Renata is awake before noxrise, sleep fading from her until she is lying languidly in the dark, sweltering in the stale air. She stumbles out of bed, checks the clock. Half past five. There’s no more sleep to be had, so she finds her way to the kitchen in the dark, turns on the stove, winces at the sudden rush of light, and puts the water on to boil.
“Mommy,” comes Aesha’s voice from the doorway.
Renata’s daughter is barefoot on the adobe floor, bleary in the stovelight, still clutching her pillow. “Oh my darling,” Renata says. “Did I wake you?”
“Nuh-uh,” mumbles Aesha, and finds a chair. “‘’s hot.” Her eyes are white slits in the darkness, staring at their blackout curtains. She rubs her neck. “Mommy, why’s the sky so bright?”
Renata chuckles. “You know what stars are, darling?”
“Mm,” says Aesha, leaning forward on the table with her head on her hands. “Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are.” Her voice is tuneless, like a broken down music box. “Like little crystals. Little sparkly lights.” She wriggles her fingertips in the direction of the stovelight, trying to get glints off her fingernails. “Mommy. How comes we don’t get to see them anymore?”
“Oh, but you do,” says Renata, and takes the kettle off the flame. “Every day. Up in the sky. Billions and billions of stars.” She can see Aesha’s nose wrinkle up with confusion. “What do you think would happen if you lit a billion candles?” she says. “All of them together, pressed up next to each other? Do you think you’d be able to see all the different candle flames, or would it be too bright?”
“Um,” says Aesha, dreamily. “Real bright. It’d just be a fire then, right? Like all the candles on fire. Wildfire. Woooosssh,” she says, and mimics flames. “Like a carpet of them! Like the burning grass!”
“That’s right,” says Renata. She steeps them tea, rummages in the cupboards for the thermoses. “And the universe is infinite, my darling. You know what that means? It means it never ends. There’s always more universe to go. You keep going and you’ll find another star out there eventually.”
Aesha is imagining a roadtrip out into the cosmos, a winding road past a billion burning stars. All the great vast fields of darkness awaiting her, Aesha about to set out to sea, cast off into an endless sky.
“And so people used to see the stars,” Renata says. “Just the few of them. Just the first ones. Because light has to travel too, before it can get to us. But then time passed, and more and more stars came, more and more of them until they crowded out the sky. Until there was nothing to see but stars.” She shrugs. “That’s simply the way the universe is, my darling. It had to happen sooner or later.”
“Oh,” says Aesha, looking up at the darkened ceiling. “Can we tell them to go away again?”
“That’s not so easy,” Renata chuckles. “But there is one good thing that happened. We used to have a star too. A big one. A bright one. Right up close so that it lit up the whole sky. But when the other stars started showing up, it got tired from all the attention. And so it went to sleep.”
“Nox!” Aesha says.
“That’s right!” says Renata, and checks the clock. “It’s almost noxrise. You’re never awake early enough to see it, are you?”
“I am now!” says Aesha, bouncing at the table.
“Well, bundle up,” says Renata, “and get your clouded glasses.” She picks up the thermoses of tea. “Let’s go welcome in the dark.”
The sky is burning when she pries open the hatch of their shelter, a billion billion lights all shown up one by one until the sky shines as bright as the surface of a star. Searing off the surface of the Earth. Stinging at their eyes even through the clouded glasses, even though they look away. And then, at the edges of the Earth, nox comes.
It’s a darkness that seeps in at the horizon, the color of the sky draining away. The world bleeds purple as a bruise. It is there, just over the horizon and ever so steadily rising, a mouth that swallows all, a pit that drains away the light. It is impossible to see, impossible to conceive of other than as its absence. A hole in the sky. A hole in the universe. The open mouth of a drain and their slow circling orbit. It is night. It is night, and they will never wake up again.
Renata huddles in her jacket and shivers.
“Noxrise!” shrieks Aesha, and she is out of the hatch and running, running, running, spinning gleefully, all the great vast fields of darkness now awaiting her, Aesha about to set out to sea, cast off into an endless sky. “It’s so pretty!” she cries, and she is gone now, out of sight, all light and warmth and beauty swallowed whole. “Mommy! It’s the prettiest thing in the world!”
You’re an otherworldly archeologist sent to Earth long after humans have disappeared. Your race isn’t even aware of their prior existence. While out in the middle of nowhere, you stumble upon a mountain with four faces carved into it. You and your team try to decipher what it could mean.
After the all the years had passed, and much later still; after the black dog had sickened, and greyed, and died; after the final stitch of quillwork had been threaded through by calloused fingers; after the remaining sweetness in the world had boiled away to a reddish stain at the bottom of a blackened earthen pot; after the waters had risen; after the stars had fallen from the sky; after the white man had been razed from the face of the Earth, from the surface of all memory - then Iktomi came, to unravel the strands of his web and from them weave a story.
From the empty cave he threw the quillwork robe across his shoulders, he ran his finger along the bottom of a blackened earthen pot and sucked off the sweetness. He strode across the world. The buffalo once more roamed the plains, the trees and grass had regrown. Iktomi sat atop the ruins of the previous world and marked out their measurements in his mind’s eye; he sketched out cities and towers and constricting gridwork streets. And in the Black Mountains, where the Six Grandfathers had once stood, he found four faces gouged into the stone, worn and haggard, stern and inscrutable, monuments to a dead race.
Iktomi frowned at them, puzzled over them, stood on his head and peered at them through multiple eyes. From the earth he pulled up the threads of plastic and copper and glass he had laid long, long before, and ran the fine filaments between his fingers and felt the distant tugs of what had long since occurred.
“You,” he said to the first face. “Devourer of villages. Destroyer of towns. Bringer of ruin. You,” he said to the second, “Architect of removal. You who sought to see men run in debt, to force them from their lands, or to be swallowed whole by your people. You,” he said to the third, “thirty-eight hung at your behest! The largest mass execution in your nation’s history. And you,” he said to the fourth, “Champion of the white race. You who could look upon ten men and judge nine of them better off dead.
“And all of you together,” Iktomi cried, spreading his arms wide. “A tourist attraction! A lure for idle sightseers! You looked upon the craggy form of my father’s body, the breadth of him, the ridges of his spine, the creases etched into his skin; you trod upon this sacred earth, you went to war for this, you slaughtered, you stole the land from those who lived here, and your first thought for your spoils was to carve out figurines of folk heroes! You sought to carve the figures of your leaders, and all you could afford of them was their faces!
“There was a nation built here,” Iktomi said in wonder. “By men who looked upon the horizon and thought only of expansion.” He clambered atop the first crumbling face and looked out at the jagged skyline of the peaks around him. “And they grew, and they grew, and they grew, unimpeded, and in the end this was the height of their imagination. Four white faces, still coveting the horizon.”
Iktomi laughed, and shook his head, and caressed the stone. “The world is passed,” he said. “Let the monuments of man die with it.”
And beneath him Inyan stretched and shuddered, his old bones creaking, and the faces cracked and sloughed away from the stone. Their mouths gaped, their cheeks caved in, their skin was veined with a thousand wrinkles, and then they fell away and were gone, the mountain face as clean as it had ever been.
Then Iktomi wound in his webs, the iron ones and the copper ones, the thin ones made of glass that carried with them the history of the world. He uprooted them from the earth, all the stories of man that had been woven and reinforced, that had underlaid the streets and cities of the world, that had linked them in a myth meant to last forever. He held his webs to the sunlight, strung between his fingertips, and ended his story, the delicate strands melting away with the dew.
And below him, in the plains and valleys of an unfettered world, the spirits sprinted across the new-grown grass, the world alive with their laughter.
Arepo built a temple in his field, a humble thing, some stones stacked up to make a cairn, and two days later a god moved in.
“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But - I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.”
The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up.
“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.”
“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?”
“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.”
The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.”
Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.”
“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.”
Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together.
“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.”
“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?”
The god rattled around in the temple and sighed.
A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer.
“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?”
“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.”
“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.”
The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god.
And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War.
Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him.
“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!”
“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?”
“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke.
“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile.
“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.”
“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.”
And as the fields burned and the smoke blotted out the sun, as men were trodden in the press and bloody War raged on, as the heavens let loose their wrath upon the earth, Arepo the sower lay down in his humble temple, his head sheltered by the stones, and returned home to his god.
She makes the poppet on the anniversary of her brother’s death. She’s not much for sewing so she makes it out of paper, two gingerbread men cut out and their edges harshly, cruelty stapled together. She writes the murderer’s vices on its arms, his name on the head, and her hatred like arrows over the heart. She gives it googly eyes so he can see inside what’s happening even if he doesn’t know it for true.
She stuffs her creation with yarrow and rue, red pepper and rusted metal, dragon’s blood and small chips of garnet so filled with her hatred that they feel even colder to the touch. Then she seals it with another snap of the stapler.
Thinks for a moment and drags a needle through witch’s salt and crushed red pepper and drives it straight through the poppet’s stomach.
Think of me, she curses, twisting the needle. Think of me and be afraid.
————————————————————
Mistrial. That’s what happens when a case is too clear cut. The good people who want to help move too quickly and forget the little things. Warrants. Miranda Rights. A licensed attorney.
Little things.
She wasn’t willing to wait another year for justice. Each day of this one has inflamed her roots, brought magic flaming to her fingertips, has put death in her eyes.
She won’t live until the next jury is selected if she doesn’t get this out of her and into him.
——————————————————————-
There are potions of invisibility, creams that encourage eyes to slide from physical form, chants that, when hissed, make the chanter seem like air.
Jails are a magicless place for witches like her. Too much stagnation, pain and fear. She’s not built for it so she buttons her aura down, locks her senses to her bones, and asks to visit Henry Stevens.
“Alright,” the guard says, eyeing her bloodless face and the small package in her hands. “But he may not agree to see you. That been through security?” He nods to her paper parcel.
“Yes,” she says. There’s a secrecy rune on the inside of the wrapping paper, encouraging sensors to overlook the metal. “But it’s not staying.”
The guard nods and disappears, speaking softly into the phone. She doesn’t try to catch the words, just lets her eyes skip from ghost to ghost that litter this place.
WIBTA for going to my high school reunion even though the two witches I stripped of magic are going?
(Read for free on Patreon (X))
I (28 witch) was in a coven during high school. Not really even a coven. We weren’t recognized and there wasn’t a clear division of responsibilities. We did have a high priestess but she hadn’t Declared or been Initiated or whatever she believed. Looking back, her learning was all over the place (and a little problematic, honestly. I remember her calling a poppet a Voodoo doll before being called out by another member). Let’s call her Sarah.
Sarah was a year older than the rest of us (still the same grade though) and her mom was a witch so that made her the high priestess. She was the one who would organize all of our rituals and held the power of veto over any proposed spells. While you think that’d mean she’d provide the ingredients, she never did. She did tell us what to buy and, let me tell you, some of those things were expensive for a high schooler. We met in the park behind her house, and she demanded that at least one of us be in every one of her classes. If we weren’t, we’d be “cycled” out of the coven until our parents convinced the school to transfer us in.
Any alt kid knows what I’m talking about because they had a Sarah in their life. If she was angry, we had to be angry (and a little afraid of her). If she was sad, we were expected to ask why. If she was happy, we had to be even more happy. You get the picture.
The problem came when Sarah added Jess (fake name) to the Coven during the start of our junior year. It was the first time Sarah allowed someone else from a witch family to join. Jess was a transfer student from England. She told us all that that made her magic deeper and more powerful because she was a “daughter of the witches you could not burn.” When I pointed out that that statement is historically inaccurate, Jess called me a “pilgrim.” She tried to convince Sarah to blind me (take away my decision-making power in the coven), but I was the only one with reliable access to dried herbs (my mom’s a botanist and didn’t count her stores like Sarah’s mom did), so Sarah said no.
Jess’ dislike of me got worse when I actually did dress like a pilgrim for Halloween that year. And, if I’m honest, I did take it a little far. I was a hot-headed kid. I followed her around the entire day and had kids sign one of two petitions – “Burn” or “Not Burn.” When the Burn Petition won, I could tell I went too far (there were a LOT of signatures). I tried to make it a joke and told her that now she really was a witch we couldn’t burn.
Jess and I got in our first physical fight. Sarah eventually broke it up, but not before Jess ripped out a good chunk of my hair, and I broke the tiger’s eye bracelet she wore.
I later heard from another coven member that Jess tried to lay a curse on me that night. Unfortunately for her, I was pretty interested in defensive work and had a fresh witch’s jar buried under my window. Her curse got caught in it and rebounded. Apparently, that’s how Jess got pink eye, not from her younger sister.
We fought like cats and dogs. Any time Jess would talk about England, I’d make fun of her accent. When I brought up what spell I’d like to do, Jess would call me a juvenile pilgrim. Eventually, Jess got smart. She’d text me insults rather than say them to my face so that she’d have a chance to tattle to Sarah before I got the chance to hit back.
Sarah pulled me aside at least three times to “address” the fights. She basically said that I needed to respect Jess more because she came from a witch family, like her. She told me I could learn a lot from Jess if I stopped acting like a human. When I pointed out that we are humans, just humans who have elected to use magic, she got really mad.
