I Was a Teenage Fanfic
I was a last minute stand-in writer for our cursed ECCC edition of Shipwreck SF. I got The Hecateae as my prompt. I wrote this. I didn't place. Life comes at you pretty fast.
"She's Crafty"
Deep in the Dreaming, in one of its many hearts, there's a pretty sweet patch of real estate. It's a special place that's existed since long before men and the concept of time.
It was once a glade with a crystal spring where ravens would gather to take lessons from mushrooms and feast upon the upright corpses of unicorns. It was once the smoking remnants of a lightning-struck cottage, the smell of roasting bodies within. The Greek prince Pentheus was once spied here, high in the bough of an evergreen, peeping down on a Maenad procession. He was torn limb from limb by his own mother for his trespass.
It was once many things, but like so much in the Dreaming, for all of its facets, this place has only ever been one thing truly: a nice little getaway spot for the Fates,
The One Who Are Three,
The We Who Are They,
The Hecateae,
to shake off the oracular grind, to dream, because all things dream, and, with any luck, to rub one out.
It has a name, this place, a super-old-timey name full of meaning, alluding to some bygone folk story. Everything in the Dreaming has a name, which seems cool at first but over say ten books it can be hard to keep up.
Today it's called Shermer High School. It's 7:00 am. On a Saturday. And as the final strains of jazzy synth from a half remembered tune by Simple Minds fade down the vacant halls, we find our dreamers in the library.
It's a big library, and they're all there.
Cynthia, the young lady one; Mildred, the mom one; and Morgan, the old lady one. Also, I don't know, Matthew, the raven; and The Corinthian, the mouth-eyed serial killer nightmare, are in there to round things out I guess.
"This is an odd one, poppets," says Mildred.
"Aye," says Morgan, "I think I was hoping for something a little more—" she shrugs as if to suggest an adjective that hasn't been spoken since Perseus tricked a Gorgon.
Cynthia giggles, of course, and says, "Aw, just go with it. I think it's cute and we dream so seldom."
And then comes Vice Principal Morpheus, a vision of angst in a sleek, off-the-rack, Armani-inspired sport coat, his hair all mussed in an I used to pay people a hundred bucks to make it look messed up but my son died a while back and I can't find the time sort of way.
"Well well," he says. "Here we are. I want to congratulate you all for being on time."
Matthew breaks the moment by squawking, "Excuse me, boss. I think there's been a mistake. I know it's detention, but I don't think I belong in here."
Mr. Morpheus doesn't blink. "It is now," he says "7:06. You have exactly eight hours and fifty-four minutes to think about why you're here. To ponder the error of your ways. We're going to try something a little different today. We are going to write an essay, no less than a thousand words, describing to me who you think you are and where, exactly, you lost or hid the keys to my favorite Volkswagen Microbus after you took it joyriding when I was in Hell. Questions?"
"Yeah," says The Corinthian. "I got a question. Does the '90s know that one day it'll look as ridiculous as the '70s?"
Morpheus smiles. "You can get the answer to that question, Mr. Corinthian, next Saturday in detention."
And in an imperious blur he's gone.
They twiddle their thumbs.
"Hey," says The Corinthian after a prolonged silence. "Didn't you guys get a spinoff?"
"Two," says Cynthia.
"Well," says Mildred, "one, really, but it had two limited runs."
"It didn't do so well," says Morgan.
The Corinthian scoffs, which ruffles Matthew's feathers, and he's like, "You know, Corinthian, you don't even count. If you disappeared from this dream forever it wouldn't make any difference."
Which point things get kind of hazy. There are some arguments, some dance montages. The whole lot of them smoke pot for a while and talk about other, unrelated dreams. There's a ton of stuff, but the details get kind of muddy because it's a dream.
Like there's this whole part where Vice Principal Morpheus gets bound by a spell and locked in a broom closet with a scarecrow janitor and they talk about how nobody respects him.
Point being at some point the Fates get swept up in the narrative arc and use Matthew's innards to predict the weather. That sets The Corinthian moping because they had kind of a sweet romance budding, the raven and he.
"Oh, my dearies," says Mildred, "The Lord of this realm is truly better off without his Microbus."
"We told him, we did," says Morgan. "Some smells never come out of vinyl seats, eh Cynthia?"
Cynthia blushes. "She was a drummer. You know I can't resist drummers. Besides it makes him look like a dad."
"Yeah," say all three in unison. "Fuck that van. You wanna make out?"
In unison The Three Who Are One reply, "Yes."
And so it begins. A hot, onanistic three way between the furies as they pass around their shared eyeball and their shared clitoris in a game of sexy Russian Roulette. They trade identities and reassure one another that for every thread that gets cut in this mixed up reeking miasma of mortality they will none of them die alone.
And when they arrive, it is with the satisfaction of always having known they would come.
And as the sun hangs low on the football field at the edge of this special place in the Dreaming, its dreamers having returned, sated, to their waking lives, we spy a lone figure in sunglasses strutting toward oblivion, his fist raised defiantly to the entire pantheon of living gods, and we hear the following words read aloud from a hastily composed essay:
Dear Mr. Morpheus,
We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for misplacing the keys to your lame dad-van, but we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us... In the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions.
But what we found out is that each one of us is a Sister…
...and a Witch…
...and a Maiden…
...a Mother…
...and a Crone…
Does that answer your question? Sincerely yours,
The Hecateae.
