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Writing and musing and talking and...

[nikaharper]

Wolfsbane

It's a tricky potion, no wonder it didn't work right. It could have been anything; one too many stirs or an herb just a bit too dried out. Bryce could mix it again right now, just the same way, and maybe it would work. Perhaps not. There really isn't a way to know, until... the right night comes along.

Which it was.

And there was blood on Bryce's hands.

They say stakes can kill vampires, which is rather funny since it was not a vampire that he was defending from, nor had he planned any assaults that evening. A cracked piece of wood from a weatherworn garden fence was all he could manage. There shouldn't be any pride in it, but there was, just the faintest inkling: he had killed a werewolf with a mere sliver of fence. Someday as a grandparent, or librarian, Bryce may look back on this (swallowing and hiding his shame) and claim his glory. Triumphant! Heroic! Utterly at fault!

He wondered how soon they transformed back, after their injuries. He really hadn't had much hands-on experience with werewolves, only knew that yes they were wolf-like and also not quite so. This checked both boxes. He also knew someone new to the township that was, openly, a werewolf. Rosaline. There was a good chance that Rosaline was dead now. On his garden path. Leaking up the place with (presumably) tainted blood.

A giddiness overtook him; maybe the blood of a werewolf will transform his herbs into Wolfsbane and he can save cash at the apothecary. Or perhaps under the full moon the blossoms grow fangs and battle for supremacy. Maybe he could film it. Take bets on Swish.tv. He needed some tea. With whisky. Hold the tea.

What does one do with a corpse in their yard? He could call the authorities but there were too many questions, from them and from him alike. What if they brought in some kind of potions expert? Was there a committee he had to answer to? Other than the Neighborhood Watch committee that Rosaline was on? Everything was a bad idea. There were no good ideas. The only good idea was stealing that fencepost and jamming it into a wolf's neck. And that didn't even turn out to be too hot.

It was not his fault he was attacked. (It was.) The potion failing was not his problem. (It was.) The Ministry would not hassle him. (They would.) No matter the way it was presented, Bryce was in trouble. He hoped he'd get in trouble for the right thing... The thing least likely to incarcerate him. Not like every common criminal goes to Azkaban but he did take another life, someone who was here directly because of a wizard diversity initiative on his county and oh no he had just killed her. Welcome to town. Please don't bite my leg off. Bryce had VOLUNTEERED, was the hard part. He had said his Wolfsbane potion was great and that he had loads of practice. He said materials were no matter, that he did this all the time. He was lying. Just lying through his grinning, exposed teeth. Bryce wanted the committee to like him, and moreover, he wanted Rosaline to like him. He had never seen anyone like her before, and it swelled up in his mind that maybe he could be her hero and ease her burden and oh my golly do werewolf moons coincide with... you know... the feminine... distress? He thought to check the corpse out of pure scientific curiosity but decided there was too much blood as is, indecipherable from its origin. Well, Rosaline seemed to have noticed him, alright. Right down to where he lived and how he responded to strange noises in the yard. Steeling himself once more, he marched out of his entryway and up to the wolf, the pools of blood continuing to spread, a deep crimson in the bright moonlight. He could see it all, almost like it was a stormy day. The roan grey fur, double-stacked teeth, eyes that glowed just a bit, so subtly, so like the way Rosaline had looked when she first laid eyes on him. Rosaline... Just to think of her--

"What's all this?" Bryce nearly started out of his shoes. Rosaline! Her short chestnut hair and subtly lit eyes, yes it was her HOW WAS IT HER SHE WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM DEAD ON THE-- oh...

"Werewolf?" was all Bryce managed to sputter. "Looks about right." Rosaline invited herself in, using the gate instead of the torn hole in the fence and hedges. She appeared ashen and gaunt, although her face was so full in shape he could see the cheekbones, and her mouth appeared wider. It was the full moon after all. "Huh," she said, nudging the body with her boot, "I'll be damned." Well that was rather literal. "Ummm, I hate to ask--" "It's my ex." She nudged it again, then descended upon the body with a ferocity unlike any Bryce had seen in a human being. Rosaline did not change form, did not need to, but it was clear that whenever she was done with her horrors that her coat would be well ruined. After much sloshing and cracking, she was upright again, mouth smeared like she had gone facefirst into an Eton Mess. "Forgive me," Bryce said when most of the mouth-noises stopped, "I thought-- I had feared-- It was you?" She stared at him evenly, "Why would you think that? "Maybe my potion, it might not have been--" He had trouble finishing sentences around this woman. Maybe that's why he was so smitten with her. "Your potion was rubbish," she smirked with her over-wide mouth, "but we can work on that. I know how to make a better one. Obviously." Rosaline gestured to herself. It took Bryce a moment to understand what she meant, as the gesture also referred to her not just being humanoid but also covered in gore. Then it clicked.

"Uh, would you like to... come inside for some tea? While we wait for the authorities?" She didn't answer, just kept her eyes on the mutilated corpse in front of her. The moonlight played off her features in strange ways. The blood-smell was less pungent under her perfume. "You look nice tonight," he tried again. "Covered in blood?" "....Yes." "Good, 'cause it's all over you, too. We're fashion icons, us." Then Rosaline smiled at him, splitting her cheeks, eyes like tired embers. Bryce had never felt quite so lightheaded.

[nikaharper]

Towers

I see them arching above us all, towering giving way to their name, and I cover my ears but naught else. They see me, even when I am not to see them, but what truly hurts is when we listen. We must never listen.

I am not old, though my actions and aversions have often gifted me the title. Even the old have phones, write sloppy-worded messages to their savvy grandchildren who grow up with their hands wrapped around crystal-screened devices while the Towers wrap invisible hands around them. They call it a web, which is mixing metaphors. Or appropriation. The ebb and flow of information is the feast, no longer sucking blood from prone figures or gorging on meaty innards. Murder is something that humans do, not the thin ones that stretch to the sky. It is bloodless, willingly given, and convenient.

What if every word you spoke was as recorded as you feared? Privacy is the war being waged, distrusting one another regarding easy numbers or vocal chatter. People now feel so connected to one another without knowing the paths their secrets take, the guise of being alone tricks them. Yet little rectangles in black plastic or rose gold may always be present.

The television is an output device, and I wiggle my ancient metal antennae to get the best signal even while I know they've been gone. Transmission, that's the slayer. Giving back. Pushing out your message. Connection. Nearly everything is connected nowadays. I am not afraid of my television with its straightforward broadcast. I worry about who is on it, how they are the voices which call to us with familiarity, making us echo back. Hello Hello How are you I am well Come to me I will

No, not spiders at all. Spiders catch, set up invisible ropes on the way to destinations; spiders hinder. This is not spiderlike. The world-wide-web is nothing of the sort. It is the destination.

Phones and computers and transmissions feed on invisible waves in the air, jutting all the way into the reaches of space and back. The Towers would be fat if they weren't so eternally hungry. I can feel their tongues on every video chat, their purring tendrils encasing each word with lust as it passes by, assuring that another will answer back. With every search engine request, a maw opens to dribble thick saliva upon externalized thoughts, lubricating the queries to be delivered all the quicker, all the more reliably.

It was easier once, when the figures dashing in the corners of our eyes were singular, when they wanted something tangible and ate their fill, absorbing voices to mimic cries for help or seduction. Trust is always at a Tower's core. You could beat them by not believing your senses and moving on.

Have you seen a modern cell phone tower? They stretch into the sky, even now so unsightly as to be hidden in the facade of a palm tree or conifer, relying on the familiar, co-opting innocuous appearances so it feels just like magic. It IS magic. Not all magic is well-intentioned.

I continue without phones or credit, letting ever-disappearing banknotes slip from my hands because cash, cash, always cash, and stamps you no longer have to lick escorting letters to awaiting fingertips. It is the only way.