And when Sarah got mad, she could make life really difficult.
My spell for luck on midterms got passed over for Jess’ jinx on our English teacher. The jinx worked and Ms. Edel tripped, but guess who still came to class with a broken leg? MS. EDEL. Guess who failed their midterm?
ALL SEVEN OF US.
Damn, I can’t believe I’m still upset by this petty high school drama. Therapy did not work.
So safe to say that Jess and I never became friends. I love magic now and loved it then, but she took it so seriously. I’ve always believed magic should be fun. All the spells she brought to the coven required a spirit element—blood, hair, sacrifice. One of the members was a strict green witch and had to drop out because of it. We missed two full moons until Sarah approved Eileen to rejoin after she woke up from her coma.
(And before anyone freaks out about the coma – we all ended up in comas here and there. We were a bunch of uneducated and untrained baby witches who all had different belief systems. The fact that there wasn’t anything worse than a coma is a miracle. She wasn’t traumatized by it any more than I was by mine.)
Jess and I mostly avoided each other for the rest of the year. We always voted against the other’s spell and I’m fairly certain she tried to trip jinx me in the hall as often as I tried to trip jinx her. Sarah never tried to diffuse the tension between us. She confided in Eileen that she was grateful we kept each other in check.
Things could have continued on that way until we all moved away for college (or repeated the year after failing all those midterms) if it weren’t for the vernal equinox. Or, as we inaccurately called it, the Spring Solstice.
The way it worked was that we all got to propose a ritual during equinoxes. They’re powerful magical events on their own and when you bring intent to the party? They were always our biggest, most successful workings.
Sarah always chose what we did on those days. She pretended like we got to vote, but we all knew she would never choose one of our rituals. My freshman year, she made us all do one for beauty. Because it was a “make real what is in the eye of the beholder” type, some of our transformations were a little…traumatizing. I’m only telling you this so you understand the power an equinox has, okay? I do not think this way anymore. Other members were just as extreme. Eileen went from a Wendy from Wendy’s to a Jessica Rabbit. And I…
Well.
I grew rabbit ears and teeth. That doesn’t make me a furry! Who Framed Roger Rabbit? was super influential on BOTH Eileen and me. I was a kid and didn’t understand my own concept of beauty. It took almost three months before I got the ears to go away entirely.
Suffice it to say, we were all excited and nervous for what ritual Sarah would pick, which is why it was a blow to find out that she had picked a ritual - Jess’ ritual.
A ritual for power.
I didn’t want to do it from day one, okay? My belief is that whatever magic comes to you naturally is what’s okay to take. I think if you rip magic up from the earth or the abyss, it’ll change you. Maybe even corrupt you or change your personality.
But I was a kid and didn’t know how to explain that. Jess and Sarah were both from witch families and they seemed to think it was okay. Even though I didn’t like Jess, I did see her as a more “authentic” witch because of that. I know better now, but as a kid seeing all of her grimoires, I gave her false authority.
Jess explained the ritual to us over the next month. She talked about how we were going to be “tested.” The ritual would pull our spiritual selves from our bodies, and depending on how long we chanted, we’d return to them with more or less magic than when we started. She said that everyone in her family did it when they turned 18.
It wasn’t until three days before the equinox that she told us what would happen if one of us were to be judged unworthy.
“Mostly nothing,” she said. I remember her exact words, how her black hair spun as she soared through the air on the swings. We stood in a half circle before her and Sarah as they swung higher and higher. An audience to their aerial court. She said, “Sometimes people lose some of their magic. When the ritual decides they don’t deserve it.”
Eileen asked, “When the ritual decides? It’s sentient?”
“There’s an overseer we’ll call on,” Sarah said. She’d been the only one allowed to read Jess’ grimoire. Her lip curled and she leaned forward so she could look down over Eileen like an avenging angel as she swung overhead. “An impartial entity.”
“I am not a deity witch,” I said. I had long ago committed that I would never call on a higher being in any ritual. Most of our spells had to be modified for me so that I could swear to the cardinal directions rather than to the Morrigan or Hecate. “You know that.”
“You’re not swearing to anyone,” Sarah said and rolled her eyes.
“Which means no one is swearing to us,” Eileen muttered under her breath. But I could tell she had given up by the slump of her shoulders.
“It’s only the unworthy who lose their magic,” Jess reassured. Her eyes flashed at me. “Scared you’re unworthy?”
Yes. I was scared. I know better now than to think lineage has any place in witchcraft. It’s about the magic, always just the magic. But months of hearing their rhetoric had worn at my self-esteem. It really felt like if I didn’t do the ritual, I was as good as admitting I wasn’t a witch. If I did do the ritual…
Well. Obviously, I did the ritual.
I was a hot-headed teen, okay? I felt challenged. I decided that I would wear extra protections. Tiger’s eye and quartz charged with intention. I picked out a silver locket my mother gave me, filled with belladonna. She told me it symbolized beauty and choice.
Now, here’s where I may be the asshole.
I can’t give you a play-by-play of the ritual. It was ten years ago, and calling on that much magic has a funny way of warping memory. But what I do remember is this:
We gathered in the park before sunrise. Seven of us in new colors – spring green, white, soft yellow and pink. Jess made us get rid of anything with a working on it – crystals, cards, and ladders. She collected them all in a linen bag and threw them into the woods. I couldn’t get away with my tiger’s eye or quartz, but she missed the pendant my mother gave me. It was a warm comfort against my chest as we began.
We lit the fire together, each of us frantically thumbing our lighter to make sure the sparks caught at the same time.
Jess brought the chalice. We all cut our palms and let seven drops fall into it. (No, we didn’t use a clean blade. My cut got infected as hell and it itches like a witch. I know better now!) She bade us drink, and we did.
“Now the magic will see us as equal,” Sarah said while Jess prepared the next step. She licked her lips as if savoring the blood. “It will only be our wills determining the outcome.”
Jess doused us with oil and herbs. It smelled sharp and uneasy. I had provided the herbs and knew all of them were either fresh or dried to perfection. But it was rancid. There was rot in the air, but I couldn’t place it then. I wrinkled my nose and took up the chanting with the others to distract myself from the smell.
If you’ve ever chanted before, you know the stages. First, you’re just talking. You say the words and they mean something, but you don’t feel them. Then your mouth gets tired. You start messing up the timing of the words. You stutter. You stumble. The words lose meaning. Most people stop there. They fall silent and sink into a shallow meditation with heads full of fog.
You’re only a witch if you can reach the next step. You keep saying the words. They become comfortable. You wear the words like clothes and feel your cadence curl through you like a companion. Your body goes on autopilot and your mind relaxes. The chant turns smooth as silk. Depending on the chant, you lose yourself to the sweetness of your coven singing. Sometimes, you sink into the earth with them. Other times, you ride the flow of the magic like waves.
This time, the words pulled us away from our bodies. Jess slowly introduced new words to our chant. Words of summoning.
We called upon the Overseer.
Pressure fell around me like a vice. I couldn’t breathe even as the ritual fell from my lips without breaking. Magic had, at that point, always given me control. This? This was a complete loss of it.
I felt myself compressing. Smaller and smaller in the face of the being that was rising in the middle of the flames. It was not an observer. The moment I “saw” it, its endless form writhing in the space between the smoke, I knew that. It was a judge and jury.
It was a spider.
We chanted. It grew. It pulled us from our bodies like spiderweb and spooled our essences onto its forelimbs. It was not what Jess described and, simultaneously, it was. We were being tested. Our psyches were being tested.
So long as we chanted, the being would be contained. However, the longer it was contained, the more of us it could take. If we let it go, what would it do? Would it return any part of our magic to us? Any part of who we were?
Or would it eat?
This wasn’t a test of magic. It was a test of faith. Faith in each other and faith in the ritual.
For those practitioners out there, you can see the problem. I didn’t enter the ritual with faith. My intent was flawed from the beginning. We’d had spells fail because of lack of belief. I had never been the person who didn’t believe.
Until then
My words wavered. The Overseer turned its eyes to me. I could see my magic like thread before it, shimmering against the backdrop of its maw.
Then another tremor. Eileen dropped a word. The Overseer split and looked at both of us. Someone else faltered. One of the coven – I couldn’t see them – fell and went silent.
The sky yawned overhead, empty and cold. The embers from the fire spun up into it and were lost. The Overseer rippled and I felt our coven shrink in the face of it.
I gasped around the chant and looked across the fire. The light licked Jess’ gleeful face. Her eyes hungered for my failure. I could see it. Through the connection of the Overseer, I could feel it.
Jess and Sarah changed the chant. To this day, I don’t remember if they taught it to the rest of us. There are so many parts of the ritual that I’ve left out or forgotten. But I remember them chanting different words. The circle grew discordant.
“I offer my magic so I may be unspun and woven anew,” they said. The words have imprinted themselves like bitters under my tongue. “I offer my magic so I may—”
Some of the other members tried to pick up the new chant. Their voices grew weaker and the Overseer’s limbs began to extend out towards each one of us.
I wouldn’t offer my magic to that thing. I wouldn’t be unspun. Eileen was stuttering. I saw her fall to her knees. I was close behind.
I threw my necklace into the flames.
Belladonna. Beautiful and deadly. It has meant choice to many women and many of them have been from my own family. It's extreme and it’s final. An end that doesn’t always make room for a new beginning.
Pretty words that cover up what I meant when I threw it into the Overseer.
My intent was Death.
Entities never die. I’m sure the Overseer didn’t. It howled. The wind kicked up and brought the flames into a spiral ten feet tall. Its forelimbs shattered, and I reeled myself back together greedily.
Not all of us were safe from the Overseer’s desperate struggle against my death curse.
Sarah and Jess were alone in the third phase of the ritual. They had changed the chant. They had offered their magic and asked the entity to do with it what it will. They believed.
And because they believed, the Overseer took their magic with it.
I think it was the first coma Jess ever fell into. Her family certainly acted like it. They whisked her back to the East Coast before the end of the year. I heard from Eileen that she woke up shortly after I left for college.
Magicless.
Sarah too.
I fully own that I was responsible for the ritual failing. I panicked. I’ve gone through every excuse over the years. I didn’t know what the ritual really was. I was just a kid. I took magic too lightly. It was their fault for not letting us read the grimoire for ourselves. But, at the end of the day, the real reason the ritual failed was because I panicked and I let that panic break my belief.
I moved on to college and it felt like running away. I’ve never returned to my hometown. I’m happy with the life I’ve built. My magic summer camp gives me time to travel during the winter months, and I feel like I’m making a real difference in young witches’ lives.
Nowadays I teach young witches to never do a working without full intent. If they have doubts, they don’t do it. It’s a lesson I learned the hard way ten years ago. I tell them it can cost them more than their magic. It can cost them their lives.
Eileen is still back home and she says Sarah rarely comes out of her house. Sometimes she sees our former high priestess wandering the school grounds on nights of the full moon. I hear from other members of the coven that Jess’ family put out a bounty on me a few years ago. However, I never saw an assassin so I think that was just a rumor.
So, knowing that they’re still not over it, would I be the asshole for attending my high school reunion next month? I’ve been craving reconnection with my roots, but I’d be subjecting Sarah and Jess (though Jess marked Maybe on the RSVP) to my presence.
I know they must hold a grudge. If they were still witches, that would be a problem. I don’t think I’d be able to defend myself from one of their workings since I blame myself for what happened. But since they’re not, it’s not really a danger. That’s pretty asshole-ish, right? Ignoring their feelings because they don’t have the magic to back it up?
So WIBTA for attending my high school reunion even though the two girls I stripped of magic will be attending?
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Thanks for reading! It looks like I'll have quite a few updates for the anthology! I am still obsessed with this format and can't wait to share some of the updates over the next few weeks.
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The current AITA story takes place in the same universe as our former Cryptid (X). About a poor, poor boy who is just proud to be a regional Nightmare. Why is everyone so mad at him?
AITA for going no contact with my brother after he pulled a scare on my husband?
EDIT: For those of you coming here from my brother’s post (X) to shit on me, you look like idiots. Try to have an original thought and really contemplate who’s telling the truth after hearing both sides.
I (32f) am one of three siblings. We come from a very well off family. My dad is a former Cryptid and he pioneered the Hook Man in the 70s, so he still gets residuals off of that. We grew up very comfortable and with the ability to do anything we wanted in life. My older brother went to a very prestigious school and my dad gave him the money for tuition. Because my older brother got scholarships, he was able to save some of that money. Right now he works in human tech (very lucrative), but his long-term plan is to use the money to start a Cyber Spook business once he is satisfied with his knowledge foundation.
I ended up taking a gap year before going to community college, but I never felt anything click. I worked part-time jobs spinning out scarer costumes and even did some part-time work as a slasher before deciding it wasn’t for me. I finally found my calling when I offered to help cater for my high school reunion, and now I run a fairly successful catering business.
When it came time for my younger brother, “Steve,” to get his money, he didn’t tell anyone what he was going to use it for. He was working as a Slasher at a small firm in town. We all assumed he’d either go to Scare School or invest the money to start a business like our older brother did.
So when Steve showed up to Halloween dinner one day, six feet taller with extra joints in his arms and legs, we were all shocked.
