as she sat down the room thumped as Mollie let out an almost deafening fart that sounded like a cracking whip.
Andy waited for Mollie to say excuse me but it seemed like Mollie was getting too big of a kick out of the noise her butt made to show her manners. “You’re gross,” Andy said, squinting her face up before eventually breaking and laughing a little.
“You’re just like your mom,” Andy said, but then she caught herself and added, “Actually, I don’t think you get all that gas from her side of the family.” The recent revelation that Mollie was in fact Andy’s biological daughter too, and had been all along, was still paying off in small ways, including the occasional moment like this. “You didn’t hear it from me but grandma Karen actually has the most noxious farts in the family. She puts Claire to shame. But she’ll kill us both if anyone finds out, so, that’s gotta be our little secret.”
Andy reached over and took Mollie’s spoon, helping herself to a scoop of her ice cream and offering her a bite of her ice cream sandwich as a trade.
ANDREA: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY
“I’m serious,” Andy said to her youngest daughter. “I don’t joke around when it comes to dancing. It sounds silly but it’s true, it works for me every single time. Without a doubt.” Andy clapped her hands and pushed off the ground to stand up. She was in the twins’ room, having another one of her mom talks with little Andi and trying to come up with new ways for Andrea to channel some of that spunk she struggled with as a teenager.
“You might think it’s stupid, but I promise you this will change your life.” Andy pulled her phone out, shuffled through some music, and plugged it into the aux cord of a speaker Andrea’s sister Julia had on the other side of the room. “You ever feel sad, or angry, or excited, or nervous, or any feeling you can think of that’s simply too overwhelming and makes you feel like you’re about to burst, you channel that out in a dance.” Andy selected a song, I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston, and she danced, rolling her hips and jabbing out her elbows, showing Andrea how it was done.
“Try it. There’s no wrong way, I know you’re a good dancer, it’s fun, and that’s the point. You have fun. You replace whatever thought is consuming you and you just focus on the fun, even if it’s for a few minutes. It won’t make the trouble go away but it’ll put you in a better state of mind to deal with it. Now come on, get up, firecracker, dance with me. Show me what you got!”
AVERY: CAN’T TASTE BUTTER
Andy was rushing, that’s what she was going to blame it on anyway, the fact that she was in a hurry. The truth was she was just being lazy. She saw a half-opened water bottle sitting in the living room and she drank from it. She was thirsty, it was there, she didn’t seem the harm in it. The only problem was, the water belonged to her daughter Avery, and Avery had recently gotten into the habit of leaving some of her witchy stuff around. Andy took a swig of the water and her tongue went tingly. She didn’t think much of it after that, but it was only a matter of time before she discovered the consequence of drinking a witch’s water.
It was a few hours later when Andy stopped by the cabinet in the kitchen to get some pretzels to munch on. She popped a few in her mouth and crunched down, but her face squinted in confusion. She couldn’t taste them. These pretzels were salty as hell and she couldn’t taste a thing. She tried some more but nothing. They had no taste. Reaching for some chips, she tried them next. It was the same. Her tongue wasn’t picking up any flavor. “Uh oh.”
Going to the fridge, Andy pushed aside some of the fruits and veggies and reached for her favorite food in the whole world—butter—and she took a bite of a fresh stick, just as she had done countless times in the past. She chewed and chewed and chewed, but couldn't taste any of that creamy deliciousness.
“Avery!” she yelled out for her daughter, mouth still full with butter she couldn’t taste. “Help!”
|
|
|
10/08/2019 02:54 PM
|
BIRTHDAY CARD
There once was a time where a day off from work meant a day of relaxation, peace, and maybe some light reading. Those days didn’t really exist for mothers. If there ever was time to relax, time for peace and maybe some time to read, it was rarely done alone. One of the girls had a problem that needed to be dealt with, or the baby was screaming, or the girls were screaming at each other. Motherhood changed things, but that sort of exhaustion was a welcomed change for Andy. She loved the responsibility of raising her collected family of six teenage girls and one two-month-old baby boy. Today, though, had a little more busy than usual, but that was alright too. It was Tuesday, which meant Claire was off at work and Andy stayed home from the shop to take care of Wyatt. It wasn’t the only thing she had to take care of though. Not at all. You see, Sunday was Claire’s birthday, and Andy things to attend to.