It is thrilling to see such change, like butterflies evolving past their survival-need of nectar. Perhaps in a way it is more like spiders. A spider's feast does not survive. I watch the words jolt to the ozone and back, listen to banal discussions and know they are an intoxicating meal as they transmit to and fro. I cannot see how we, people, are being eaten and digested, not yet. But the wendigo Towers are always hungry, and they will always feast. I wonder how it will kill us. We are prey animals, not meant to survive, and we do not know we are being chased.

I do not hide my face from these Towers, do not flinch under the weight of wi-fi internet buzzing around my ears. I am hidden until the Towers have done their feeding, until the crystal-screened serving platters go black. I know they will come for me then, again. Until that time I watch, and wonder, when will we people be spent. How they will feed next. How I will see them when they crawl out of their palm-tree costumes and stalk when the harvest runs dry.

The Towers are always hungry, and I must keep my ears closed tight, waiting for the current to slow, and change.

[nikaharper]

The Other One

I was the other one. No, not that one either. You've never met me. I didn't make history, I didn't have a name or a title worthwhile, but I know the stories and I was there. Everything that was said was true. All of it, even the variations. Because the truth is stranger than any of these things could express.

It wasn't a frog, but it could have been. Certainly that was the easiest descriptor, because something bulbous and black and foul cannot be named, not when it used to be the Prince, not when it was my brother. Yes. I am the sister.

All we had were questions and an empty chair at the banquets. A bed that was no more used than wetted by the oozing skin of someone once considered kindred, my friend and companion. Was it a curse? A natural anomaly? A prophecy we did not take to heart? The thing, this Prince, could not answer. It belched meaninglessly, carried around the manor on a veiled sickbed normally used for ailing elders. It had eyes, somewhere... we could not tell exactly which of the protrusions were ocular, as they all seemed to be staring at us.

This creature of slime was not malicious in action, it seemed to have no interest at all. Not passive, no, but distracted. The handmaidens offered warmth and comforts, the finest velvet under this new mobile throne, but any semblance of personhood was never roused within my brother. He sat, gulping out of openings that disappeared back into its bulk when the gasping ceased. There was not one single mouth, nor one tongue. There was too much of everything.

Still, we kept the charade. My parents would talk to the creature over dinner, hoping it would respond to food or react to our kindness. An entire kingdom pretending nothing was amiss, resting the crown on a nearby gilded pillow, ignoring its squelching as easily as it ignored us. Neither heat nor cold bothered the thing, no food could tempt it. Only once did I see it move of its own accord, a lone tendril inching across the silver plates presented before it, digging to find a prize. The room was still, all eyes fixated on this new arrival. I cannot speak for the rest, but my body felt locked with apprehension, and fear. The curling limb squirmed to the center of the banquet, and quicker than anything I had seen, flopped itself into the pan of pork drippings beneath the roast. It rolled and slapped the wet fat, shuddering in the oily debris and lay satisfied. Slower than we could see, leaving a trail of dark gristle, it retracted. The room stayed still, and silent, and after our food had turned cold it was cleared and we retired for the night. The dreams I had... I thought they were so horrible, but upon waking I recognized they were not different nor separate from this new reality.

That was when the noises began. Deep in our chambers, a sound reverberated through the empty halls, out into the valley outside and below. It was not so much audible as felt, a rumbling belch that rattled the windows. In the moonlight I sat upright, the dawn nearly peeking onto the horizon, and I felt the fear well up within me again. This was not a dream. It was long, this call, several minutes passed before quiet resumed in the manor. Though I heard no other noise, I knew there was not a person in the house who remained in slumber. One long call, then silence again. The next night, two. Then every night. The damp ululations vibrated the very hairs of my scalp, long utterances that echoed almost from another world... and the portal was, used to be, my brother. Our mornings became weak affairs, the eyes of my parents sunken, my father looking wan and gaunt. Still, we continued the royal charade. What else could we do?

The town below sent messengers and well-wishes, hearing these unearthly disruptions as clearly as we had. The gifts piled up in the entry hall, borne of both concern and care. Even as a moaning blob of otherness, he was still our Prince, and we must be reverent. Even in this monstrous form, he was extraordinary and important in a way I could never be.

Then began the nightly visitations. Knocks upon our door, the gates clattering and being forced open, always accompanied by a grim visage of women, their eyes glazed from lack of sleep or being currently entombed in slumber. Their arrival was consistent, summoned by my brother's visceral calls into the moonlight. It wreathed these enslaved pilgrims in mystery as they slammed their fists against our doors, blank-faced and expectant. The first night, the pale girl was shown in and walked  through the halls, almost in a trance, disappearing into my brother's chamber. We had long been used to disruption in our rest, and in the entry hall of our manor, my parents and I, chilly in our bed robes, watched the girl enter, and leave. It was as though she had spent no time there at all. No words were spoken. We avoided each other's eyes. Then we retired to our beds. For once, the calls had quieted. We slept.

The parade of women continued, different each night, varying times and myriad circumstance. Some were dressed as fine ladies, hair glossy and gems shining. Others wore tattered clothing, bare feet pale with cold. Some were frighteningly young. We did not bother to greet them; oftentimes I would lay with my gaze fixed on the ceiling, waiting for the ghastly chorus to be over, for the transient mouths to seal themselves and recede so I may return to my rest. Other nights, I would join the servants in the entry hall and watch the parade go past. Only one woman per night, but if sleep was truly evading me, I took a macabre interest in the happenings.

It was my mother and I who saw the woman who didn't leave. She looked older, well-traveled, and I glimpsed a carriage at our gates which looked dusty from the road, but otherwise well-kept. This figure strode into the manor, her face sharper and more keen than many of the others I had seen. She looked at me, acknowledged I was there. Her confident steps clicked down the hallways, and this time my mother and I shared a glance. Something was different. The long-exhausted sense of fear roiled within me, awakened and angry. We waited for the mysterious woman to exit the bed chambers. But she did not.

There is a new member of our household, now. We do not know her name, have never heard her speak, but it is clear. She is the new Princess, and at her side is the Prince, back as himself at least... looking as such. But mealtimes are silent meetings, their distant gazes not meeting ours as they slurp oily, fattened soups and lick glistening silver spoons teeming with lard.

My brother is back in a recognizable form, the guttural calls replaced with occasional midnight burbling, the only sounds I've heard either of them make.

So it seems my brother, the Prince, has indeed found his bride. They shall reign over this land in a way we never knew before. At last, there is a proper Princess that roams these halls. At night, when I consider this woman with the travel-lined face and opaque stares, I am glad she is the Princess. But then I wonder... The Princess of what?

[nikaharper]

Unrelated Happenings in a Big Apartment Building

It was considered a regular Tuesday.

James had a productive evening, catching a quick drink with a coworker who was stuck completing a project he had moved on from a month ago. It was still as fucked as ever, and James grinned inwardly as he got the leftover fried rice out of the fridge. Time for some Hulu.

Alex had a sinus infection, again, and was resigned to laying on the patched couch full of bleary-eyeing cold medicine. He fell asleep while flipping channels and woke with memories of a strange dream about the American Revolutionary War. No more napping to the History channel.

Marielue always felt awkward in the evening, the transition between day and night, and this particular walk home had perturbed her. A discarded brown sweatshirt in the gutter had, at a glance, appeared to be a dead dog, and after a double-take she couldn't shake it from her mind. Everything became an abandoned animal corpse. She saw three more "dead dogs" and one that looked like a slain kitten, but was actually a gnarled tree root poking out of a lawn. She closed her eyes as she closed the door of her apartment, took a few deep breaths. But the rest of the night didn't fare much better. Every bit of discarded laundry was a lifeless form; she saw a skull in a bar of soap.

Naseem was cooking up a stew for dinner, and he checked his phone for texts from his girlfriend. There was a flash of pain on his forearm; he had rested it against the stew pot on the stove. He washed it under cold tap water, but it glowed a livid red. He remembered thinking it would blister, and considered taking a picture for his girl. 'This is what I go through for you!"'

Charles was out of the apartment, watching the basketball game on Ian's couch and talking too loudly about a girl he'd met that weekend. He didn't know it was too loud, though.