Dad was furious. He gave us all the same talk about the scare industry when we got our first part-time jobs documenting missions at his company. He told us that scare work was hard and backbreaking. We couldn’t buy our way into it or use his connections to become successful. If we were interested in it, we had to work our way up from the ground like he did. If we didn’t, we’d more than likely end up dead at the hands of a final girl.
He especially emphasized that mods had to be considered carefully and were NOT a substitute for skill.
Steve thought they were. When his company didn’t pay him back for his body modification AND didn’t promote him from Slasher to Regional Nightmare, he quit. But the surgeries drained his cash and he couldn’t afford his apartment anymore. He had to move back in with Mom and Dad. As always, Mom totally coddled him. She said that he didn’t have to pay rent and agreed with whatever he said when he’d go on these long tirades about his former company.
I could tell Dad wasn’t happy with the arrangement, but he’s never been able to go against Mom. So he mostly kept his mouth shut though he did try to get Steve a job at his old company. However, last I heard, Steve was set against anything corporate and was spending a dozen hours a day driving around using the app SlashDash to find jobs.
About a year and a half ago, I was over for dinner with Steve, Mom and Dad. Steve was talking about work. He said SlashDash wasn’t working out for him and was taking too many fees out. I offered advice since I’d done Slashing in high school. I recommended sites like Scarework and Midnighterr to get more gigs.
Mom told me I interrupted Steve. She gestured for him to continue and tell me about his exciting new setup.
Steve told me he was beyond the sites I recommended. He said he’d bought a scanner so he could listen to broadcasts of active corporate missions. When those fail, he arrives on scene to kill any straggling humans before the scare company in question can send a cleanup crew. And since he’s a Slasher on their scene, they have to give him emergency pay for doing it. It’s a total ambulance-chaser, bottom-feeder move.
Dad was just staring at his plate, not saying anything, but I could tell he was ashamed of Steve. Steve was bragging about being a vulture in the profession Dad helped build.
I asked Steve if he was proud of himself for living off of leftovers. Steve blew up at me, but so did Mom. She chided me for not respecting my brother’s hard work and that his idea to get a scanner was genius, not predatory.
After that dinner, Steve and I rarely talked. Most of the news I got about him came from our older brother bitching about Steve badgering him for scare connections or Mom bragging about Steve killing and “meeting quota.” She would get very cold with me when I told her he was finishing a quota someone else started and not doing his own work. She told me if I couldn’t respect Steve, then I was welcome to not come over while he lived with her.
(Yes, Steve’s always been the golden child.)
I stopped interfering with Steve and focused on my own life. Shortly after, I met my wonderful fiancé “Reginald” while catering an event at Dad’s old company. Reginald is the head of sanitation and he’s the one who gets sent out to clean up any unexpected events during a Scare (like any magical residue or body parts that can’t be explained away through human means). He used to want to be a Cryptid, but he’s got a heart condition that prevents him from working in the field. He says that he’s happy being the “janitor” and happier being with me 😊
Reginald and I got engaged after only eight months of dating. Dad always says that when you know, you know. I invited everyone in my family to an engagement party. Steve didn’t bother answering the invitation. Even though Steve and I weren’t on good terms, I was still hurt when he didn’t show.
When I confronted him about it afterwards, he said that he’d been promoted to Regional Nightmare and he was patrolling his territory, and that’s why he couldn’t come. I asked him what company he was working for, and he said he was still using the scanner.
I pointed out that he couldn’t be a Regional Nightmare without a state license since only the state can assign territories. He started going on and on about being his own “Monster” (and let me tell you, extra joints DOESN’T make you a Monster, those guys are way more committed) and that he had passed the state exam.
When I told Reginald about my brother calling himself a Regional Nightmare, he was concerned. He works closely with the legal department, and he said that Steve is opening himself up to lawsuits by declaring public slashing grounds as his “territory.” He offered to talk to Steve.
We went over to Mom and Dad’s house together to confront him. Dad didn’t know he was calling himself a Regional Nightmare and he went pale when I told them why we were there. Reginald explained to Steve and Mom that being certified was different than being licensed. Legally, Steve is a Slasher even if he can control shadows now (which is a VERY expensive talent to acquire if you aren’t born with it. I think Mom may have paid for it).
The conversation didn’t go well. Steve said a lot of nasty things about Reginald not hacking it as Slasher and claimed he was just jealous. He picked on Reginald’s health which I had me seeing red. I asked Steve what there was to be jealous of since he still mooches off of our parents? Mom got involved and it went downhill from there.
All this to say that I didn’t expect Steve to show up at my gender reveal party less than 5 months later.
Reginald and I weren’t planning on kids this early, but we knew it was meant to be as soon as I got that pregnancy test back. We decided to put off our wedding so that our baby can be part of the ceremony that makes us a family. That being said, I did still have a lot of things ordered for the wedding so I turned the day into a baby shower/gender reveal instead.
That brings us to the party my lovely brother wrote about. First of all, he wasn’t invited by me. Mom invited him, and when I found out, I wasn’t happy with her, considering he never apologized to Reginald after our last fight.
Reginald was stuck at work (some idiot brought together a whole summer camp of final girls and the aftermath was brutal) so I had to force myself to be a good hostess. It was mostly fine. We have good friends and my older brother was very kind in helping me with some of the baby games we were planning to play when Reginald finally got there.
Steve, however, was NOT helpful.
He was annoying the whole time. He messed with the kitchen and he hounded the guests. I’m PREGNANT and the smell of raw meat triggers my gag reflex. He took the meat off the heat without me noticing and basically prevented me from eating lunch with everyone else.
Additionally, Steve claimed in his post that the party was dying??? Reginald and Dad have a lot of friends in common so the party did NOT die. They were all interested in talking to Dad. Dad’s voice is very quiet and raspy from strain over the years, so everyone was being quiet to hear him better. Steve was the one practically screaming over him to talk about his scummy job. The new Hook Man who succeeded Dad was there and Steve basically treated the poor man like a novice even though he’s a Cryptid.
Reginald finally got home and I could tell he was exhausted when I met him at the door. He still put on a smile for me though and said he didn’t need to miss out even when I told him it would be okay. He wanted to be there in our big moment to celebrate our family. He went upstairs to change.
I went back to the guests to tell them that we would start the games soon. That’s when I heard Reginald scream and fall down the stairs.
I’ll never forget the look on Reginald’s face. He was lying at the base of the stairs and looked like he was dying. He was gasping for breath and clutching at his chest. I was terrified his heart was giving up. I asked Hook Man to call an ambulance.
That’s when Steve started laughing.
I lost it. I screamed at Steve to get out. He told me to calm down, he’d just scared Reginald a little bit as a joke. I told him he knew about Reginald’s heart condition and that it was incredibly disrespectful to scare my fiancé in our own house.
He said he didn’t mean to scare him that bad, but that he was just better at it than he thought. His scares were too powerful. He seemed smug and was still laughing.
I accused him of intentionally hurting Reginald because of the licensing versus certification argument we had. I said he was a bully and an idiot.
Mom jumped in and said it was an accident.
Dad FINALLY said something. He shadow-walked (the first time in YEARS) up the stairs and hooked Steve by the neck. He dragged all twelve feet of him down the stairs and told him to get out.
Steve said, “For what? It’s not my fault that weak-hearted son of a bitch can’t take a joke.”
Dad lost it. He told Steve a REAL scarer wouldn’t use their abilities like that on their own families. He told Mom and Steve it didn’t matter if he meant it as a joke. The fact is he used his scare tactics on a layperson, and he could get blacklisted from the profession for it.
Dad kicked Steve out and told him he wasn’t welcome back into the basement until he got a REAL job. Steve kept arguing, but the paramedics arrived then and I lost track of the rest of it.
I went with Reginald to the hospital where Reginald insisted we both get checked out. The stress wasn’t good for the baby and doctor told me it might be best to go on maternity leave sooner rather than later. Reginald is also going to be taking a leave from work. He had a heart attack because of my brother.
Things could have ended worse, but they didn’t end well. I told my parents that I refuse to have Steve at my wedding or even to see my child after they’re born (and now I STILL don’t know the gender! Only our older brother knows since he got the gender reveal cake).
Mom started to protest, but Dad said he understood. He said that both he and Mom just wanted me to be happy and healthy and that they would take care of Steve.
So now I leave it up to you. Having read both of our posts, who do you think is the real asshole? My brother for being “proud” of scaring my fiancé into a heart attack at our baby’s gender reveal party? Or me for never talking to said brother again for the health of my future family?
AITA?
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This week's story is based on this (x) prompt from Writing-prompt-s:
You are a person who covers your counter space in clutter and inadvertently makes a shrine to a long forgotten god who shows up to thank you.
AITA for being proud of my job as a regional Nightmare?
My sister told me she’s making her own post and that if I was so sure I wasn’t TA then I should make my own so here I am.
I’m a regional Nightmare. I’m very proud of how hard I worked to get here. Not many terrors in their 20s get this high up and it’s because I do the work. I get up at 8pm and I’m out in the woods grinding out those quotas until dawn. Sometimes I sleep out there in my uniform just so I can be the first on scene for the multi-part jobs. I’m efficient, I’m punctual, and I’m committed. My goal is to be a Cyptid by the time I’m 30 and, to do that, I have to stay on at all times.
As a result, I work a lot. I’m often not home for days at a time. I have a very strict training regimen and my time for friends and family is virtually nonexistent. That’s why when I do get the time to hang out, I prefer to spend my time intentionally. What I mean by that is that I don’t want to sit on a couch when I could be lifting weights. I don’t want to chill in the pool when I could be volunteering for new scares. I especially don’t want to gossip over tea when I could be getting overtime.
Last Saturday, my sister invited a bunch of family over to her house. My job in the Virginia woods fell through, so I decided to go. Silly (her childhood nickname) said she had something important to tell the family so I thought it wouldn’t be a waste of my time.
Key word: thought.
When I got to Silly’s house, I was surprised to see so many cars out front. Our parents were there and our older brother. The house was packed. There were cousins, aunts, uncles and a ton of people I didn’t know.
At first the event was fine. Silly’s always been a good cook (see, I know you’re reading this, Silly, and see? I do compliment you when do something actually good) and everyone was really enjoying the flank steak (though I did have to save it before she cooked it medium well). But as the day wore on, I could tell people were getting bored. Silly and Mom were focused on cleaning up and said that dessert would have to wait until her fiance got home. Which was kind of rude to be late and I felt really bad for Silly. It seems like my soon to be brother-in-law (BIL for short) is never around when she needs him.
In an effort to help, I engaged some of the people I didn’t know in conversation because the party was getting a little dead and I didn’t want one of my sister’s parties to fail. I was trying hard not to think about the time I was wasting waiting for my future BIL so it also served as a distraction.
It turns out one of the guys was a fellow terror. He worked a corporate job and we talked for a while about the pros of being freelance like me. He asked me a lot of questions and I was happy to mentor another terror. Corporate can suck the art out of what we do. My clients only care if the quota for their mission is met and don’t enforce such strict timelines. They come to me for quality. Poor guy barely had time to mend his uniform between scares (his cloak was tattered and his hook hand was rusty) so I recommended my tailor and blacksmith.
The guy and I exchanged information. I gave him my business card and he looked for one of his. While he looked, I felt nature calling so I headed upstairs to use my sister’s bathroom (like hell I was going to use the same one as my Uncle Joe). From up there, I saw my future BIL pull into the driveway.
Being a regional Nightmare is a tough job. Like I said, I have to train a lot to keep my certification. So I thought it’d be a good idea to get a scare on my BIL both to punish him for being late and to make up for all the time I’d already wasted at the party.
So I waited for him to come upstairs to change and, when he did, I pulled out the works. I darkened the room and fell back into the shadows. Then, while he groped for the light switch, I stretched out my leg (I have an extra joint in them) and tried to nudge him. I honestly didn’t expect for him to trip and I DEFINITELY didn’t expect for him to fall backwards. I’ve been practicing this skill on my family since I was sixteen and got the leg extension mod and none of them ever fell like that.
My future BIL fell down the stairs. I panicked and raced over to look over the banister. He was fine! He wasn’t bleeding or anything and, when I saw that, I started to laugh.
Everyone freaked out though. They all said I was being immature and bullying my BIL. I told them it wasn’t bullying, it was my actual job. I said that I was just joking and didn’t know my BIL, a former “Cryptid”, would take it so hard.
My mom jumped in and backed me up, but my sister has always been the Queen of the castle. Silly and Dad kicked me out ( I mean, I let them, I’ve got enhanced strength and I didn’t want to hurt them). Dad called me a disgrace and to not come back home.
I asked him if he was really kicking me out just because I wanted to show off my skills a little? And he said yes. And Silly said I had it coming to me for a long time.
I don’t even know what went wrong.
So AITA for taking pride in my work?
---.
SillyCreeper says: Oh my god, you actually made this post? You’re an actual idiot. For anyone who believes this story, read mine before you vote. My brother left out a few details like how the party was my GENDER REVEAL PARTY and that he’s not a regional Nightmare, he’s a Slasher for hire.
OP replies: I am TRAINED to operate as a regional Nightmare. That makes me an independent regional Nightmare.