“Finally,” she mumbled to herself when she got Wyatt down for a nap. He had been up all afternoon and Andy needed a moment to get this card written. The girls would be home from school soon, and even though they had plans to all get dressed up nice and go to the mall to get a family portrait of all the Stoddard-Barclay children—something they could frame for Claire as a birthday present—their arrival always blew through the house like a hurricane. Andy needed to capture this moment, this briefest respite, and make the most of it before it passed her by. Of course, however, the moment she sat down at her desk, clicked her pen, and opened the blank birthday card in front of her, her mind was completely empty and she couldn’t think of a thing to say.
The words, well-wishes and love and sentiments, this was meant to be the easy part. The gifts were always a struggle for Andy but she was pretty sure she nailed that part. The girls had their photograph but Andy went out of her way to get a few things that would just be from her. It was hard to imagine that this was only their first birthday they ever shared with one another. She wanted it to be special and that special started with the necklace. Andy had Claire’s relative Fillip track down an old heirloom, something that belonged to Claire’s ancestor Elizabeth and he came back with the most beautiful necklace—three golden swirls clustered together at the bottom of a chain. It was a symbol for Claire’s pack, the Northern Lights, and the perfect gift for the new Alpha. While Andy had her mother polish the necklace, she custom ordered a shield for Claire. Fillip tried to convince her to gift Claire with Elizabeth’s old battle axe too but Andy thought a shield had a better message than a weapon. It was a symbol of strength but defense, a symbol of peace. She had the same markings—the three golden swirls— placed on the front of the shield too. Andy never expected Claire to use the shield in combat, though she could, but it would be a nice piece to hang on the wall, a symbol of who Claire was and what she had become in the short time they knew each other. The gifts, the gifts were taken care of, but the words…
“F***,” Andy said, rubbing her temple. She told Claire how much she loved her, how special she was, how perfect she was, every single day. Why was it so hard to put it down in black ink? The whole concept was f***ed. Words never did it justice. They never fully articulated how Andy felt about Claire on any given day. But words were important, too. So Andy stopped thinking. She put the pen to the card and just wrote. She let her feelings guide her.
Claire,
It’s hard to believe that this is only the first of your birthdays that we’re celebrating together. Our life is so full and special and utterly perfect, it almost feels like it’s always been this way. I remember the time before you, but I don’t ever remember cherishing a moment before we met. Now, I hold every moment close to my heart. Now, every day with you is a blessing I’m grateful for.
This may be the first of our birthdays that we celebrate together, but it’s the first of many. You don’t want to make a big deal out of it—I can respect that—just a fun family day in on a Sunday. That doesn’t mean the day isn’t special. Our family is special, being together, that’s the most special thing you could want to do on your birthday.
You are the greatest thing to have ever happened to me, Legs. October 13th will always be a National holiday for me from here on out. I look forward to endless October 13ths from now until the end of time. Always and always.
Happy Birthday, Claire.
Your adoring and loving wife, Andy
She closed the card and made a content sigh as she heard the garage door open. Footsteps stampeded in. The girls were home. She ran her hand over the drawing of a sun on the front of the card, a nod to a sneeze, to how they met, and she put the card in an envelope, sealed it, and wrote Claire’s name on the front.
Relaxation and peace were not found directly anymore, they hid in the quiet moments, the gentle moments where thoughts lingered on loved ones, where family celebrated each other. Andy got up and washed back into the noise of life, putting the card away until Sunday when she could give it to the love of her life. She carried the peace Claire gave her into the day, and had no problem keeping a smile on her face.
|
|
|
09/25/2019 12:56 PM
|
TAKEN PART II
[Writer’s note: The opening scene is adapted from Discord writing. Claire’s dialogue is written by Claire’s writer.]