Amelia was plucking her eyebrows in the bathroom mirror. One, two stray hairs, grooming to the perfect shape of arched but still natural. The phone rang as she gave one last look in the mirror. Odd, that one had bled, and left a smudge of red on her dark skin. That never happens.

Caleb was doing laundry in the basement, full of coin-op machines and scuffed linoleum. He sorted the wet items into dryer-ready heaps, except one of them... That wasn't his. Maybe it was leftover from another tenant? A cotton pair of too-small boxer briefs, he was about to discard it before he remembered what happened last week. Best to put them in the trash. He bit his lip too hard as the garbage can top swung and creaked.

Jackie just woke up. Her head pounded, and she always swore Monday night drinking was the most abrasive of them all, because you'd be around people who may have no jobs or may have nothing left in life, and keeping up drink-by-drink was a hazard. She remembered some names... Michael or Mike or maybe something unusual like Makivar. One look at her phone said she was right. Skyla was asking how she felt, punctuated by emoji of which she could only see half and the rest were rectangular blocks. Then there was two missed calls from "Makkovar." She must have really liked him. She wondered if he had a job.

Kevin removed his headset. The raid wasn't going well. Wiped five times on a boss that they considered farm-status. He rubbed his eyes and didn't notice the shadow passing by his fifth-story window.

Thomas and Stephanie lay on sweaty bedsheets, panting in the glaze of newfound love. Three times that night! It wasn't even midnight. "Need anything from the bathroom?" he asked. "A towel." Stephanie turned over and smiled into the pillow, feeling the stickiness between her thighs. But it wasn't all just passion. "Um, maybe I'll... get it myself," she called, carefully rolling on her back and edging out of the bed, trying to hide the blood on her fingers. "Fuck," said Thomas from the bathroom, the lights on, "Are you okay? I mean there's—" "It's fine, I got my period, sorry sorry." Stephanie hadn't had a period in two years.

Ed was home early. It was bullshit. He pulled off his hat and cheap, dark wig, slamming himself down into his favorite lounge chair, the same chair his dad used before he died. The costume party was an annoyance at best, a disaster at worst. "IT'S FROM TRIGUN," he finally yelled out over the keg at a dumbstruck partygoer dressed as Finn. He didn't mean to scream, but Ed had never been good at environments where music was blaring and everyone was drunk by the time you arrived. He really cared about his outfit, it was good shit. A bottle of shochu washed the taste of cheap beer out of his mouth, and the remote flicked through his library to find Trigun, the episodes with Rai-Dei. He pressed 'Play.' Ed looked awesome. Fuck anyone who didn't get it.

Brandon took out the trash and found himself face-to-face with an oppossum. He hadn't recognized before how much their face looked like a skull.

Alejandro let the faucet run for a bit, waiting for hot water to make some rice. His nose was in a book, so he didn't notice that for a moment, the water ran blood red.

Makayla wasn't into that witchy shit, it seemed like stuff for dispossessed white girls. But on the websites, as fucking footnotes, there was a mention of Marie Laveau, and voodoo, and the things that called to her. She had more power here than she thought, without the fuckin' salt lamps and quartz crystals that cost nine dollars each. Nah, there was good shit in here, and it called to her. She held half a dead cigar in one hand and grabbed an oily eel filet, the best she could find at the Asian market, in the other. It jolted through her like a seizure. Something was very wrong, and very near. Makayla gasped and dropped her reagents. Nah, fuck this. She'll fry that damn eel and not fuck around with this shit anymore.

John's business worked at night. So he didn't recognize the flickering lights in the hallways, excited squawks and yelps from other apartments doors as he passed. This was all normal. Eyes followed him from the underside of dark doors, squinted through the keyholes of post boxes as he went to get his mail that evening. He paid no mind. Why should he?

Renee had the worst night. Newly single, full of glass-shard memories that hurt to remember but they were everywhere.... It was easy to exist, to do normal things in a normal life because there was a repetition that was comforting. Coming home was the awful part. Moments to rest were the awful part. She felt unloved. Worse, she knew she wasn't loved anymore. Things had ended that badly. An hour passed sitting on her bed, thinking about a bottle of wine. Any bottle. It didn't matter right now. Then it was an hour and a half. Mentally taking note of all the things in her space which SHE had touched, the candles they had lit on romantic evenings, the way the pillow still smelled like her, the dress and leggings still piled into a corner from the last time they... It was three days ago. That they touched, that they felt each other's heat and Renee felt the heartbeat of her as she lay her head on that chest, that perfect chest that held the most golden heart, the person she loved. It all seemed to be going so well.... Or well enough. Good enough. Enough to go on, to continue, to keep being in love as they were, as they had been for over a year now. Maybe Renee hadn't seen the signs. She must not have, because it all felt so sudden. Two days ago. Three days ago they had been twisting limbs in a galaxy of jersey bedsheets, and one day afterward, nothing. She wanted to wash the sheets. But she didn't dare. There was no wine, so that... couldn't have been the problem. Renee didn't take any pills, she had always been a rather healthy person but admittedly she hadn't eaten much that day and didn't plan on putting together a dinner. Her friends didn't know yet, so they couldn't provide survival comforts. It was just her, on a bed, in a tiny apartment, alone. So it wasn't wine or pills or attributed to anything particularly chemical, but it just so happens that on that night, Renee got a nosebleed. In the midst of her tears, a dark stain spread on her palms and she realized she was bleeding. It felt so dramatic, she walked to the bathroom pinching her nose and looked for the nearest towel to wipe on her face. As she removed the washcloth, a threadbare thing she would probably throw away after this incident of staining, she realized it had changed color. It was a yellow handcloth, she had wiped her hands on it for years, probably too long without replacement, but it was yellow. It was a bit blanched with wear and wash. But it was yellow. Not now. The cloth in her hands was a deep red. Renee's eyes snapped to the mirror, inspecting her face and nose—maybe she had bled a lot more than she thought— but her face was clean. The cloth stayed red. A single tear snuck from the corner of her eye... she followed its path in the bathroom reflection... and it was dark, moody, red. Like wine. She felt wet, like having walked out of a steamy shower, the air was warm and full of vapor and she could barely breathe. A drop of blood splattered the hexagonal tiled floor, but her nose felt dry. Dropping the towel, Renee watched as her fingernails pooled with thick burgundy liquid and spilled to the ground. This time the mirror showed her looking clean, and pale, and scared. The floor was splattered art, white tile and grey grout, artful splashes of deep red. Her sandals stood in pools of crimson, a steady flow easing out of the peep-toe opening. This wasn't just grief, it was worse than that. Renee knew she wasn't losing her mind. The world, like many other things, was here to blindside her, and she had no control over it.

Maybe the other tenants could have seen the sloshing red liquid in the other washing machine. The mysterious stains on the stairs. The pupils of their eyes that looked red and luminous in the mirror's reflection. The metallic tang from a bitten lip.

But it was a regular Tuesday night. Easy enough to forget, anyway.

[nikaharper]

Dearly Departed: An Advice Column Beyond the Mortal Coil

Found and transcribed from a piece of paper found inexplicably in a hotel room in London.