You befriend the one goth kid at your school; after a bit of bonding and sleepovers, you find out he’s actually a 300,000 year old lich king who kind of gave up on the whole undead necromancer business.
“So, what?” You ask when he’s finished his tale. “You just got tired of haunting the moors, threatening heroes, and raising the distraught dead from the peat?”
He looks down at his clasped hands. You’d elected to stand, but he’s sitting at one of the student tables like he’s about to be executed. “I don’t think you understand how bad of a place the moors are.”
“I’m sure,” you say. You don’t know what your voice sounds like, reeling from the shock of finding out your friend is 300,000 years old, but he flinches.
“I knew it,” he says, the words growling up his throat. He swings his dark bangs out of his eyes. “You’re horrified by my past. The evilness of my talents. The tales of my conquests and misdeeds. All of it repulses you. You regret being friends with me.”
You hesitate. You’d sort of planned to go home and think about this first, but if he wants to have the conversation now, you can have it now. “Look, can I be honest with you?”
He nods miserably, playing with his spiked bracelets.
“It’s none of that,” you confess. You grimace. “Would I like to say I morally object to being friends with a murderous, vengeful, necromancer? For sure, my parents aren’t going to be super stoked about me not freaking about that.”
He jerks, alarmed. “You’re going to tell your parents?! I’ll be mobbed—“
“Shut up,” you say, rolling your eyes. “You know I tell my parents everything. We’re tight like that.” You steam roll past his horrified expression. “I just have…some concerns. Not related to the murder or the undead part or even your kingdom of undead servants somewhere in Scotland.”
“Tell me,” he says, swallowing hard. “I—I don’t want you to be afraid of me. You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had.”
“Let’s work on that,” you suggest. You don’t want to be this guys only friend anymore. It’s gotten weird. “It’s just…your hundred of thousands of years old, right?”
He nods, wringing his hands. His silver wrongs clack together.
“Capable of raising the dead and going on hellish crusades for land?” You clarify.
He nods.
You suck on your teeth. “Capable of shapeshifting?”
“Into anything,” he confesses.
“Right.” You rub your hands on your jeans. “I get why you wanted a normal life, I do. I just—why high school, man? It’s pretty fucking weird, given all those things, that you’d choose to be a highschooler.”
“I wanted a fresh start,” he says, spreading out his hands. “You understand, right?”
“Sure,” you agree, even though you really don’t. “It’s just…I’m not super comfortable? With you being suuuper old and like, socializing? With 17 year olds?”
He gapes at you. “What?”
You put your hands on your hips. “Don’t act surprised, dude, you were at the same internet safety class I was. They warned us about older people trying to take advantage of us online.”
“Taking advantage of?” He looks genuinely hurt. “I would never! I just feel like I fit in better here than anywhere else. I found you here.” He smiles at you, that sweet smile you used to find so endearing.
It’s not so sweet anymore.
You rub the chills out of your arms. “It’s fuxking weird dude. Especially your crush on the volleyball captain? That’s—that’s gotta stop. You can’t have a crush on someone literally 299,984 years younger than you.”
“Why?” He asks. “I’m not hurting them and I genuinely feel like we’d be a good match.”
“No,” you say firmly. You look around and find a stack of homework on the desk to your right. You pick it up, roll it into a tube, and then smack him with it. “Bad! That’s exactly what a fucking pedophile would say. If we are still going to be friends, you can’t be a pedophile. Somewhat obviously.”
He rubs his head where you hit him. “But I’m lonely,” he whines. His shoulders droop.
It’s hard to see him sad, even now. “I know, man. But I can’t support you going after kids.” You have a great idea. “You can’t be the only supernatural creaature in the world. I bet there are a lot of awesome, older vampires or something you can date!”
“Are vampires even real?”
“Maybe!” You’re on a roll now. “I’ll help you find them, dude, it’ll be sick.”
He looks doubtful. “I,” he says carefully, “would prefer to tend to my crush in the volleyball—ow!”
You brandish your homework club threateningly. “That’s what happens every time you’re a pedophile. Either get on board with the vampire idea or I’m going to light you on fire until not even your bones can look in a teenagers direction.”
“Wow,” he says, “can’t wait to find those vampires. Thanks, best friend.” He flinches as If expecting another blow.
You smile beautifically. “Anything for my friends.” You’re going to get a better club to hit him with. You can see in his eyes that he’s not completely on board with. But he will be.
AITA for divorcing my vampire husband because he lied to me about his human job?
I (542 vampire) and my husband (260 vampire) have been together for a little over two centuries. There’s a saying in the vampiric community that it takes a century for a tryst to become an enduring partnership and another century to become soulmates. I thought that was true and that Matthew (using his real name because fuck you, Matthew) and I would be together forever…until this week.
First, let me explain a few things to the mortals here. I don’t mean that negatively – I came here specifically to get the opinion of those with a finite lifespan. However, I want to be fair to Matthew as much as possible and some of his decisions are very immortal-minded.
Both Matthew and I are vampires who have chosen to forsake some of our powers in exchange for the ability to daywalk. We made the transition together on our 100th anniversary almost 115 years ago. It wasn’t an easy transition for me. I was very dependent on human blood and I spent the first twenty years in almost constant sleep as my body adjusted to running off of less lunar magic and more solar magic.
It really felt like I was losing everything. My body got physically weaker and my powers began to disappear one by one. It felt like every time I woke, another part of me was missing. One day I could turn into a wolf, the next I could barely turn into a vapor. I could command a legion of undying servants, and then I could barely convince the mailman he didn’t see me levitate down from the second floor.
Matthew, however, took to daywalking like a werewolf to a sheep farm. He barely seemed to feel the pain of losing his power, maybe because he was so much younger than me. Whatever the case, he was out all the time once he stabilized. He would be gone for days sometimes and when he came back it was with fantastic stories about the humans’ new inventions or the new structures being built in whatever town we were in.
I’m not saying I regret transitioning. Just that Matthew and I had very different experiences. It felt like he barely changed at all while my entire being got rewritten. Being immortal makes you comfortable in your own skin. I never doubted myself or my power after I turned 100. But becoming a daywalker made me feel like I was being born as a human again. It was humiliating and vulnerable. I have to admit there were times I resented how easily Matthew did it. I blamed him for not supporting me like I thought he should. I would daydream about draining a human in front of him, showing him what I thought of his fascination with them. I had all sorts of vile and vengeful thoughts. I’m not proud of the person I was and now I’m grateful Matthew wasn’t there to see the lows I sunk to.
Despite all my awful thoughts, I didn’t quit. I don’t know why, but I didn’t. I stuck with it and, day by day, things got easier.
After 26 years I began to stabilize. The benefits of being a daywalker slowly blossomed before me. Now I can say that I am completely happy with my daywalker status and all the changes it’s brought.
I am the most mentally stable I have been since my Turning in 1482. It’s like I’m awake. The fits of rage that used to consume me for months at a time have completely disappeared. I don’t experience the same level of obsession I used to which has freed up a lot of my time that I used to spend stalking my victims.
However, that drastic of a change would be challenging in any relationship. Matthew and I ended up together because of my obsessive nature. Our relationship became strained when that part of me went dormant. He expected me to follow his immersion into the human world just as I had followed him in his revenge quest against his Master. He expected me to support him wholeheartedly and with everything I was. He wanted sacrifices from me that I used to not even flinch at before making. But something was just…different. We wanted different things. I wanted different things.
Matthew was obsessed with being the perfect human. He craved full immersion. He still makes it a point to get a human job every twenty years or so. Me? I’m happy to live off our investments and some mild mind control while enjoying the art and theater community the humans have evolved.
It got bad. Some years, we spent like ghosts in our own house, drifting by each other without a glance. Other years, it was like we were spies behind enemy lines. He would do whatever he could to thwart me and I would go out of my way to ridicule him. Our vitriol poisoned the earth. Matthew didn’t speak to me for a full decade when that poison killed off an entire town.
About twenty years ago, it all came to a head. We had a serious sit-down talk about our relationship. It wasn’t easy. What they say about teaching an old dog new tricks is sometimes true. Matthew wanted me to be as involved with the humans as he was. He wanted me to care about them like he did. I wanted him to travel with me like we used to and not just hop from town to neighboring town (which he did to maintain a human identity with references so he could keep working). When it became clear that we were at an impasse, I brought up the idea of separation.
Separating in the vampiric world isn’t easy. There are a lot of alliances and blood oaths to be considered. Over the two centuries we spent together, we became known as a unit to a number of supernatural entities that we maintain an uneasy truce with. Separating would mean creating new oaths and alliances with the same individuals. And there was no guarantee that those individuals would make new pacts with both of you. A LOT of vampire couples end up in blood feuds while separating. Neither of us wanted that.
There was also, of course, the emotional side of things. While a lot of immortals tend to only feel muted emotions (especially vampires as old as me), Daywalking had made both of us more sensitive than we’d been before. We were both attached to the memories we shared and neither of us could imagine life without the other. After 200 years together, it felt like Matthew was my right arm, and I his. When I brought up separation, we both felt it like we were discussing an amputation.
After about a year of talking, we finally reached an agreement. We didn’t want to separate, and so we would compromise. I wouldn’t interfere with any of Matthew’s human jobs for the 15-17 years if he could hold them without arousing suspicion. In exchange, he would take a year off to go traveling with me before finding another town for us to live in. In between my trips, he would go to plays and galas with me to enjoy human artistry at least once a month.
Maybe our deal was in his favor. At the time, it felt practical and fair. A year of traveling wouldn’t undo Matthew’s string of connections. We would still see each other frequently by going on dates that I liked. Matthew would get to stay immersed in the human world at the level he wanted, and I could stay within my comfort zone.
Which brings me to my current problem.
We are currently at the start of one of Matthew’s work cycles. He’s been everything from a fireman to a politician to a subway worker to a barista. He craves knowledge and connection to a terrifying degree. If it weren’t for how we move every 20 years and he goes without protest, I’d call it obsession.
This cycle, Matthew told me he was going to be a teacher. I was hesitant. While the humans have become more tolerant and less violent over the years, that doesn’t mean they will tolerate us near their young. Enough humans know about vampires that staking in the modern era is a real possibility. Matthew could incite an angry mob against us or, heaven forbid, get a vampire hunter on our tail. I have yet to be shot, but I hear that they have silver bullets that hurt like Hell.
When I voiced my protests, Matthew reminded me about our agreement. He said that I wouldn’t interfere with his jobs and he’d go to all the plays I liked. He even pointed out that, as a teacher, he could get us into high school plays and expositions. I was uneasy, but agreements are penultimate to immortals. I silenced my objections and let him get a job as a science teacher at a local high school.
When Michael has had jobs in the past, I’ve never really paid attention. One time he was a state senator for ten years and I never even heard him speak. I didn’t consider it worth my time to hear whatever his facsimile of a human would say. Real humanity is in the art they create, not in the parody Michael enacts.
But this one…I couldn’t ignore this one. Maybe it was because I was still uneasy about his proximity to human young or maybe I could sense his lies even at the beginning. Whatever the case, I watched him.
The first thing I noticed was the hours. He would go to work early and would often come home when it was time for us to sleep. When I asked him about it, he said that he wasn’t used to grading and that he had underestimated what it took to put a good lesson plan together. I visited some online forums and that’s apparently reasonable for first year teachers.
He would also sometimes go in on the weekends. He missed one of our dates because there was a “grading emergency” that needed his immediate attention. Something about a student’s test getting lost and then found and he needed to input their grade before the deadline which was on Saturday. Humans like silly rules like that so I didn’t even look that one up. I just reminded him that he couldn’t miss our dates again or else he was breaking our deal. He apologized and said it wouldn’t happen again.
Then about three months into his new job, the phone calls started. We have a private room in our house for when we need to talk without any visitors overhearing. Michael moved all his school supplies in there, saying that he needed a silent space to concentrate on his grading. Whenever he got a call, he would never answer it in front of me. Instead, he’d say “Sorry, work” and just go into his office.
I also noticed that he didn’t dress very professionally. Human fashion changes quickly so it didn’t register at first. A sweatshirt here and there slipped past me, and also the Gucci slides. When he started wearing baggy jeans and jerseys to work, I noticed. I may not be up to date on all the newest fashions, but I do go to classy events. I know what a slob looks like and it didn’t sit right with me that he was wearing that to school. When I asked him about it, he always had an excuse. “This is what everyone wears” and “It’s a theme day” or, bafflingly, “It’s spirit week!”
I tried to leave it alone. The reason we have stayed together for so long is because of our agreement to not interfere in each other’s lives. But between his hours, the phone calls, and his appearance, something didn’t add up.
Then, last Thursday, he missed another one of our dates. We were supposed to go to the Nutcracker together. Even though I prefer matinees (when the cast is fresh), I agreed to get us tickets for the evening show so that he wouldn’t have to leave work early. When he wasn’t there at 7pm, I called him and he didn’t answer. Then, when I called him again, his phone was switched off.
I was furious. I spend nearly two decades in these tiny towns so he can live his human fantasy and he can’t even show up for one two hour show? It was the first time since becoming a daywalker that I felt that angry. I was scared about what I might do, so I made myself go home to wait for him.