12:25 AM TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 2019 GRAND PRAIRIE, TEXAS
A group of werewolves from the Northern Lights pack gathered in front of the Stoddard-Barclay house, rallying behind their alpha Claire, waiting for their orders, waiting to figure out how they were going to rescue Claire’s wife Andy who had been missing since earlier in the afternoon, presumed to be taken by the Red Wolves, a rival pack to the Northern Lights. In addition to Claire, there was Fillip and Fallon, the oldest werewolves in the pack, ancestors to Claire in some way. Four of the newcomers were there too, Dusty, Peter, Carrie, and the quiet wolf with the sword Feeney. Claire’s plan was to kidnap one of the daughters of the Red Wolf Alpha and work out a hostage trade, but that sparked a discussion. Claire and Fillip bickered loudly on the other side of the driveway while the rest pretended not to watch.
"I'm sorry. I'm.. a bit out of sorts,” Claire said when the spat was over and she returned to the group, hands on her head out of frustration. “I was wrong to suggest kidnapping a child. So we will try another way to find her. Hopefully Sergei didn't think to hide her with magic. If he didn't, Avery may be able to use a locator spell.”
“We don’t need Avery,” Feeney was the first to speak up. All eyes went to her since she didn’t often have a ton to say at moments like this. “And we don’t need to kidnap anyone for a hostage trade. We need a distraction.”
“I don’t understand.” Carrie scratched the back of her blonde head. “A distraction?”
Feeney looked to Claire. “Your wife is tough as nails and badass, right?”
“You’re saying we let Andy rescue herself?” Peter asked, stepping up beside Carrie.
“I say we give Andy what she needs to help rescue herself,” Feeney said.
“And how do we go about that?” Claire asked, her full focus on Feeney now.
"Well, we don't grab his daughter but maybe we make it look like we're going to grab his daughter. If he cares about his daughter he'd move more of his wolves to protect her and away from Andy. Then all we have to do is get Andy her weapon."
"What's her weapon?" Carrie asked.
Feeney blurred to the garage and blurred back with a chainsaw.
"How do you know so much about Andy?" Peter asked curiously, but his question would probably get washed away in everything else.
"How do we get a weapon to her?" Carrie asked.
"Magic. Avery doesn't need to track her," Feeney said. "That sort of magic is easy to ward against, but she can use a spell that'll transport this chainsaw to wherever Andy is in the Multiverse and then she frees herself."
A quiet moment lingered between the pack members gathered there. Feeney’s plan was bold, dangerous, and required a lot of trust on Claire’s part, not trust in Feeney but trust in Andy. Feeney made a gamble suggesting it, but she was certain it was the right move. She wasn’t surprised when Claire stepped forward and smiled. “Okay,” Claire said. “Let’s do it.”
WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON SEPTEMBER 25, 2019 NECROPOLIS
Time didn’t exist in the basement. Andy had a rough estimate of how long she had been a prisoner of the Red Wolves pack but there was no true way to tell. The room they kept her in had no windows. There were no obvious breaks in the pointless torture they were putting her through to give her any idea of what was day and what was night. There was only the harness that kept her elevated off the ground—legs and arms numb and joints sore from where the straps cut into her—and there was the room. She dozed off occasionally between bouts of torture, but never for very long, and waking up from a spontaneous micro nap only made it harder to track how much time was passing.
There was no routine or schedule, but the human mind could find patterns in anything and Andy managed to find some semblance of a rhythm to how things operated down there even if it wasn’t an exact or regimented order of events. The masked man came in and out, never speaking, not even a word. He wasn’t a wolf, he was a witch, or a warlock or whatever classification of magic-user he deemed himself. Andy didn’t give a sh*t what he called himself, she only cared about what he would do. It was savage and cruel for the sake of cruelty. No questions were asked, no point was given; the man in the leather mask simply would come in, crush Andy’s hands and feet with his tools, leave her to suffer, come in and heal her with his magic, and start the process all over again. Sergei made it sound like she was just a bargaining tool, but that didn’t account for the torture. Her imagination ran wild with explanations. The masked man was a psychopath who Sergei owed a favor too, and Andy was a payment. He was a show of force and the pain inflicted on Andy was only meant to last psychologically and not physically. A dozen scenarios played through her head, but when the hammers swung the reason why it was swinging didn’t matter. Only the pain mattered.