Dearly Departed, Before I died, I hid a stash of unmarked bills in my basement. I've been trying to tell my (well, ex-) wife and kids about for some time, but they keep getting freaked out. I've tried everything! Moving furniture, flickering the lights, even the messages in the foggy mirror trick, but nothing works! Now they talk something about calling someone to cleanse the house! By the gods old and new, what can I do to tell them before I'm exorcised out the home? Signed, Scary Rich Requiescat in pace Scary, Incidentally, a few other letters have described much this same problem, notably by Edward McCuen II whose granddaughter could save his secret treasure from becoming a golf course. As is typical with mortal relations, the guidelines for haunting are complicated and artful. We've long heard stories of the most majestic haunters such as Savine D'Echante who lured her loved ones with her marvelous singing voice, and Horace the Horrible who literally terrified tenants into discovering his secrets, like a spectral shepherd. There is no one perfect way to achieve haunting payoff, so break down your specific goal into broad, manageable tasks and tackle them however you feel fit. If these ideas do not get your creative ectoplasm flowing, then I must ask you this: Why did you bother hiding your fortune in the first place? Poor planning may be the mistake you have to "live" with for eternity. Dearly Departed, This is a bit embarrassing, I'm about 50 years dead now and I still can't come to terms with how I died, especially since it reflects in my ghostly form. You see I died of a heart attack halfway through the act of coitus and now, regrettably, I shall forever fly at full mast. This is severely limiting my ability to interact socially with other ghosts and narrows down my haunting posts to positions I'd really rather not take. Any advice on how to deflate the remains of my earthly indulgences? Regards, Rigor Mortified Requiescat in pace Rigor, Oh my ghostness, I can see how this would be a problem! My first thought (apart from the obvious) is wondering why it is you chose to stay in this mortal coil, as there must have been a very good reason for your continued existence. The fact is, you have all the time in the world to appreciate your position and sheer luck, as many people (dead and alive alike) are envious of your cause of death. Consider that you have obviously have a good story to tell, and harness that confidence to become the "life" of the party! Your eloquence would be well-exercised here. In the meantime, your fatal fornication may have allowed you access to wearable bedclothes, and it's always a good time to bring the Sheet Ghost aesthetic back into fashion. Dearly Departed, I work in an office and due to my semi-corporeal nature, I sometimes have issues exiting the automatic revolving doors of my office. Obviously, it takes an enormous amount of concentration for me, I stand in this cylinder, ready to leave and I am trapped. I do not haunt my office. I should be free to go when I choose, however I am shackled by a technology which refuses to recognize my efforts. What can be done about this? I stand there sometimes for minutes just... waiting to be recognized. It's frankly insulting. Please. Free me from my corporate prison. Professionally, Regreta Garbo Requiescat in pace Regreta, It appears to me that this is less a problem of yours, and much more of that to do with your company's attitude toward ghosts. In fact, it seems in violation of the Magical Employment Equality acts introduced as far back as the 1890's, and this may be an issue you could bring up to your managers or even perhaps the Ministry. If a company is dedicated to employing spirit-kind, they should be making any and all effort to make their buildings spectrally accessible. Dearly Departed, How do I haunt the internet? ~@GhostintheC# Requiescat in pace GhostintheC# At risk of being colloquial, "You're doing amazing, sweetie!" While this publication has not yet made it to the Magical Information Network shell of the non-magical internet, I daresay it is difficult to strike fear into the hearts of a series of ones and zeroes. Perhaps think on a smaller scale, such as haunting particular beings who create these networks. Simple machinery like "keyboards" and "personal computers" afford many opportunities to affect specific change, perhaps even so far as a good ol' possession! But be warned, there are guidelines to how much a ghost can terrorize non-magical kind (falling under, I believe, one of the amendments within the International Statute of Secrecy) so keep within the allotted trickery and GLHF! Dearly Departed, I want the other ghosts to stop screaming. I get it. You're dead AND scary. -Shushing all the Banshees Requiescat in pace Shushing, Well aren't you just a fuddy-duddy. There is an eternity out there and you spend it criticizing when others have their fun! You seem like the type who would not attend deathiversaries or convergences, and to that I say, BOO! That is all for this week, please send in your queries to our Agony Apparition care of Germanus Press. See you on the other side!

There also seems to be a url scribbled on the paper. For other submissions?

[nikaharper]

The Next Memory is Arriving in 2 Minutes

It's right across from the Seattle Link train, and I can't help but stare at it every time. Just a budget airport hotel where I spent a night around Christmas, when I was thoroughly and wonderfully in love.

It had been almost a week, and that time was memorable. It gets cold in Seattle, and it was the first time I had experienced the type of rain that is like standing at the foot of a waterfall; a thick cloud of wet that attacked from all angles. Umbrellas were useless. Every part of you and everything was soaked. But we smiled.

We looked good being together, our fashion and affection made us handsome. We walked everywhere, explored a lot, and I don't think the city has ever looked greater than when I was sharing it with them.

We didn't want the weekend to end. I checked into my flight, and in an airport cafe we had our last wine, just before security.

Certain things become forgettable over glasses of wine. I suppose I had lost track of time, or security became especially long, or... the reason was not memorable. But it was the last flight of the night. I called, in tears. And so, a cheap airport hotel...

I was distraught, and maybe a little drunk. The tan-upon-tan-upon-beige lobby had a two-foot tall attempt a christmas tree, all bent and sad taken straight from a cramped storage cupboard. Immediately, I went to work straightening and sprucing in an attempt to spread holiday cheer, and noticed that there was only one type of ornament present on the branches. I'd seen those miniature plastic apples on trees before, and loved them despite their cheapness. These were the same, but they were black.

All of them were black.

I had never heard of black apples before.

I took one.

I visit Seattle every year if not more, and I stare across the platform of the train.

The emotions and memories flood, all attached to one silly hotel sign. Of love, and guilt, and dreary lobbies, and black plastic apples.

[nikaharper]

Du-Par’s

The night was young but he couldn't stop paying attention to the restaurant's variable punctuation. On the plates and cups, and napkins even, it said "Du-Par's" just like that. The menu claimed it was "Du'Pars" and the font was different. The logo on the computer at the hosting station claimed it was "Du'Par's" which really threw off everything. He couldn't remember what the sign was like outside. At any rate, it could have been "Par-Du's" just to further the set. One is never sure.

The first table where he sat was grainy. Clearly some drunken excitement had occurred at the booth across from it, covering the otherwise set table with a fair amount of salt. Thrown over the shoulder for good luck, perhaps? But how unkind for anyone to throw salt in a restaurant, especially with such longevity. The salt was truly everywhere. He stood, relocated to another table and waited.

It was sort of an alibi, you see. Or for safety. Or for anything. If he had a receipt, and one person remembered his face, then he could not be pinned for the crime he knew was happening. Being aware of a crime is, sure, a crime, but not nearly as much as being involved. Which he was not.

Besides, that asshole had it coming. He made no effort to stop it, but wouldn't lift a finger in either direction. No aiding, no dissuading. Just being confused by interchangeable punctuation on an old restaurant's branding.

The food was better at the Vegas location, yeah he believed it. At least there, it wasn't trying to be something else. This restaurant had existed so long that the city gentrified around it. In a world of Denny's, Du-Par's still tried to sell $29 steaks at 4am, the shiny oxblood vinyl booths torn without effort for repair. Salty tables undusted. No soup past midnight. Its sheer continuity was a puzzle to him. Anyway it helped keep his mind off crime.

He smiled and got the $29 steak. Live in the present, right?

It was dry. The air began to smell like a grocery produce aisle, refrigerated and tangy and a little chemical, though not in ways that could be defined. He busied himself comparing the condiment selection of various booths. Ketchup was not guaranteed. Hot sauce had 3 varieties at various tables. That one had a honey bear and nothing else. He couldn't stop thinking of how it could be this way. that sandwiched by overpriced furniture stores and farm-to-table restaurants and organic quick-lunch business-park establishments that this place even had a chance. He wondered what made Du-Par's live. He wondered why Leonard had to die.

It was a simple thing, barely worth the bother. Fucking assholes usually get theirs, karma is a bitch and so on and so on. Hell hath no fury, and so forth. The short of it was, Leonard couldn't be ruined, despite everyone's best attempts. That untalented fuck had been on the up and up for so long, that it seemed no sabotage or scandal could ever faze him. He just kept going, and kept screwing up everything and everyone he touched. Like it was a superpower. Like his villainy was brash ineptitude. And when his condo became a house then became one of the plentiful million-dollar homes in LA, nobody questioned it. He had a name now, at least within the industry, for reasons that nobody could really understand.

Maybe he just assholed his way into things. Maybe people bought into his braggart boasts. Perhaps they believed that he was as good as he thought himself to be.

What utter horseshit.

Still, tonight Leonard would die and that was that. Because nothing else seemed to work. Because justice is bullshit and patience has an expiration and at some point you'll have to stop selling your $29 dollar steaks to people at 3am when you have dirty carpet and ripped-up vinyl. Because someday things will close down.