Only, he never came home that night. At 3am, he sent me a text apologizing and promising to make up our date on Saturday. But the Nutcracker was only playing until Friday and that would be too little, too late. To be honest, it already was. I texted him that and he never responded.
He never ended up coming home last weekend. I texted and called him probably a dozen times and he never responded. I got angrier and angrier as the days dragged by. Did he think I was someone to be taken lightly? Did he not realize that the fragile agreement between us was all that was keeping us from separation?
Yesterday (Monday), I couldn’t take it anymore. If he wasn’t going to come home or respond to my messages, then I would go to him. If he was so obsessed with this new job that he would ignore me for it, then I knew exactly where to find him.
I arrived at his school at 10am. I researched enough to know how to go to the office and sign myself in. I asked the office assistant which room Mr. Duetto was in.
The lovely young woman looked confused. “I’m sorry, but I can’t give that information out to anyone but family,” she said.
“I am his only family,” I said.
She clicked a few more keys and looked more confused. “His paperwork only shows his mother, Delilah Duetto.”
That’s right. His mother. But I still didn’t understand then.
“That’s me,” I said.
“You are not the mother of 17-year-old.”
“I’m his wife,” I said.
She was upset by that. I won’t bore you with every detail, but I had to alter her memories so she wouldn’t call the police. I may not look like someone who has a teenager, but I also don’t look like a teenager. I ended up having to alter her memories so she wouldn’t call human CPS on an apparent adult swearing she was married to a minor.
I went home and broke into his office. There weren’t any lesson plans. There were no graded papers. There were syllabus from different classes, homework with his name on it, and a few polaroids taped to the bottom of his desk of him at a party with children.
Human children. I don’t honestly know which is worse.
(EDIT: I know the child part is the worst part. I misspoke because of my anger. It’s not the humans’ fault that my husband is a pervert.)
I broke into his laptop and used that to check his text messages. He’s been texting like a high schooler. He’s been to parties with them, listened to their problems and even fabricated a few of his own. He’s caught in some sort of weird love triangle where a freshman girl likes him but his “best friend” likes her. He has texted both of them about it, promising his “bro” that nothing is happening and then turning around and leading this girl-child on.
Some choice quotes: I should know better than to get close with you. You and I come from very different worlds
To which she replied, lol maybe we should let our worlds collide
!!!!
I find the entire situation disgusting. Matthew is several centuries older than them and he definitely knows better. He’s literally wearing the sheep’s fleece amongst the flock. He has no business forming relationships with human children and even less pretending to be one of them. He’s not a baby. He is over two centuries old!
What is he doing flirting with a child? It’s vile and disgusting and I was set to kill him for it.
I confronted him about it when he came home last night. I told him that he was sick and dangerous and if he loved humans then he needed to stop immediately. I told him we either left town today or I would make sure he never set foot back in that school in a way he really wouldn’t like.
He threw a huge tantrum over my invading his privacy. He shouted at me that I had broken my promise to never interfere in his job. He called me controlling and crazy.
I told him he was the crazy one for chatting up a child. He told me he wasn’t, she was just his friend. I asked him to read their texts out loud if he was being so friendly. I also pointed out that there was no way a 260-year-old vampire is a child’s friend.
He told me I was a hypocrite because I basically cradle robbed him (we’re almost 300 years apart.) He said if anyone was disgusting, it was me for taking advantage of him.
I pointed out that he wasn’t a child, he was over 60 and had already been a vampire for four decades. He argued that that was basically being a child in vampire terms.
I was so angry at that point that the house was shaking. I told him if he felt that way, then we could get divorced right then and there. That that was what I wanted to do anyway because I couldn’t be married to a pedophile.
He asked me if I was seriously going to start a blood feud over him immersing himself in human society. I said no, I’m starting a blood feud because he’s become every predatory stereotype humans have of vampires.
He called me a hypocrite again and told me he was leaving. He said not to call him unless I was ready to apologize. I told him that the next time he sees me, he’d better run before I showed him the real difference between us. And it wasn’t just 300 years.
When I calmed down, doubt started creeping in. From an immortal perspective, what he’s doing isn’t really wrong. I hate to say it, but most immortals don’t view human lives as significant. I know a few vampires who would say that divorcing because he’s playing with his food is idiotic.
Plus, there’s the agreement to consider. During our fight, Matthew pointed out that being a student is a job to humans. So therefore I didn’t have the right to interfere. A big part of me thinks that’s bullshit, but a small part of me wonders if he’s maybe right about that?
I also have to ask myself why this even bothers me. I’m the one in the relationship that is aloof from humans. I’m the one that’s always saying we are from different worlds (Yeah, he stole that from me) and for good reason.
But over the years, I’ve become fond of humans. No immortal makes art like them. I may not remember my time as a mortal, but there are works that give me a sense of nostalgia. Sometimes I think I can remember being a child myself, standing in a field like in Monet painting, staring at the wheatstacks and waiting for the miller to come.
The thought of Matthew playing with them makes me sick. It’s like even after all the years of him living amongst them, he thinks of them as props in his twisted play. It’s even worse that he’s doing this to children.
I can’t help but think something went really wrong with my husband when I wasn’t looking. At the very least, I’m planning on divorcing him. But would I be the asshole if I killed him too?
Separating from him will be violent and messy. There will likely be human casualties. But I don’t see any other way. So, I ask.
AITA for divorcing my husband for lying to me about his human job?
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Thanks for reading! I loved answering some of the responses I got when I first posted this over on my Patreon (X)!
These collaborative story telling pieces are the highlight of my week. Next week's story is about a witch who wants to know if she should attend her high school reunion even though she's responsible for stripping two former classmates of their magic...
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AITA for telling my boyfriend’s coworkers that he’s lying about his body count?
I (35f) have been dating my boyfriend (32m) for four years. It’s honestly been the best relationship until last Friday when it all went down. I feel like I’m in the right, but now I’m wondering if I overstepped.
For context, my boyfriend has been a professional Slasher for about eight months now. He’s always really admired Cryptids, Monsters, and Nightmares so when his application was finally accepted, he was over the moon even if he was starting in a lower position than he initially applied for.
At his company, being a Slasher requires a lot of travel which we knew when he accepted the position. The end goal is for him to get a promotion to at least regional Nightmare (he wants Cryptid, but that position doesn’t have a lot of turnover) but to get that he needs to be in role for at least 12 months OR meet his goals for three months in a row. Once he promotes, we plan to relocate to his new region and “start talking about our future.”
(Side note: no this isn’t about him not popping the question yet. We are both in agreement that marriage comes after financial stability. I run a small business doing scare consults and, while it’s been growing, I wouldn’t call it stable yet. So neither of us are ready.)
I told him it’s completely normal for it to take a whole year before he’s ready to promote and he really should focus on adjusting to the company before thinking about next steps. I used to work for a competitor (I’ve been retired for five years now) and I know it can be hard to go from only taking the occasional human life to having to take over half a dozen a week. It’s not a light workload, no matter how easy it looks in the movies. One of my best friends Slashes part-time and she still only averages about five lives a week despite having done it for years. Especially these days, it can be really hard to meet quota. Humans are getting smarter, no matter what the Council wants us to think.
Anyway, boyfriend didn’t do as well as he thought he would in his first couple months. Totally understandable, of course, which I told him. I suggested he ask his boss if he could be put on a couple team assignments or even a duo until he got the hang of it. That was our first real fight. He thought I was doubting his ability to kill. He brought up how I told him it would take over a year to promote and how I said that this job wasn’t for everyone (His first assignment ended with a 0% kill rate, but that’s a different story). He said it felt like I didn’t believe in him and he said that if that was the case then maybe we shouldn’t be thinking about marriage so soon.
It got pretty messy after that. I felt like he was forgetting that I’d worked in the same field and, arguably, had a lot more experience (not to brag, but I averaged a 98% kill rate). Also, four years is NOT too soon to talk about marriage. He said I didn’t understand how he needed to focus on his career right now. I told him I thought he was taking Slasher too lightly just because it wasn’t Cryptid. He accused me of not respecting him and then things spiraled from there.
We both said a lot of things we didn’t mean and I’m embarrassed that it turned into a bit of a fang measuring contest. I ended up sleeping under the bed for a few nights until he coaxed me out to apologize.
It was a rough patch, but we talked it out. We agreed that, going forward, I wouldn’t offer advice unless he asked and he would try not to take so much of his frustration home with him. He took a weekend off and we went on a recreational haunting trip in the Montana woods.
Things did get better after that. I tried not to give him consults every time he came back from a work trip. He started bringing me souvenirs like roses and cursed puzzle boxes his work said he could have. It became easier just to hang out with each other and it felt like we were back to normal.
But then, four months ago, he came home super pissed because his boss put him on a PIP. (A performance improvement plan.) Apparently, boyfriend had not been doing better at work, he had just stopped telling me when he had a bad assignment. I saw the paperwork he got (he left it in the dungeon under the house, I didn’t go through his stuff) and he’s been missing quota by a LOT. As a junior Slasher, he was supposed to be executing at least 6 people a week, but he’d been lucky to be maiming half that.
Obviously, I had to talk to him about that. We rent our house and, even though I could have afforded the rent on my own, I didn’t want to jeopardize the investments I was making in my business (I was in the process of hiring an assistant to handle my scheduling). Plus, we agreed from day one that we would be 50/50 on rent and I would take care of the rest of the bills because I earned more. I felt that if his financial situation was in jeopardy, he needed to talk to me about it.
I tried to approach him a bit differently than last time. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help. I told him about my slasher friend and how maybe she could give him advice if he didn’t want any from me. But he said he needed to figure stuff out on his own and that if he couldn’t get himself off the PIP then he would go back to work for his dad’s janitorial company.
I let it go. I was worried but I didn’t want to fight again just after patching the holes from the last blow out. It really bugged me that he thought I didn’t believe in him so I committed to giving him the benefit of the doubt. I said okay and asked him if he needed me to meal prep for both of us that week. He offered me grocery money, but I said it was fine since I’d had to deal with a lot of humans breaking in lately and I still had some leftover in the dungeon.
Fast forward a month. Boyfriend got off the PIP super fast. He worked his way off of it over Spring Break and started taking on a lot of extra assignments. In just four weeks he went to Miami Beach twice, New York City twice, and to three separate summer camps. I missed him and it was hard not having him around but I remembered how he said he needed to focus on his career and I tried not to nag.
It was hard not to nag though. With him gone, all the housework fell on me. We rent a 19th century manor, and its upkeep really does need two people. Doing all the chores plus running my business started to really drain me. Even when he was home, he forgot to banish the ghosts (my chore is to kill all invading humans, and his chore is to banish their ghosts) and he never took out the trash. I think he cleaned blood off the dungeon walls once, but then I had to basically redo it because he missed a lot of spots.
But still, I didn’t say anything because he was doing really well at work and I didn’t want to ruin that for him. Even when Humans started breaking in every week, I didn’t complain even though it interrupted my work day.
Last month though, I did ask him if we could move somewhere that needed less maintenance. There were just way too many Humans breaking in and I didn’t have the time to deal with them anymore. Even if I don’t do all the theatrics I used to as a Cryptid, killing humans through fear still takes a lot of time. He asked me if I didn’t appreciate the free meat, and I said I would appreciate it more if I wasn’t the only butchering it.
He said he didn’t want to move because he was really close to getting promoted to regional Nightmare and he didn’t want to take time off work to move. I was so surprised that I couldn’t hide how surprised I was. He saw and got offended. He asked if I still didn’t believe in him. I said that I did, but it was a huge jump to go from an 8% kill rate to getting promoted.
He got even more mad at me for bringing up his stats and he said that he had nearly 80% kill rate since being put on the PIP. I asked how many humans a week he was slashing and he told me I was being too nosy and that was proof that I didn’t believe in him.
I asked him if we could at least hire a ghoul then to keep the humans out of my office and he said he didn’t want to waste the money that we should be saving for our new house. I asked him what he wanted me to do then? I had to take phone calls for my consulting business and it was really hard to stalk humans all around the house while trying to sound like a professional to my clients.
He asked me to be patient for one more month. He said if he met quota for one more month, his boss said he’d get promoted. So I said fine and let it go.
Fast forward to now, almost a full month later.
Last Friday, I attended the Eldritch Conference. For those not in the scare field, the Eldritch Conference is the most prestigious event in our industry. It’s invitation only and is a chance to network with all the big players in the field. Mothman, the Jersey Devil, Bloody Mary and Bigfoot all spoke this year and both my former company, Grudge Industries, and my boyfriend’s current company, Forgotten Summer Solutions, were invited.
I was surprised to get an invite as a solo contributor to the field. However, my consulting firm has really been doing well and I did land a seasonal contract with the Yeti Co-op which I guess is how they heard about me. Plus, I’ve been a speaker before so I think the organizers knew I would behave myself.
I was planning on telling my boyfriend that I was going, but he was out of town on a co-ed sleepover assignment. He usually doesn’t have his phone on during his assignments, so I didn’t bother calling him. I just figured it’d be nice if we ran into each other at the conference if he made it back in time.