Whenever the masked man exited Andy was left in the room alone with a single wolf guard who sat in a chair in the corner behind her. They were meant to watch her but they mostly just read from a magazine while Andy hung in the center of the room, suffering, groaning, or sleeping. Sergei hadn’t been back since he left after the first torture session. The guard was different every time, but that didn’t help Andy track time either. They never stayed very long and they switched out often. Now, in a lull between torture sessions, the guard was a woman with light blonde hair who read from a magazine that had a pair of shoes on the cover and was decorated in cyrillic script. In the beginning, Andy talked to the guards—even if they never talked back—but she didn’t have the strength any more. They beat that out of her. She looked back and stared at the woman and her magazine upside down from time to time, but she couldn’t do that long either without the blood rushing to her head.
The lulls between torture were almost worse than the actual torture. That was a strange thing to think, Andy figured, but it was true. At least she had the ability to wince or brace for impact before the masked man swung his hammer down on her hands or feet, but hanging there, exhausted and hungry and thirsty and covered in her own piss and bruises, it was enough to drive anyone mad. There was no getting comfortable only transitioning from different sorts of discomfort. Sometimes the shoulders hurt more than the legs, sometimes it was a headache that set in that made Andy’s skull feel like it was on fire. These shifting pains came in the lulls, and Andy’s only escape was the brief moments of sleep her body forced upon her every now and then. One was coming on now, she could feel it in her bones. Andy was drifting off when all of a sudden there was some snoring. Snoring? Andy wasn’t asleep yet, she wasn’t snoring. Craning her neck back and looking upside down she smirked. The woman guarding her had drifted asleep, her magazine slumped forward in her lap.
An idea came to her like a bolt of lightning.
“Ade beaucoup Damballa,” Andy whispered, closing her eyes and concentrating on the voodoo prayer she had memorized. “Donne-moi tout le pouvoir, je t’en supplie. Ade beaucoup Damballa. Give me the power, I beg of you. Awake!”
The guard woke up in a snort and a start, the magazine dropping from her lap. She looked around confused, touching her face and arms and legs and then she smiled at Andy and Andy smiled back. “It worked,” the guard said, not speaking in a Russian accent.
“Please cut us down,” Andy said.
Andy copied her soul and took possession of the guard. The spirit of the Russian wolf was still inside that body too, and Andy wasn’t cruel enough to make a soul share their host with an outside force for long, plus Andy wasn’t fond of the idea of having too many soul copies out in the world anyway, but these wolves did kidnap her. They were the bad guys, so she didn’t feel too bad. The copy of Andy got up, pulled a knife from her belt and used it to cut the harness down. She tried to ease Andy down to the ground but she ended up falling with a huff. Andy didn’t mind. She never had been so happy to fall on the ground in her life. Once down she was able to free herself, rubbing her wrists and ankles and slowly getting up on her feet.
“We need to get out of here,” the copy said.
“I need to get out of here,” Andy corrected herself. “I’m not taking this person with me. They may be working for bad guys but there’s gotta be a difference between us and them. There’s gotta be a reason I can call myself the good guy.”
“You’re hurt,” the copy said. “Let me at least help you fight your way out of here. You can’t do it alone.”
There was a zap of energy somewhere behind them and when both Andys turned they found Andy’s chainsaw sitting on the floor by the door. Andy smirked, not knowing exactly how it got there or where it came from, but knowing that her wife was somehow involved. “I’m not alone,” Andy said, standing up and picking up the chainsaw with her stronger of the two hands.