He didn't think so, though. This place would go on forever, and maybe tonight Leonard would somehow survive. Wasn't his business. And someone, like his stupid ass, would be the next guy to walk in and buy the damn steak.

He paid, tipped well, and lit a cigarette outside. He imagined flicking a cigarette, and the whole place erupting into flames like it was waiting for the excuse. Like it wanted to go and couldn't tell anyone. He imagined the mismatched punctuation would be put to rest, the honey bear no longer lonesome on a table.

But Du-Par's stood vigilant in the night, unaffected by fire or ill-wishes both. And besides, he needed the people inside to remember his face.

[nikaharper]

Something New

It had been a while since Millenia had legs. They'd been gone far longer than she'd been in a state to notice, and many other parts required fixing before the limbs were to be bothered with, but she distinctly remembered being without them for a while. Long enough to adapt.

Automatons, cyborgs, robots, call them what you will (and everyone seemed to argue so much about the names that it cemented their stubborn usage forever) they had true range. Simple things performing menial tasks with no consciousness, or at least none that the engineers would talk about. All the way up to highly-functioning body replacement systems that kept a slice of a beloved personality and took off into the world. These ones were better regarded, as they could argue their own case better, in the vernacular of intelligent human speech with none of the hollowness of robotics. Millenia was one of that type. And she was in therapy.

Mainly, the focus was physical. Wiring systems together, exercising them back and forth until they no longer shorted out or locked up. A lot of that could be done without a conscious form, but Millenia was a special breed and her personality couldn't stay dormant long. It was imperative to keep her internal, semi-organic structures, no matter how small, alive and well. Which meant a lot of bug-fixing was something she'd have to undergo while aware. There was no way to knock her out for the surgery, for instance.

Pain was something of a factor, in whichever way her kind could experience it, which manifests as a deep mental burden more than an agonizing reaction. Automatons feel things. They merely feel them very differently. Their mental processes overload.

Mostly, her arms were fine, which was very helpful in her recovery, and luckily her head (one of the trickiest parts to engineer) was in fine shape. She was still emotive, responsive, eloquent. Anything below her chest, though, that was almost entirely destroyed. "Good time for an upgrade," one of the engineers joked as she jockeyed a refrigeration unit into Millenia's shell of a torso. She stayed silent and tried not to react; she could tell the trauma surgeons were uncomfortable. The hardest part wasn't resisting the need to cry out, it was not blinking.

Reconstruction was a lot for any automaton to handle, most got scrapped if they were cheap and didn't have a consciousness. There were a fair amount of survivors in the bunch though, important enough to the efforts of the world to undergo a second (or sometimes third or even fifth) chance at existence, cost be damned. Millenia had never really known about reconstruction therapy, purely from lack of necessity. She had been lucky, as had the beings she knew. In her social circle, she surmised, she was the first. Therefore it came as a deep surprise to learn that there was counseling. Group therapy. Acclimation and re-assimilation meetups. Places where robots talked about their feelings. Who had even considered such a thing?

It was a nightmare, those sessions, and they never got better. It was everything horrible that could happen to a self-aware automaton concentrated into four-hour meetings, like walking into a ghastly slasher film and realizing you're one of the victims and still in the middle of it. There was no respite in those sessions. The only things she felt for others was pity, not hope, not unified strength. She looked at Joylin with her misfiring spine, watched as Tungstein struggled to show expression on his blank, forgotten face. It was a carnival of horror, a robot show of suffering and Millenia knew that deep under the pity, she also felt disgust. Already shameful that she was inoperable, these broken, pathetic mechanicals could not help her redeem her power. She felt nothing for them. They knew she didn't belong. Even among the broken ones, she was 'other.'

The hardest thing, that she could not reconcile in herself, was that she no longer saw the point of existing at all. Her systems had all checked out, thorough in the neuro and personality areas and all were operating quite well. But the haunting question of "why?" invaded her thoughts with every session and rehabilitation surgery.

"Now wiggle your feet for me? Side to side." The panel of engineers were rapt, clipboards at the ready. She did. But why?

Mindless robots are scrapped all the time. Delicate cyborgs are destroyed purely by accident. Somehow, these clinics deemed that she was too special and valuable to have left behind, but in the wake of all her physical reconstruction, she still had one thing missing: her purpose. Automatons, with their advanced minds, were supposed to care. Millenia had utterly stopped.

The steps she took were shaky and confused. Her knees didn't work right, didn't bend, sparks flew on occasion. Her hip was leaking. She trudged on and did the task immediately in front of her, supervised all the while. She went to the therapy sessions and watched Tungstein's mouth  gape into a grotesque attempt at a smile, averted her eyes as Joylin snapped backwards and shrieked. Her refrigeration and internal systems were testing normal. It's down to the re-learning.

Automatons can learn things very easily. They adapt. What they have trouble with is reverting to old data, processes that had been partially written over in the short span of, for instance, not having legs. It wasn't like "remembering how to ride a bike." It didn't all come back. It felt foreign and archaic. Trying to pick up the pieces and become what she had been a year ago, regressive, impossible. Regaining an existence that was ordinary to begin with, and had grown stale in her mind.

Millenia took the steps, stumbled, took them again, waiting to get a high score on her daily report card, just wasting time until they asked if she was ready to get on with her life and she could answer honestly, "I don't know."

[nikaharper]

Little Gaia Nostalgia Stories

I used to make little avatars, with stories. Tiny things.

[nikaharper]

Room Temperature

The straps should have loosened by now, they seem to be regular fabric. The ends are floating and tickling my legs, but I can't move enough to scratch or change it. I've tried not to urinate, but I gave up. I shouldn't drink either, but I'm thirsty, I'm not sure if I can even cry anymore. Yelling wore me out, I gave up on that yesterday. If it really was yesterday. It's dark and everything echoes. That steady drip that has been keeping time, maybe that's my seconds-marker. I've counted, and given up, and lost which tens of thousands I'm in, or I guess fallen asleep. My ears are ringing and sore, I wrench my neck to keep them above the water but I'm hurting, and I don't have the strength. The drips sound like a drum underwater, and I can hear my feet move. I worry about the air. It's getting harder to breathe. I'm drowsy and aching and lost, I'm not sure I can feel my body except when it itches or hurts. This doesn't seem to be a big place, the echoes are tight and constrained. It might be a hot tub. I just don't know where. I always hated the smell of chlorine. Like public pools at gyms or at schools, it always felt so medical, the smell that covers up humanity and pretends there's no sickness around, it becomes its own banner for denial. A hospital smell. Something to mask the revulsion we fear in the world, each other. Artificial purity. It burns in my eyes and soaks into my hair... Which is coming out. My scalp is burning the longer it's submerged and I can feel little tickles of it by my elbows, my knees, I know it's just falling out and I want to scream again and I can't. My throat is raw. My sobs creak. I feel swollen and tired.

I'm not drowning, not yet, but that drip has been slamming into the water and maybe it isn't filling so much as it's keeping the levels even but I feel the surface tickle my chin and I don't think it was that high before, and the gag is damp and my mouth tastes like chemicals and bile and I can't scream anymore I just can't I don't know how. I shouldn't breathe so hard because I don't know if the air... If they thought I was dead, they wouldn't gag me. Someone knows I'm in here. My head is pounding in its own rhythm, I guess it's my blood and my heart and it used to be fast but now it's slower than the dripping sound, sometimes it hurts so bad I clench up and it feels like my skin is bursting and scraping off against the straps, how can I feel so shriveled and bloated at the same time? I'm so thirsty but I keep choking on my own vomit and my stomach feels like there's glass shards in there but I know I couldn't be stabbed or else I wouldn't still be awake in here after all this time. This is what rotting feels like, tight and distant and sick-sweet and salty with tears. My wrists burn, I wonder if they're bleeding and it's so dark everywhere, what if the water is bloody and red and I'm soaking it all in and recycling it back through myself, filtering in and out until everything equalizes, what if there's nutrients in the water so I can't die and they keep me here for a week like a body in a glass jar, waiting for me to move... I wonder how much of this water is my tears, how much of this water is me. Maybe I'll slowly dissolve into a gelatin slurry and they'll garnish me with parsley and dip in cups to taste how scared I am, like I'm dessert, like I'm art or else why would someone keep a person tied up in a tub like this? It's dripping every second and the water on my chin is just a tickle, like I'm floating and I can't tell what's the surface or what's the fabric or what's my loose hair or if anything can be a way out, if I could simply float up and evaporate entirely, sneak out the cracks and corners and join the clouds somewhere. I just don't know what this means.