Which brings me to what actually happened (apologies for the long post).
So everything went great for my part of the day. I got to network with a lot of individual businesses and even got to reconnect with Blood Mary who I knew back in my Cryptid days. I told her I was dating a Slasher from Forgotten Summer Solutions and invited her to come with me to check out their booth. I thought it would be fun to grab dinner with her after since I assumed if my boyfriend was there, he’d be going out with coworkers which he often does. Plus, I admit, I was showing off a little. I don’t often get the chance to brag about my Cryptid days.
She agreed and we went over to see if my boyfriend was there.
I introduced myself to the people manning the booth. My boyfriend wasn’t there, but a few Slashers recognized my name and greeted me. They were definitely in awe of Bloody Mary (she came in full uniform) and invited us to look at their displays. They had portfolios for each Slasher on the desk as a sort of preview of what their services looked like.
While Bloody Mary looked through the portfolios, I chatted with my boyfriend’s coworkers. They said they were thrilled to work with him and that, even though he had a really rough start, it was impressive how quickly he started meeting his goals. Something about how they talked about his work kind of didn’t make sense. They were talking like he was killing a dozen humans a week, but he’d told me that he was at 80% on his assignments which typically only offer about ten humans each.
I asked them about it and they said that he’d been Slashing during After Hours which is a new goal supplement program his company launched a few months ago. Basically, anyone can sign up for After Hours and the company counts human kills done in uniform as part of their quota. I asked them if this was available to them while they were on assignment and they said no, it had to be done when they had down time. I asked them how my boyfriend was part of that when he was traveling all the time and they looked confused. One of them said that my boyfriend is still getting one assignment per week and is then supplementing his kill rate with After Hours.
At that point, I was even more confused. It sounded like my boyfriend had been lying to me then, because he told me that he was getting at least two assignments a week. If he was only getting one, then where was he going when he said he was traveling?
Bloody Mary interrupted before I could say anything and asked how their Slashers did their kills. They said that every Slasher at their company is required to use a standard issue weapon (like a machete or axe) for their kills to count. They said their company doesn’t count accidents as part of their quota (like falling or heart attacks).
Bloody Mary pulled me aside and showed me the portfolio she was holding. She said that she was going to give me a chance to explain without them overhearing and showed me the book. She said that a bunch of kills in it looked Cryptid kills. And she said, specifically, it looked like the kills I made when I was a Cryptid. I took the book from her and flipped through it and she was right, they really did look like Cryptid kills. Worse, I recognized a few of the Humans from the past few weeks. They were actually my kills!
Kill stealing is a major taboo in our industry.
I told her I didn’t know anything about this. She looked really relieved at that and said that even though I wasn’t a Cryptid anymore, it would look really bad for me if I was caught helping a Slasher cheat at their job. It could affect my business which she’d only heard good things about.
I’m embarrassed to say that I tried to defend him. He’s new to our industry so I thought it might be a mistake. He might not be trying to cheat, this could be a misunderstanding.
She said she didn’t think so because a mistake would be one or two of my kills mixed in with his, not the entire book.
I counted up how many photos were in the book and, all told, of the 146 kills, at least 100 were mine. I couldn’t really say it was a mistake at that point and I was just staring at his portfolio like an idiot. Bloody Mary asked me what I was going to do because, mistake or not, this looked really bad and could damage my reputation if it got out.
At that moment, another man walked up to booth and asked us if there was a problem. I knew that if I said anything, I would be jeopardizing my boyfriend’s job, but if I didn’t say something, I was jeopardizing my business.
I told my boyfriend’s coworkers that he was lying about his body count. I said I didn’t think that they knew he was doing it, but over half of the kills in his portfolio weren’t his and I suggested they remove it from their display before another Cryptid came by and realized it.
The other man thanked me for bringing this to his attention and asked how we knew. Bloody Mary said that she knew another Cryptid’s kills and I had to tell them that I was that Cryptid, though I was retired now. He asked me if I knew my boyfriend was doing this, and I told him no.
I told him I really didn’t want to get my boyfriend in trouble and suggested that maybe he didn’t know those kills didn’t belong to him because they happened in our house. I was grasping at straws and Blood Mary even looked sad for me. His coworkers looked skeptical but tentatively agreed. The man – who turned out to my boyfriend’s boss – said that they would investigate this thoroughly and apologized personally for his employee’s misconduct.
I was spiraling at that point so I thanked him and said I wasn’t mad, I was just looking out for both of our reputations. He promised to keep it between us and I agreed.
Then I apologized to Bloody Mary because I didn’t feel like eating dinner anymore. She said she understood and wished me well.
I went home and did a quick perimeter search of the property. Sure enough, there were human summoning stones ALL OVER the yard. Which means my boyfriend was intentionally luring humans to our house to get me to kill them so he could take credit. It wasn’t a mistake at all.
My boyfriend came home later that night in his work clothes. As soon he got inside he started yelling. He said he was suspended without pay and that all his hard work was for nothing.
I said I knew he’d been stealing my kills and he almost ruined my reputation. He said they still counted as his kills because he did all the work of luring the humans to our house.
I told him that wasn’t how it worked and he knew it. He said it was the same as setting a trap and I was taking this too seriously. I told him that, as a Slasher, he has to use a weapon to get his kills, not me. He said I was basically the same thing since I had such a high kill rate. I asked him if he was calling me an object.
(My parents exploited me by selling me as a haunted doll through a lot of my childhood and he knows I’m sensitive to being called an object.)
He backpedaled at that point and asked if I didn’t want to buy a house together. He said he was doing it for us and I should’ve understood and not said anything. I told him that when I was a Cryptid I had my pride and would’ve never done this.
He said I needed to tell his boss that he was the one who made all those kills. I said it wasn’t me who recognized them as Cryptid kills and now his boss knew too. He accused me of thinking I’m better than him because I have telekinetic powers and can move through shadows and can possess people, while he’s basically a human himself. I told him of course not and that I worked hard for those powers unlike him.
He got really mad at that and actually charged at me with his machete raised. I don’t think he was going to actually hit me, but I reacted like he was. It was all instinct. I disarmed him and I swear I heard a crack when I grabbed his wrist. I shoved him into the wall.
He crumpled to the floor and started crying. He said sorry and sort of curled up around his wrist. He said he didn’t ever feel like he was enough for me and he didn’t even know why I was still with him. He called himself a bunch of names and said I would be better off without him.
I sort of awkwardly stood there for a minute. On one hand I wanted to assure him that he was enough and that I loved him, but, on the other, I wasn’t sure I could forgive him. He nearly ruined my reputation, and he embarrassed me in front of Bloody Mary. Plus, I still didn't know where he’d been going all those times he said he was on a business trip and apparently wasn’t.
So I ended up not saying anything. I went to our room and started packing a bag. He followed me. He was still crying as he begged me not to go. He said he would own up to his kill steals at work and he would make it right. He pleaded for me not to leave him and that he would give up slashing.
I told him I needed space to think. He tried to grab me, but I shadow walked out of the house. I heard him screaming from outside and I hurriedly drove away.
Now I’m at my friend’s house and I told her everything. She agreed I did the right thing walking away from him, but when I asked her what I should do she hesitated. She said that my boyfriend wasn’t right to kill steal but, as a fellow Slasher, she understood what he was going through. She said I wouldn’t understand the pressure to meet quota because I was always surpassing mine when I was in the field. She said that a Cryptid could never understand a Slasher.
She also said that nobody would have found out about his kills if I hadn’t brought them to his boss’ attention. She said the only time kills are on display like that is at the Eldritch Conference and by the next one, he’d have had kills of his own. She thinks that if I’d just confronted him at home, he wouldn’t be on suspension.
So now I’m worried that I overreacted when I told my boyfriend’s coworkers that he was lying about his body count.
AITA?
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It shouldn’t take ten years to set up a date with the woman who loves you.
The thought doesn’t show on Tasoula’s face. The night hums around her, the fairy lights draped over the patio blending in with the fireflies teasing at the edges of the wine bar’s glow. It’s a waste to come here at night. During the day the vineyard stretches out below the hilltop restaurant and the trellis’ hugging the walkway up glow with morning glories.
Technically, the woman she’s waiting for has given Tasoula decades of lifespan already. Is it really a crime for her to waste just one of them?
Tasoula leans back in her garden chair. Her reservation had been for a table inside at noon but, as the hours dragged by, she’d been shuffled outside to make room for guests whose dates actually showed up. She’s not the easy sort to move, so there’s a half-empty bottle of complimentary wine on the wrought iron table. She’s pressed to the edge of the patio, right against the cedar fence separating the seating area from the sudden drop into darkness. They’d been very attentive until the dinner rush came in. Then she’d been forgotten, fading into the shadow until not even the most senior server looked her way any longer.
As usual, it’s not until Tasoula is forgotten that Margot shows up.
your town had a ridiculous villain more annoying than fearful. Always committing minor inconveniences and pranks more than evil deads. But when a new truly evil big bad starts hurting their people, he'll show how evil and powerful he can be.
The bridge almost collapsing consumes local media for a good fortnight after Mr. Maxwell finds the crack during an early season rafting trip.
Could have been disastrous, Ms. Lane from the grocery store says.
Potentially a dozen lives lost during rush hour, Amber Carter says in her guest appearance on 43.2 AM. She’s valedictorian and that’s about the closest to a popstar the town sees. I would have had to organize the memorial on top of writing college essays. Can you imagine?
People can imagine, DJ Arthur assures her at the top of the hour. That’s what makes it so horrifying.
The Mayor releases a statement. No indication there was immediate peril. However, the township always strives to improve infrastructure and will patch the crack before the holidays.
The mayor is not invited onto 43.2 AM.
Why are we still talking about the bridge? The Police Chief wants to know. He’s standing in front of his cruiser which looks closer to a clown car than a police vehicle. Doesn’t anyone care that the Echolocator painted official police property polka dot red?
People roll their eyes. The Police Chief is from out of town. He’s always up in arms about the Echolocator and his newest shenanigans. The Echolocator commandeered state resources! The Echolocator used the town’s dam for a truly impressive yacht party for one night. Where the yacht came from or where it went didn’t really matter, did it? The dam didn’t break, right?
Echolocator mobilized the city’s mole population to erode the future site of the town’s first Walmart! The way the Police Chief went on about that one made the townspeople extra suspicious. All of the moles the Echolocator used came from Central Park, ending the infestation there. Did the Police Chief want Central Park to be mole infested and hole-riddled so that they’d have to cancel their Sunday marathons? And did the Police Chief not care about small businesses? If he did, he’d be as indifferent as them at the cancellation of the Walmart project.
Somebody decorated every tree along Main Street in various holiday themes out of season. There’s crime going on, Police Chief, did you know that? Maybe start caring more about solving those rather than acting like the president of an HOA.
The Echolocator isn’t news. He’s as unpredictable as the weather, sure, but just as fleeting.
He makes apple juice come out of every faucet for a few minutes every hour, making every citizen time their showers with care.
(They do and effectively reduce water waste by 30% that week.)
He makes 3rd street into a giant slip and slide, shutting it down for a whole month.
(The only business on that road was closed with Mrs. Castor in the hospital so it’s not like she loses any sales. And at least the kids – on summer break – found something to do that month with the local pool closed for maintenance. )
When a movie producer comes to vet the town for the next biggest hit, he goes missing. Last spotted walking arm in arm with the Echolocator.
(The town never wanted to be a film set so that one doesn’t even merit a mention on 43.2 AM)
The Police Chief learns slowly, but he learns. When it comes time for reelection he only talks about Mr. Maxwell, the hero who found the crack in the bridge, and how the citizens were the real heroes here. He shakes Mr. Maxwell’s hand when he gives him the Good Samaritan medal, smiling for the cameras through gritted teeth.
I can play the game, he thinks to himself. He makes a show of surveying Central Park himself to verify the continued absence of moles. The real police work happens behind the scenes anyway. One day, when they need me, they’ll listen. I’ll save them. Get their trust. And then they’ll listen.
They’ll listen.
The day comes sooner than expected and too soon all at the same time. When the Police Chief vowed that he’d prove himself, he’d imagined he’d do so against thieves. A jewel heist. A bank robbery. Something dramatic and worthy of 43.2 AM.
Instead, what he gets is Coriander. An A-rank villain with the power to summon and control tiny imps that ran through people’s yards and set fire to all the houses that didn’t have any flower beds to tear up. The Police Chief watches the creatures carry their stolen flowers up and into the Gothic castle that appeared overnight in the middle of Central Park. The command center is posted right in the parking lot, as close to the castle as he dares to get without Hero Force backup.
He scrubs a hand over his face. The castle is dormant after a long night of flower looting. According to his sources, it won’t last long. Whatever spell Coriander is cooking up will be unleashed soon. He looks up to the single microphone held out to him by DJ Arthur. At least he’s on 43.2 AM now.
“Stay indoors,” he says. His voice echoes out of passing vehicles. They’ve been driving by, gawking at Coriander’s base. He closes his eyes. “I understand this town is fucked up and doesn’t care about villain activity. But this is dangerous. Coriander has a body count. We all need to bunker down until Hero Force arrives.”