The Copy nodded at her original, saluted her and said, “Good luck,” before she started chanting a similar voodoo spell. There was another pop of energy and the soul duplicate was gone. The werewolf that had been possessed fell to the floor, unconscious but otherwise okay.
Andy was weak and her, but that didn’t stop her. She picked up her chainsaw and kissed the rusty blade. “Groovy.”
That’s when the door opened behind her.
The man in the mask walked into the room. He entered with a leisurely pace and posture but when he looked up and locked eyes with Andy—free and standing four paces away from him, armed with a chainsaw, her guard passed out on the floor—his body went rigid with panic and confusion. His face was hidden by the mask, sure, but the panic and confusion shone so brightly it glowed out from under the seams.
Andy smiled and wiggled her eyebrows. “Hi.”
She pulled the cord on the chainsaw to bring it to life but it only puttered into nothing. She tried it again. Nothing. A bruised thumb flipped up the gas cap. The tank was empty. The weight difference didn’t even register on her exhausted arms. “F***,” she sighed. The masked man turned his head to the corner where his tool kit sat on a stool. He stared at it. Andy stared at it. He stared at her. She stared at him. They hovered in limbo, waiting for the right time to make the first move. He flinched first, darting for the stool. Andy heaved her weapon back and tossed the chainsaw through the air. There was no gas to make the blade sing but it had additional value. The chainsaw gracelessly soared through the air and the engine clunked the masked man on the head before he reached his stool, knocking him down to the ground.
Andy dashed forward, adrenaline pumping through her body and making everything function despite the pain she was in. She got to the stool as fast as she could, grabbed a hammer and knocked the rest of it down. There was no hesitation or second thoughts or caution. Andy acted and she acted quickly. She used the hammer to turn the masked man’s head into jelly. BAM! BAM! BAM! She was relentless, bringing it down on him over and over again, putting every moment of the torture he put her through into each swing. His skull crumbled and he leaked through the leather mask until he stopped moving and went stone-still.
When the hammering stopped Andy was panting, sore, and covered in sweat and blood. She took a second to catch her breath, tossed the hammer off to the side, and went back for the guard’s knife. She picked that up, doubled back for her chainsaw, and limped out of the room, unsure what she would find on the other side but ready to deal with whatever was there. The basement had a second room—this one smaller and blander than the first. There were a few supplies along a stone wall under some wooden stairs that went up. Among the supplies, Andy found a red plastic gas canister. She tucked the knife in her belt, went to the canister, and smiled when she shook it. It was full.
Andy filled up the chainsaw and tossed the canister away when she was done. When the cap went back on she lifted her weapon of choice and chortled some. It was heavy again, heavy like it was meant to be. She took a deep breath, went to the foot of the stairs, and steeled herself for the fight to come. She pulled the cord back and the chainsaw roared. Deep breaths up the stairs and she made her blade sing before heading upstairs. Some people yelled in Russian and then came some screaming in terror.
There were only two people upstairs, two werewolves in the whole house actually, other than the guard in the basement and the masked man. Andy caught them off guard and managed to fight her way out with one decapitation and one disemboweling. She left the house covered in blood and bruises, looked around and found she was in Necropolis. That explained how the Russians made it to Texas so fast, the supernatural city could be accessed from anywhere in the world and sort of acted as a short-cut between places.
She didn’t take the time to explore the house, but even just on her way out she noticed that there had been more people there. Something lured them away, something made Andy’s job easier, which was something she was incredibly grateful for because as soon as her face hit the fresh air outside all those hours of exhaustion and torture and hunger hit her like the El coming down around a bend. She fell to her knees laughing, unable to lift herself anymore. She let out a scream, crying out in victory. A few people came out of neighboring houses, all row homes connected by shared walls. It didn’t matter if there were any other wolves left in the area, there were witnesses now. Andy was safe.
A few good Samaritans came over to help Andy. One yelled to call an ambulance. Another came rushing over with water. A third cradled the exhausted Andy in his arms.
“Claire,” Andy mumbled through chapped lips. “My wife… get me to my wife.”
|
|
View All Posts
|