My feet are burning, and my knees are burning and my stomach is on fire, it feels like I'm being broiled and popping, oily bubbles of my skin like buttery bread, the shifting doesn't help and I must have been asleep but now there's another smell. It's not the same at all. The denial of death. Those chemicals like science class with scalpels on limp piles of what was once a frog or a pig but is now a mutilated mess of labeled bones and soft organs, I know this smell and I know that feeling. It's a preservative. The sharp smell of something yellow that lasts. My torso is stinging and the first bits reach my chin and I've still forgotten how to cry, but I'm trying, I'm trying to feel anything that isn't a classroom experiment and I'd welcome being spread out on a table with a knife in me just to know that I once identified as a human being instead of a pickled mass of limbs and why is this happening now? Why can I smell the onset of death when it could have been over so much easier, so much earlier, what if there's other things in here with me, what if that wasn't my hair I was feeling and my tears I was floating in all this time? What if I'm just the newest one...?

My eyes are stinging, they might be open or closed I can't tell anymore, but the drip is faster or maybe I'm slower, and the water is reaching to my lips or I'm sinking and not fighting anymore, maybe I'm not special but I'm just the next one, the fresh one, the experiment of how long until someone stops fighting. And I've stopped crying, I've stopped screaming, and maybe after this rest I'll stop trying. I can burn underwater, I know that now, and I think I might stop fighting. The taste of humanity and denial in my mouth and maybe I'll just stop fighting.

I used to dream of floating in the clouds.

[nikaharper]

Relevant Residuals

They didn't notice it was my picture on the wall.

I had put on sixty pounds since, my hair is unkempt. Really the only thing that remains of my legacy is a wall-sized modeling photo and the name of the restaurant, a place nobody would go to if they weren't stuck in an airport.

They even sell tee shirts here. Like, what really is the point.

It was a good business move, at a time when my minimal fortune needed to be cultivated and prosper after I stopped getting those sweet checks for an album nobody really remembers anymore. Sure, I've had my time in vogue, if you'd call it that, for about a year before I was forgotten. Now it's just layovers and residuals for me. I've been encouraged to take up painting, star in a show or two on daytime TV, anything to keep me relevant. I had publicists, and they worked their asses off. They're gone now, whether they were shitty or I was unwanted, either way it ended the same. A few investments here and there. Nothing I have to really pay attention to.

I should have gone for the car dealership.

The bar is sticky under my arms, and this margarita is atrocious. Surely it's $11, served by a dour bartender who had seen better days, and a bored teenager who checks his phone obsessively in his waiter's kilt thing. Probably sick of my face, of the tee shirts, of the overly-sugared drinks that create snail-streaks on the countertop, wiped away half-heartedly by the patrons just enough to leave a smudge of paper napkin behind.

Who the fuck comes here.

Sometimes one of my songs plays over the tinny speakers, which stutter as they short out like the clacking of an old film reel. It doesn't make my song sound that much worse. Above all indignities on the warped, crusty menu is the cocktail specials with names like Jonny's Punch, Jonny-Rita and the most egregious, Mo-Jonny-to. A self-insertion pun that doesn't work when spelled, and is impossible to pronounce. I wonder if they sell any, or if people just roll their eyes and order a mojito without debasing language or their thirst. It seems like a thing that you have to be drunk already to order properly. Cleveland airport deserves better.

Why Cleveland? Something about affordability. A good opportunity.

My fries are soggy. It's six p.m. and the place is only half full. I'm flying coach to visit my mother in the hospital. Maybe I should bring her a tee shirt.

I could change this place if I wanted, but then I would have to care. Or, I'd have to prove that me and this little restaurant didn't age the same way. Sometimes it's easier to sip your syrupy margarita and wait for your next flight out of here.

[nikaharper]

I’ve been saving my words for you.

I don't know how to say goodbye, and I thought I'd be better at it for having so much advanced warning. We knew, we're smarter than that, and there's only so much fighting before it starts to kill all of us, not just you. But I can't talk about you without crying, and I get very tired of it. Three months should make the tears go away, I think. It should make the words come back. I'm going to throw them at you instead. Maybe some will come out this time. And I miss you. That will never change.

In the hardest part of my life, I couldn't handle it. I released it all on you, the details, the feverish ramblings and self-snapshots of a trying time. I unleashed all my horror, because I couldn't at the time, it all built up as I sorted through a destroyed house that used to be a promise of a better life for my family, broken hope painted into the walls and unfinished windowsills, the way we all let ourselves fall apart and I faced it, alone, with no phones and no internet and barely working lighting fixtures. I told you things I think I've forgotten by now... but I remember the feeling of it. I remember you telling me to stop. It was too much for you. Well it was too much for everyone, I couldn't tell a soul, they all hushed me in fear of their own hearts breaking, but mine stayed broken.

She tells me you saved it, the whole conversation, and named it simply "sad." I don't know what to think about that, and I can't ask you.

The day we sat at our desks and you took a phone call, but it was quiet and short and serious. You didn't look at me, already breaking down. "He killed himself!" All I could do was hold you as you fell apart, hoping my disintegration next to yours would keep us both salvageable.

You found me in the closet once, hiding in the dark, trembling with anxiety. You shut the door, because I asked you to. You trusted me to figure out what I needed. You supported me when I dropped classes, quit jobs, tried to find a path I was happy to take. You helped me move out, you let me move on when I needed to go. We buried our romance beneath the branches of a lifelong friendship, nourished the roots with our understanding that being soul mates is a lot more than fighting about dinner or sex.

I didn't worry about you as much as I should, but I've always been selfish.

You said I threw chicken at you. For the record, I don't think I did that.

I miss your hugs. You were good at expressing that you cared with a hug, even if there wasn't a good way to do it in words.

I looked at the city lights and felt your ash grit under my fingernails. And I miss you. That will never change.

[nikaharper]

Timelost

I feel like I have thirty minutes to sum up everything I know. It's not that the plane is going to crash or the world will meet its end, or even that everything or anything at all will change. It won't. Things will go on just as they always do, this deadline is arbitrary and frustrating, because it's self-created and imposed. It's me trying to make up for lost time, which as we know, is a commodity which only goes one way. You cannot have extra of it. You can only not have enough.

I do not recount these lost times as a failure, but I worry that I must document them, write them in a ledger to show how far into the red I am. What has come out of this narrow, driving line. I could start with all the way at the beginning of the year, but with all the empty minutes and hours in the way, I doubt I can remember that far. I shall start wherever I find closest and journey onward. The first product of my empty hours was a letter. I could have written and delivered it, wishing a happy holiday (whichever one was nearest at the time) or scrounging up aspects of my life to dress up, emblazon and be proud of, but the curtain of fallen seconds prevented me from seeing those noteworthy accomplishments and I swore only to write when I had something worth saying. The letter was never written, and the recipient is now too late to receive it. That time is gone.

I could also note the times lost to ennui and drink, for they were many and stretched on, creating only double their length with how little I enjoyed them. Misery passes slowly, as does the time when you have an itch that begs to be nursed, the agony of every moment until satisfaction. THe itch went away without being scratched, my malaise faded without being cured, the spirits evaporated from my pores without my respite. As is the way, the itch returns.

Financing was always a bother, but never so much as current when accounts were overdrawn or underpaid, and I'd no recollection of it. THe sheer day escaped me, and the debts knocked down my (often uninhabited) hall, but it was forgetfulness that caused the pain so. I could often find the funds, but my distraction was what forced the collectors' ire. I was irreliable. It has become my foremost trait.