DJ Arthur frowns. “Police Chief, that’s a harsh accusation. We care. That’s why I’m here.”
“If you cared, you wouldn’t be here,” the Police Chief says. He doesn’t care about reelection. He feels the last sleepless 24 hours weighing on his shoulders. He gestures to the man in front of him, tweed suit and all. “People look up to you, Arthur. They listen to you. I granted you this interview so you can tell the citizens to go home where they have a chance of avoiding Coriander’s next assault. History shows he won’t stop at fire. He won’t—”
“I didn’t come here for an interview,” DJ Arthur says, blinking. He adjusts the strap of his recorder uncomfortably. “Sorry. Should have been more clear. I was asking top be granted a spot in the command center. Up close to the action. Front row seats.”
“…What?”
“Also, please call me DJ Arthur. We’re on the air.”
“No.” the Police Chief thinks this might be what hysteria feels like. “No, that’s not—you’re not—People’s lives are at stake. Coriander’s already committed tens of thousands of dollars in property damage, six people are in the hospital—”
“Which is why I’m here,” DJ Arthur interrupts. He jerks his chin towards Central Park. The double doors of the castle are just visible through the trees lining the main path. “People are hurt. He’ll be here soon.”
“Who—” He turns to see a man on the main path towards the castle. His cape swishes left and right as he power walks through the park to the front door. He’s got the worst kind of bedhead and his brown, curly hair looks almost like a bird’s nest from this distance. The Police Chief learns slowly. “Who is—” But he learns. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
Echolocator’s arms pump. His knees jerk up to the sky in an enthusiastically uncoordinated march. His teal cape twists into a knot and swishes behind him like a tail.
“Echolocator on scene,” DJ Arthur says, his lips directly on the mic. His gaze is feverish. “He’s approaching Coriander’s castle.”
The Police Chief is frozen. The Echolocator is annoying, but he doesn’t deserve to die. His hands tingle and his heart beats against his ribs. Should he draw his weapon? March right up the trail and drag the Echolocator back? It’d put him in proximity to Coriander and he’s seen videos in the Academy of how that ends. But isn’t that his job? Isn’t that what he’s been trying to show the people he’s willing to do? Die for them? His numb fingers find the latch on his gun.
“The Echolocator is knocking on the door,” DJ Arthur says. Metal on metal sings across the park and the DJ’s voice fills with mirth. “No one answered. The Echolocator is using the brass knocker on the front doors to get Coriander’s attention. Come on, Coriander! Open up. It’s not polite to keep the Echolocator waiting. Open up! Open up!”
A roar of honking fills the streets behind them. The Police Chief jumps, heart leaping into his throat. His hand falls off his weapon as he turns to find they’re no longer alone in the parking lot. What seems to be every vehicle in town is in the lot and spilling out onto the street. He can see people banging on their steering wheels, shouting along with DJ Arthur.
“Open up! Open up! Open up!”
They’re crazy. The Police Chief tries to get enough moisture to wet his lips. “Go—” No, his voice breaks and he has to try again. He tries to be heard over the din. He waves his arms over his head. “Go home! It’s not safe! This is an active battle zone! You need to—“
An unholy cheer crashes over his pleas. He stumbles back as it reverberates through his bones. Townspeople lean over steer wheels and pop through sunroofs, all with the same feverish gaze as DJ Arthur.
“Watch, Police Chief,” DJ Arthur says. His hand is gentle but firm as he drags the Police Chief back around. He guides him to the command chair and sits him there. Leans over his shoulder. Whispers into both the mic and the Police Chief’s ear. “Watch our villain at work.”
A terrible rumbling shakes the ground, coming from Coriander’s castle. The Echolocator is still standing on the front step, hands braced on his hips. The castle doors shiver and the very air seems to ripple as Coriander’s forces race to answer the provocation. Booming footsteps fall like the howl of a bell.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Echolocator starts. Looks over his shoulder with a frown. He contorts so he can untangle his cape. He smooths it along his shoulders. Looks back at the crowd as the cacophony of footsteps swells. Rolls his eyes as if to say Oh brother.
The doors fly open and there’s Coriander. Long, black hair writhing like the black mass of shadow behind him. Silver robes flapping in maelstrom of power. Eyes and fingertips sparking with furious magic. His voice is a lightning crack. “HOW DARE YOU—"
The Echolocator grabs Coriander by the throat. The supervillain chokes and his hands go to scrabble at the lesser villain’s wrist. Magic sparks and chews the air with an audible crackle. Echolocator hardly seems to notice. He forces Coriander back into the castle ahead of him. The doors swing shut the instant they’re over the threshold.
The screams start up a beat after that.
The tingling in his hands has spread to his legs. The Police Chief feels completely robbed of strength. He’s heard screams like those in training. He knows what they mean.
“Boo,” DJ Arthur says into the mic. His arm is tossed carelessly over the Police Chief’s shoulders. “No audience today. Echolocator has hold of Coriander and it doesn’t seem like he’ll be letting the villain leave without paying for poor Ms. Ethel’s broken leg. And Mr. Castor’s concussion. And Savannah’s contusions. And—”
The Police Chief barely processes DJ Arthur’s recitation of civilian injuries. He’s watching the doors, every scream seeping through his ears and sloshing around his brain. There’s something wet slipping out from under the double doors. Something that shimmers a brilliant red under the late afternoon sun.
He’s seen that liquid in training too.
When the tallest tower of the castle loses the first of its shingles, the crowd starts to drift away. The screams are thin now. A breeze through winter-stripped branches. A stone falls next. Then another. And another.
The Police Chief doesn’t stir even when DJ Arthur packs up his microphone and mutters about heading home to write the transcript. He sits in the command chair, elbows on his knees. Tripod position, that’s what it’s called. He’s trying to suck in enough air to chase away the feeling of suffocation. But no matter how wide he flares his ribs, he still feels short of breath.
Coriander’s castle dismantles painfully slow. It shrinks like melting ice, tucking itself neatly into the earth. There’s no other way to explain it. Each stone sinks and dissolves against the ground as if they very foundation of the town is trying to destroy it.
When the sun sets, it’s on an empty field. No, not quite empty. Mounds of flowers lie in the shape of Coriander’s castle’s footprint. But Coriander is gone. Echolocator is gone.
The Police Chief nods slowly. He nods and nods and nods. The streetlamps flicker on. He stands and sways, blood rushing back into his legs. He nods at this too. Circulation will return. He has no doubt.
Other things will return too.
He hobbles over to his polka-dotted car on pins and needles. The bridge project – the Mayor promised before the holidays. It’s behind schedule. If he diverts some man hours, he can help get it back on track.
A safe bridge is the best sign of a safe community. He’s glad he finally sees that now.
He listens to 43.2 AM on the way back to the station.
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Due to a loophole in the system, people can escape hell and get to heaven after death. You go to hell and all you see is Satan, just sitting there playing the harmonica. Everyone left him and now he’s all alone.
Oh. Oh, jeez. This is the kind of situation you’d always dreaded and feared in a weird mixture between the two, but you never expected it to happen quite like this. Nah. You’d pictured it happening with your old bigot uncle or racist boss you’d chewed out before promptly getting fired—y’know, telling them with the utmost go-fuck-yourself tone that you’d “see them in hell” and then actually running into them in hell? And finding out they’re all alone and looking kind of pathetic and actually pulling at your heartstrings because you still have some of those in you despite all you’d done to end up in the pit.
Well, okay. You never thought you’d see the big red man himself in that exact situation.
“I thought I’d at least see Hitler here.” It’s the only thing you can think to say—because it’s the only reason you’d gone through with your condemnation to brimstone and eternal suffering before making use of the loophole and taking the fast lane to the pearly gates like everyone else.
No, you didn’t want to meet him. Didn’t want to greet him or shake his hand.
You wanted to punch him. Just once, right in the nose.
Maybe twice.
To your surprise, the somber harmonica tune comes to an abrupt halt and Satan answers. “No; we keep him in a box. Three boxes, actually, all locked up in different vaults.”
At least he didn’t get out with the rest of them. It’s a strange comfort, knowing that the worst of the worst are all probably still around, somewhere. Suffering.
“Oh…”
Add awkward to that mix of dread and fear.
Sure, you always knew you’d go to hell. You just never thought you’d meet actual Lucifer face-to-face. Much less speak to him—and in a situation that couldn’t be described as anything less than an awkward family reunion with an uncle who’s really just a close family friend to your estranged dad or a second cousin or third cousin twice removed you’d never met and only seen in photos.
He returns to his harmonica—and, boy, does that just amp up the discomfort. He’s the literal picture of Devil-may-care over there, sitting on a rock beside beds of simmering coals and charred skeletal remains, blatting out a blues rendition of Pity Party. He isn’t actually red, either—and he doesn’t have a tail, or horns.
Actually, you’re not entirely sure that some scrubby middle-aged knock-off Santa Claus wearing a red T-shirt that blatantly says “HAIL ME” in all black caps actually qualifies as Satan at all. It’s just, who else would still be here besides the real Prince of Darkness—no offense, Ozzy—himself?
“You’re still here?”
Again, he speaks to you. Probably because you’re still standing in the mouth of the cave that brought you to this expanse of a hellscape like you’re waiting for a hostess to seat you at a fancy café.
He waves the harmonica in his hand vaguely toward the cave ceiling and you look up at the dark stalactites briefly before returning your gaze to his. “Did you not get the memo? Everyone gets a free pass to the streets paved in gold. Heaven: population, everyone. Hell: just me.” The last sentence is punctuated with a grand, sarcastic shrug.
Yikes. Milton’s sympathy for the devil never prepared you for this. It’s like everyone forgot about his birthday party and left him to celebrate all alone even though they sent in RSVPs.
“Uh,” you begin oh-so eloquently as you take a few steps forward, careful to avoid what looks like a human skull half-buried in the silt. “Redemption’s never really been my thing. Besides, not really sure it can be called that when everyone gets it for free.” Something cracks under your heel. Yep, that was a spinal column.
“A glutton for punishment, then. Y’know, even those guys ran for the hills when they found out they could cheat the system.”
“It just doesn’t seem fair, is all.”
“That’s what they all say here. But…not quite in the same sense.”
You stop walking so you’re close, but no closer than a room’s length, to Satan.
It’s not like you’re expecting to get buddy-buddy with him, but the poor guy just seems so damn lonely without anyone to eternally torture. Or whatever it is he does. Maybe he just sits back and plays that harmonica while his demons do the dirty work. Speaking of, you hadn’t seen a single imp since your arrival.
“Did the demons get out, too?” you wonder.
“No. They’re on an extended vacation.”
Silence.
You say the first thing that comes to mind just to break it.
“I, uh, I always pegged you as a fiddler.”
“Harmonica’s more ergonomic.”
More silence.
It passes awkward and begins to verge on tense as he sits there watching you, sizing you up, and you’re almost afraid to tear your gaze away.
“You’re really gonna stay here?” he asks at last, drinking from a tumbler of what looks to be whiskey that seemingly materialized out of nowhere in the hand that didn’t hold the harmonica.
“Guess I am. I did the crime, so I’ll do the time.”
“Stupid,” he comments with raised eyebrows and a shake of his head, and you can’t argue with his choice of words. “Well, pull up a chair and get cozy. It ain’t hell without more sinners and it’s gonna be a while before more idiots like you show up.”
Something bumps the side of your leg and you see a fully-stocked bar and stool set that hadn’t been beside you before. With no complaint, you do as you’re told and sit.
“Bar’s open, but all we have is Jim Beam. At first they really did me a solid with that whole Devil’s Cut scheme but now there’s just too much of it.”
“I’m a vodka gal myself.”
“Then consider it a small taste of hell.”
There’s nothing more to be said after that. You buckle down and decide to wait, no matter how long it takes, because you’re not eager to get anywhere anytime soon and that get-to-heaven-free card would never expire. It wouldn’t hurt to keep the guy company for a while.
And besides, that harmonica already sounds a little more upbeat.
“Ah yes, I nearly forgot to introduce everyone to you. These are my brothers ______ and ______ and our good friend ______.” Lowering his voice in mock discretion he continued, “Do be careful, they are hopeless children sometimes and will tease without mercy.”
Since birth, sleep had never come easily for Cecilia—or at all, really. It wasn’t rooted in anxiety, it wasn’t insomnia, and it wasn’t for the fear of encountering Freddy Krueger. Her family had consulted doctors and specialists more times than she could count, yet none could prescribe a cure for her inability to catch even a moment’s rest.
The problem just was.
Most of her life, she learned to function. To balance the amount of sodas and sweets and energy drinks she needed to appear bright and lively—or at least gain the energy to complete a day’s worth of tasks and keep deadlines straight. No amount of uppers could hide the dark smudges beneath her eyes, or the empty exhaustion that hit her when the hyper energy waned. It wasn’t until she entered high school that it began to negatively impact her grades, her social life, her happiness—and it wasn’t until then that her parents were desperate enough to take drastic measures.
It started as a joke. Just something facetious to brighten the gloom of an impossible situation. We should summon The Sand Man, her father had said. There’s not a person alive who could resist his magic sands of sleep.
But there isn’t a way to just summon him, her mother had pointed out, and with good reason, not like with the tooth fairy. Nobody’s seen him in years. Nobody.