In a final thought, I dare the second most tempestuous in its loss was when I failed to smile. Long we held eyes, on an unseasonably beautiful afternoon when I was unseasonably present outdoors. I had grown apprehensive of my grim pallor, it belied a truth I was not yet to face, that I was wasting away. My shoulders shook with a cloak of ghosted seconds and my ankles dragged, shackled by the weight of dead days. Still I looked up, through the paths of beetles and bees in a garden so sweet that the air could become nectar, and there I saw you. If I looked poorly, you looked conversely wonderful. My paleness was that of cobwebs and bleached shadow, yours was the fullness of milk. There was such life in you, and still is I have little doubt. Perhaps you saw the gravestones in my lashes, the wind-whipped tremor in my voice. You stared on, as did I, as did we, locked in our few paltry instants together. And I did not smile.

It is merely the end of a year, another time to raise a glass to all that is gone and shall come anew, but I raise a pen in my ledger of failures that nothing will change, no stroke of midnight can twist my direction, no spirit may veer my soul. I am shouldering vast forces and lost smiles. THe new day ahead is built on the ruined structures of those from before. And I stumble with them.

[nikaharper]

The Lord and Lady Everly

Everything gleamed. The floor, the punch bowls, the gowns, the smiles of guests. The invitation must have read to wear gilded clothing because the ballroom was full of whites and silvers and golds and shiny wheat colors that spread like sunlight, like candle flames heating the room with laughter and tinkling wine glasses. It was a banquet and ball for the evermost of celebrations: Lord Everly's entrance into society. He was of age, of status, and of perfect regard amongst the partygoers and other Lordships. The list of society entrants was long, and Everly was of age to officially be one of them; To host his own gatherings, speak to the elders, and finally begin his first family, the latter of which was much desired by the revelers. It was well known that Lord Everly's devotion was a treat of which none had yet indulged.

Saiah entered the event dressed in red velvet and gold. She didn't intend to stand out, but if that was the result, she was gracious. She had a plan. It was hard to capture the attention of the most popular person in the room, much less lead them away, but she was never one for subtlety nor failure. The elaborate dress worked in her favor just as his popularity did; On this night, they would all see Lord Everly leave the room with her. Rumour would obscure the true purpose of the talk, and their absence.

They were not strangers, the ballroom was vast yet familiar. It would be rare to see a face unknown in the crowd that had grown up along the same high walls, in the same protective yards, in the same dinner parties since their youth. Saiah curtsied and swept through the dancers with learned grace, smiled at some and winked at others. Lord Everly was ever on the elbow of another admirer, his hair so light and golden it fit the decor; He'd have blended right in if he didn't shine the brightest of the room. He always did shine so brightly. A lovely, soft-spoken, warm and caring character who supported and nurtured and loved all through his youth. It was easy to love such purity, and the ballroom was full of that love for him. Saiah was drawn to it. "May I ask you to a dance?" she murmured, her gold-gloved hand sliding down his arm, extricating it from a debutante's gentle grip. Everly's look of surprise was replaced with a smile, "Yes of course, my dear, I admit your splendor—" "I suppose I don't conform with the fashion of the group," she said, guiding him around in a waltz as harp music chimed at their elbows. He held her gaze, hers sharp and his buttery. The evening was not yet half over, so she did not push too hard. "I have a glorious gift for you," she said, "to celebrate your ascension. I will find you later." Saiah left his arm, struck still in the dance floor only a moment before someone else was at his side. She smiled, and waited, she was very good at both.

Through much wine and many words, the night kept on, not quite at its decline. Saiah waited for the apex, the time of greatest revelry before she caught Everly again, swaying him to face her out of the circle of admirers hanging on his words. "Your present," she asked, "you haven't forgotten?" "Not in the least, my lady." "I'll show you now. Won't take but a moment." If Everly protested, none heard, for her arm entwined with his and whisked him away in a regal parade. He nodded and smiled to those he passed, who all looked on at the striking woman in the deep red gown, and he who shined brightest.

It was easy to retrace her steps, the manor was so large that when Saiah had arrived earlier, barely anyone had noticed in the rush of preparation. There was no reason to exclude her from anywhere but the working areas, for she was surely not of that caliber and would be promptly led to places of entertainment for guests. She was a guest, a celebrated child friend of the new Lord Everly and his bounteous friendship. There were few places she could not walk, even as a mere visitor to the home. And her elbow led Everly directly to one of those places.

"Lady Saiah, you surely spoil me with such an effort," he prattled at her elbow, sweet and genuine like the bleating of a lamb. She smiled but did not engage in his discussion, nor as he mentioned what a wondrous time this night had been and how happy he was to be on his next steps of youthful life, she nodded and acted along as their measured steps echoed in increasingly deserted pathways in his manor. Everly's curiosity was not abated, he spoke of them as children, running every which way and pestering the maids by trespassing into forbidden areas that ended up being full of boring nonsense. But it felt fun just to be there. Her smile grew at this, their memories were beautiful ones, little Lords and Ladies all daring each other to enter wine cellars and push over items in the armour rooms. They learned to go where they weren't allowed. Perhaps they never grew out of that trait, because they were headed right toward somewhere that would be considered off-limits, mostly.

Trophy rooms were silly things. Cleaned once a month, visited far less unless you had something to hide. Saiah had nothing to hide and everything to show, as she led Everly into the gleaming room full of artifacts, awards, objects of priceless worth. His fingers tensed in her golden gloved hand, as though worried of revealing a secret, which she did and had. The room and its corridors were empty. "What is this present you have?" he said, his breath tinged honey-like with wine and affection, his movements sluggish as he looked around. They were alone. "It's here," Saiah motioned to an intricate bowl, carved with leaves and deep recesses. She motioned and nothing more, waiting for him to walk closer. He did not. "...I know that bowl," Everly said, and his inebriated state was apparent. Saiah did what she could, moving to his back and guiding him closer. "Look inside." "Must I?" "It's part of the present," she whispered in his ear, her arms at his back and waist. He tipped his gaze toward the bowl, its grandiose state only evident from the outside. Within its thick-lipped depths, there lay a single finger. It was a thumb, pristine, no blood, no torn skin. Sliced clean.

"You know this, I'm sure," she whispered all the more, purring her thoughts into his ear, "LORD Everly, so eligible, so kind and wondrous. You'd make a fine husband for a fine spouse, and I believe you'd find a fine wife in me." "What is this?" "Your lover's hand, you know. You've held it in this gallery so many times." Saiah had known of this, the secret dealings of this desired creature and his forbidden love.

Saiah stepped away, dragging on Everly's shoulder to face her. The light in his hair and his eyes had gone out. He was none brighter than the gallery's fixtures. "I will be a fine wife to you," Saiah said evenly, resplendent. All the light in the room seemed to gravitate to her, "We'll attend the galas, greet guests and admirers. I am a most charming hostess, a perfect pair we will make. And of course... I say, we WILL make." She gestured to the bowl. "He is safe, your lover, but the choice is yours. Our worlds will connect, our fates sealed. I've lived in this mansion for my young life, with you and with our friends and associates. Now I want it to be mine. We will marry within the year, I will inhabit the Queen's wing of the manor. You are free to do as you like, even to save the young Page you have taken to so kindly." Everly's eyes flicked to the bowl and back. "It IS your choice. He is safe, and we will marry. I don't expect you to propose right away, I have time. He has nine fingers left. I have just as many days."

Saiah swept out of the gallery as the raspy question met her ears. "Where is he?"

Everly won't find him, she knew. A magnificent ring would be on her finger before he would accept another severed digit delivered to him.

Saiah would keep her promises, so long as Everly kept his. Marriage. Children. So many parties she could barely count. But she COULD count. After all, the young lover's toy had oh so many fingers.

[nikaharper]

Ethically-Sourced

It wasn't the perfect gambit, but it didn't have to be. It just had to work, a few times at least, forever at best. It was temporary, so she hoped, so she believed. And business was going alright so who could complain?