Dear, nobody ever sees him. That’s the point.
Even so, the joke became a search, a quest; their only shot at returning their daughter to a normal circadian rhythm. They performed obscure rituals. They left piles of sand at her pillows. They played The Chordettes’ iconic song on a loop every night from her bedside table.
Still, nothing worked. And despite not being able to sleep, lying night after night among blankets filled with gritty dust that just never seemed to wash out became a nightmare in itself.
On the eve of her fifteenth birthday, Cecilia decided she’d had enough of her parents’ pointless crusade. Their hearts were in the right place, but they couldn’t help—she couldn’t help herself.
“Mr. Sand Man,” she said, singing along to the incessant music at her ear, like a lullaby of a final hope; one she’d put to rest in the morning, “please bring me a dream.”
She closed her eyes, even if sleep wouldn’t come.
This was what her nights consisted of—keeping her eyes closed to rest her body, if not her mind, while remaining aware of the creaks in the framework, the night breeze, the nocturnal whispers and scurrying creatures who were awake, alive, while all else slept.
It was how she heard the scrape of her window in its tracks, how she heard the footsteps land gently on her floorboards, how she heard the rustling of a canvas sack and hushed whispers of a number of invaders.
When she felt a familiar salty dust, a familiar grit, trickle down against her eyelids, she hoped it would bring sleep, for once, but nothing changed.
“Nice try, but we both know placebos don’t work.” She opened her eyes—expecting to see her mother, her father, but the sight that met her instead was that of four strangers standing together at the side of her bed.
One, the oldest, holding a burlap sack in his hands, half-opened and revealing a pile of sand not unlike the miniscule dots speckling her sheets; two similar in looks, in height, like twins; and another, shorter, grumpier. All men, all dressed in outdated nightgowns and sleeping caps with pom-poms at the end.
“Well,” the man with the sand-filled sack breathed, eyebrows arched high, halfway to his hairline, one hand still filled with the small grains. He looked to it, then to her, then back to his hand before dropping it back into the sack and brushing his palm off on the side of his long robe. “That didn’t work. And it usually does, too. Only doesn’t, when—”
“Excuse me, but who are you? Did my parents hire you?” She sat up, clutching the sheets to her chest, eyebrows furrowing in suspicion.
“What? Of course not. Dear, you should know—didn’t you call for me? ‘Mr. Sand Man, bring me a dream!’ Well, I am Mr. Mortimer Sandman—Sandman, to you, and I am—was—here to grant you a pleasant journey to dreamland.”
“Which failed,” Cecilia pointed out. “And who are the other three?”
“Ah yes, I nearly forgot to introduce everyone to you. These are my brothers, Wynken and Blynken, and our good friend Nod.” Lowering his voice in mock discretion, he continued, “Do be careful, they are hopeless children sometimes and will tease without mercy.”
“It’s all because of the sleep deprivation, you see,” said one of the twins, rubbing at one of his eyes as he released a jaw-cracking yawn.
“I just like a good joke,” said the other, seeming to find keeping both eyes open a difficult task, even as a lazy smile drifted across his lips.
“You try double-majoring with honors without a normal, healthy sleep schedule and being nice.” The third shrugged and rubbed at his neck. “And we aren’t children. Not anymore, at least. Also, those aren’t our real names—Sandman’s the one who likes to tease.”
“Well, Wee, Willie, and Winkie are also good names.” Sandman busied himself tying the sack of sand up tight, then hanging it from the belt tied around his waist, hiding it beneath the flowing sides of his deep brown robe.
“But they aren’t our names.”
“Rip, Van, Winkle?”
“You flippant jerk, you forgot our real names after all these years, didn’t you?”
“Of course not—Eh, why don’t you three scamper along and make sure her parents are sleeping peacefully? I have business to discuss with the young girl.”
The three took their leave—but not without long-suffering eyerolls—and she could hear their footsteps pattering softly along the roof as they headed to her parents’ room.
Sandman waited until the footsteps faded, until only crickets chirping and owl hooting sounded in the night, and then took a seat in the rocking chair beside her bed. He folded his fingertips together, elbows perched atop his spindly knees, watching her over the arch they made. “It’s been years—decades—since I’ve encountered someone immune to my sleeping sand. You’ve had this problem a long while, yes?”
Cecilia nodded, sitting up against the pillows at her back, gradually letting down her guard when she realized he wasn’t here to bring harm. “I can’t remember a day I’ve been able to sleep.”
“And how old are you now? Fourteen?”
“Fifteen to the day.”
“Amazing how I hadn’t been aware of you until now. Most of the youth ping the radar at ten years old.” The chair rocked, at the whim of gravity, as he straightened his posture. “Those three? The twins—Danny and his brother Joshua—have had it in their blood since birth, being kin, but little Tom has been in my care since he was eleven. He’s getting on in years, becoming far too busy with his own matters, wanting to return to a normal life. I’ve been aware a replacement—a successor—would soon be needed. This is wonderful timing.”
“What do you mean? Replacement for what?”
“Dear, do you truly think there is only one Sandman? There are far too many people for one man to keep up with. I’m also getting on in years.”
“Not ‘Dear.’ My name is Cecilia.” She squinted at Sandman. “And you aren’t even as old as my father.”
“In a physical sense, no, but my soul is old. I, too, wish to sleep someday. Well-deserved rest, I’d say.” He cracked his spine, as if to emphasize his point, and rolled his shoulders. “Dear—Cecilia, have you ever stopped to wonder why exactly you find it impossible to fall asleep?”
“Every day. Obviously. It’s weird. I can barely function like a normal person.”
“What if I told you it wasn’t, as you say, weird? That it’s just the way you are, the way you were meant to be born, and that there is reason for it?” Again, he steepled his fingers and looked pointedly at the dark shadows plaguing her eyes like ink smudges. “Always tired, but unable to rest. Fighting it only makes the condition worse. Living like a zombie, drifting from moment to moment, days and nights blurring into one another, separated only by a number on a calendar. I’m not the first Sand Man,” he said, as if it explained all. “And, if you don’t object to the idea, you could be the next.”
Cecilia watched him silently, mulling over his words. It was true that she’d always felt herself destined for something more, that this life wasn’t where she wanted to be, but she’d dismissed it as teenage angst and moved on. It was true that she’d grown tired of it all and purposely slacked off in school, having long since lost interest in the work, the people, and the place. She’d long since accepted her inability to sleep—and now, she knew there was no way to. It was a part of her.
“Some would call it making the best of a bad situation,” Sandman added, hoping to convince her.
“I wouldn’t call it bad. I’ve grown accustomed to it. I don’t know what I would do if your sand managed to put me to sleep,” she admitted. “If this is something I can do, I’ll do it, Sandman.”
Sandman rose to his feet and offered his hand to her. She looked at it a moment, then up to his eyes, kind and genuine, also smudged by the same sleepless shadows, and reached out to grasp it in her own.
“Then we are happy to have you, Cecilia.”
If she couldn’t sleep, nothing would make her happier than to offer it to others.
Life in the small town of Bail is peaceful, if not exactly normal, for July Marsh until an accidental midnight run-in with a vampire provides a literal change she’d never been looking for. Family drama collides and her once-peaceful life becomes the hub for a motley crew of bloodsuckers—but it’s only temporary. Right?
This is the full version attempt of a five-chapter kinetic novel, imperfect, but absolutely playable/readable, started and completed within the month of March for NaNoRenO. A full list of warnings is included in the novel.
The NaNoRenO 2017 complete version is up for download on itch.io now!
Tips And Tricks On How To Deal With Magical Beings
The midwife had seen a lot of babies, in a lot of shapes and a lot of forms. But this one, this particular baby had to be the strangest baby she had ever seen.
For one thing, it’s skin wasn’t a newborn pink, it was a maroon red, and it’s eyes were as black a coal. It was also much larger than a normal baby, and didn’t cry like one either. Instead it growled and grunted, like an animal.
But none the less, she washed the babe, checked to make sure it was healthy, which it was, and wrapped it in a blue fluffy blanket, then turned to the mother. “Would- Would you like to hold….. it?”
The mother looked up from her book. She had recovered rather quickly from the labor and seemed more interested in her book than her baby, as a matter of fact she seemed almost bored to be there. “Yes. I’ll hold it.” She said, calmly.
The midwife delicately placed the infant in the mother’s arms.
The mother gave it a once over, then looked at the midwife. “Please go out and send for Corneilia Attelbury.”
Corneilia Attelbury couldn’t believe her luck, when a pregnant woman came to her doorstep, asking for riches in exchange for her first born. Most of the time Corneilia had to trick people into giving up their children, to have one come so willingly, it was to good to be true.
And now Corneilia realized why the woman was so eager.
“It’s a demon!” She shrieked, looking at the baby in it’s mother’s arms.
The woman smirked. “It’s only half. I made a deal with a demon to have it’s child in exchange for eternal life.”
“You- You have tricked me!!” The witch screeched. “I wont take it! I wont!”
“We made a deal.” The woman said, looking down at her child who let out an odd grunting noise. “I said I would give you my firstborn. Which I am.” The woman smirked at Corneilia. “You wouldn’t be breaking your deal would you?”
Corneilia was enraged. She did not want to raise a demon child. But if she broke her deal, her reputation in the Witch world would be ruined. So she handed the mother a special chest that would always be full of gold, no matter how much you took out, and the mother pressed a kiss to her child’s head before handing it over to Corneilia.
“I’d like to stop by every so often and see the child if you don’t mind.” The woman said, picking up her book and opening it.
“Fine.” Corneilia hissed through her teeth.
Zimbach did not understand. The woman had come to it, oh so willing, begging for immortality in exchange for bearing it’s offspring. The time had come for the babe to be born, and Zimbach stopped by the woman’s place of residents, only to find the babe was not there.
She explained what she had done, and it was furious. How dare this mortal- Immortal- give away it’s offspring to a filthly witch.
“I said I would have your offspring. I never said I would give it to you.” The woman said, her nose in her book.
Zimbach paused. And glared. “Where do I find this witch.”
“What do you mean it’s yours! This child was given to me!” Corneilia shrieked.
The baby, as it turns out, was not so bad. In fact, Corneilia had grown rather fond of it, and they were living a carefree life, until this blasted demon showed up.
“Little Muamun is my blood. My offspring. The child is rightfully mine.” Zimbach said, losing it’s patience quickly.
“It’s name is Dilwyn!” Corneilia shouted, clutching the babe tightly to her chest. A barrier had been spelled between them and the demon the minute Zimbach showed it’s ugly face, preventing the demon from moving closer.
“It is my child, I shall name it whatever I wish.”
“I’m the one raising it. I’ll name it whatever I want.”
“Foolish witch!!”
“Dumb demon!!”
“Good evening.”
Zimbach and Corneilia turned to see the mother walking in, her book held at her side.
“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to see little Dilwyn.” The mother said.
“See! Even the mother agrees!” Corneilia shrieked.
“I have had it with you foolish beings!” Zimbach shouted. “I will have my Muamun!”
“Why don’t you just share?” The mother asked, calmly, taking the babe from Corneilia.
“Share?” Corneilia asked.
“Yeah. Joint custody. Dilwyn could live here every week, and visit Hell every other week end.” The mother suggested, giving the baby a stuffed goat.
Zimbach and Corneilia looked at each other.
“You- You could take the child this weekend.” Corneilia stammered. “I planned on visiting my sister.”
“Very well.” Zimbach said, nodding.
“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Dilwyn-”
“Muamun!”
“Dilwyn!”
“Muamun!”
“Happy birthday to you!” The mother said, with a beam as the witch and demon once again fought over names.
The child had just turned ten and was already as tall as Corneilia.
“I have a very special present for you this year.” The mother said, pulling a small wrapped package from her pocket. “It was given to me by my great grandmother.”
The child ripped the package open and withdrew from it, a book that it had so often seen it’s mother read. It was a brown, leather book, with no title on the front. Somewhat ordinary. But inside, everything was written in gold ink, and on the back of the front cover it read, “Tips And Tricks On How To Deal With Magical Beings” in loopy golden handwriting.
“It had helped me gain everything I have. Even you.” The mother said, looking at it fondly. “I’ve added my own additions, and I’m sure you’ll find use for it someday.”
The child smiled.
It isn’t uncommon for this particular demon to be summoned—from exhausting Halloween party pranks in abandoned barns to more legitimate (more exhausting) ceremonies in forests—but it has to admit, this is the first time it’s been called forth from its realm into a claustrophobic living room bathed in the dull orange-pink glow of old glass lamps and a multitude of wide-eyed, creepy antique porcelain dolls that could give Chucky a run for his money with all of their silent, seething stares combined.
An old woman hobbled out, bent and old. She took one look at him and her face lit up. “Todd! Todd is that you! You’ve come to visit me at last!”
The prompt was by @lucifer-is-a-bag-of-dicks Thank you so much for letting me write your prompt! The post that this was inspired by is right here.
And the last bit of this story is from @eatbreathewrite‘s story about Todd and Granny, where a demon is mistaken for Granny’s grandson, Todd. You should definitely read it. The link is right here.
Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.