It began to take over a lot of her life, so she cut back her hours at work and spent endless weekends at posh farmers markets and hocking her wares at local-ish artist collectives and places where people will buy ethical soy candles for nineteen bucks each.

She was perpetually scented of patchouli, which was better than other things at least. Her tiny apartment smelled like all sorts of things, but mostly the patchouli, which was as designed.

So that was five more at the market, three at the couture clothing joint, and a new vegetarian vietnamese place across the bridge that was just comfortably outside of her purview that selling them a pack of ten candles (all lemongrass!) felt safe enough. They were good candles after all! She put a lot of time into them. Maybe she'd keep with it when this whole issue blew over, but she couldn't imagine keeping up with it for longer than a few months. The mess in the kitchen was reason enough to get fed up. But the sales were going well, and spaced out, and the police had stopped calling months ago. Besides she was good for another six months at least. No point worrying about the future.

Ten lemongrass soy candles, she had three lying around so just seven more. Not too bad if she was careful. She'd have to throw out those pans. Probably move out. The oven was nearly busted anyway. What a stupid idea. No matter how long she cleaned it, there was that burnt residue of mistakes and frustration. She did much better when she used a hippie crafter's kiln. They were understanding of her need to self-cremate her "German Shepherd." They brought her flowers. Well, he was German. As for the Shepherd, nobody could say.

The trick was mixing the ashes with the wax, but she'd gotten good at it. The labels (artfully crafted, hand-stamped and proudly Organic) did not mention being vegetarian. It was merely implied. She would NEVER eat at that vegetarian vietnamese restaurant, for one thing.

Admittedly, it was hard work, and good fun, and the candles smelled great and burned evenly. She nearly had a knack for this stuff. It made offloading the remains a lot easier. Maybe she would stick with it for a while, her baggie was less than half full and she hummed little songs over the wax pot. Songs about burning.

The lemongrass candles were a hit with vegan diners. She got an order for twenty more. Didn't have to be the perfect gambit, just had to smell nice in the right upstart cafes.

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[nikaharper]

Substitution

A story written on Twitch.

When she complained about her leg, I assured her it was all going to work. "It hurts," she whispered, her breath hitting my ear in gossamer gasps. "You'll be whole soon, your leg will be back." I applied the bandages, a salve to soothe the ache and the burn, and gave her another drink of the tea. It calmed her heart and her breath, she lay quiet for another few hours, enough for the leg to grow accustomed and likewise.

The next time she spoke, it was a cry. I was there with a rag at her forehead, brushing the saline from her eyes, "Shhhh your leg is doing well." It was. It was lively on her knee, wriggling and enjoying the air she breathed, basking in our exhaled whispers. She fainted, but I waited for her next wishes.

"What is this?" Her words zig-zagged through the steam of the kettle, escaped on the vent in the ceiling like the cruel wind that whipped outside. I wiped her tears again, kissing her jaw and wondering what else ailed her. Her joints creaked in their bandages, and she flexed her elbow, "It's... it's...!" "It's all happening soon," I crooned, wetting her scalp and kissing her nose. When the noise was too much I shut the door and used a pillow. And continued to sew her her into shape. It took readily, the stitches melded and rejoiced, finally bound to a form; they sang and danced and I danced with them, in the flickering candlelight as the night wore on. We awaited her next word, her command, we tingled with the anticipation of her needs.

"Water," was the next cry and water she had, slurped sideways through thick ceramic mugs and hot like her heart, like her limbs, like the air around us. It was a sauna, the inside was the outside, pumping life into the very air and I captured it all for her, for the being she could become. She stopped speaking after that, the water either having lulled her or letting her rest in her satisfaction, and my work continued, seeing what called out for recovery.

A pinky finger. A patch on the shoulder. A long strip of abdomen that felt better when relocated. The long sigh of skin as it rests and hugs its neighbors. I sighed along with it.

She awoke. New. But antique. The shudders of pleasure wracked her form but more tea calmed it all, it was so much to take in, yet so much more to do.

The waxen lipstick displaced her mouth for but a moment, and kept them strong for the unveiling. Her lungs were her own, her throat was a brocade of those I'd loved before, whose lacy forms became a mantle to display. A quilt of love, a hungering canvas.

When she awoke, she was Everything. "It hurts," she whined, and my tea made everything quiet. The twitching, the excitement, it soothed the moments before the project was complete. That's the hard part, you know. Finding a suitable carrier. I'd seen them all, their nervous endings electric, their spasms of anticipation. I knew I had done right. Everything said so. Now, she was Everything.

I waited for the next breath.....

"Stop...."

But I have so much to show you. Have you ever been more beautiful than with her calves? Her miracle, musical hands? Have you ever known such benevolence as what these shoulders have wrought?

Have you ever been truly kissed, with lips such as these?

And I lean down to match my mouth against hers, and what is not hers anymore. The pucker of a princess, the pout of a priest. They whisper prayers, quiet things to me, thanking me for freeing them into the world where they can say whatever they want after so long of just yearning. And she? She is the heart. She is the soul. But she might not be the body. That's up to her.

As I cradle her perfected being, rubbing salve on the gashes and stitches, she utters: "Please, release me...."

But I know the lips that form her request. And they love me, as they love themselves. They love her too.

Don't worry. You're okay here, you're healthy. Everyone here will tell you so.

[nikaharper]

Life in the Face of Life

He got distracted in rooms with TVs, or bars that were always watching sports. Somehow it always cut in. People bringing their "family" to the big game, news reports cutting into commercials that were ALWAYS top billing, new ways to humanize and dehumanize something that could be classified as neither. He was a songwriter, he needed material to write on napkins after his third beer, but it seemed the craze was taking all the airwaves. My Bloodied Valentine Old Zomb, New Tricks 'Til Undeath Do Us Part

It was not only on the news, but there were commercials, daytime TV, songs that spoke about it. None of it was flattering. When the dead stopped dying, it became a pop sensation. A trend, a meme, a movement. There were the anti-zombie protesters, the Pro-Undead Rights Union, and mostly the entertainment industry that had grasped the first new thing and ground it into the back of all our minds, until the subject was laughter instead of understanding.

'Un-Dad,' the weeknight sitcom that had a real walker blindly stumbling around his family home, swapped out with a guy in a zombie suit when they needed the laugh-track-cued look of frustration and annoyance. The ultimate mindless comedy for the mindless viewers who would rather giggle at something than grasp its weight. Hey, bring Late Uncle Marvin in here! He'd get a kick out of this!

Treating the dead as pets was inhuman.

Treating the dead as human was ignorant.

Treating the issue as entertainment was abhorrent.

Much as he tried to bring his mind back to a world of living and dead being binary and clean, he couldn't. THe guitar strings under his fingers, the keys on the piano, they all whined about something he found repugnant and confusing: THe whole world thought this situation was amusing. Not miraculous. Not terrifying. Not indicative of a global paradigm shift. They thought it was novelty.

When the health department had to study whether having undead in the workforce passed hygiene code, when labor unions were split on whether zombies had rights, when local governments determined whether walkers counted as a passenger in the carpool lane or as a dependent on tax forms, the American populace didn't give a whit for as large as it could be exploited, or laughed at, or if their clothes were cheaper if made by zombie hands.

Wars were brewing over sacrilegious ideals, rights movements were creating uprisings and violence around the world, but Facebook had post after post of Ha Ha Ha As though death was a new classification of circus animal retardation to be mocked or shamed or used for their own ends.

Picking up a guitar again, his head whirred with lyrics about feelings, and experiences, and the time his mind sickly perceived as "The Old Days." But those all felt like folk music for a deaf audience, who wanted to hear about whether zombies could fuck or whether their car wash would be cheaper if dead people held the rags. He wanted to sing about love without mentioning a heartbeat. He wanted to cry about loss without a line about muzzles. He wanted people to see art without the new, nylon manufactured veil applying mortality to their every experience. But the songs stopped coming out, because he was just as stuck as they all were.