#august!heat

[augustmakkabaus]

This Is When The Bad Guy Wins

No houses around to put locks on the doors He dreamt he was a king, safe in his bed

The insects droned and hummed from the willows, cypress and oaks in the southern humidity. The air hung as heavy and stagnate as the murky swampland surrounding him. August picked carefully through the muck. By now, he knew exactly which paths to take and where to step to avoid sinking into the bottomless bayou swamp. He had his land memorized like the veins in the back of his hand. Each time he went into town, he would take a new path.

  Dull thuds echoed through the summer air behind him.

  Arvak leaned forward to nuzzle his neck affectionately. The beast’s eyes glowed a dim red in the summer sunlight and his black coat glistened even in the shade.

  Somewhere a bullfrog croaked loudly. It sounded like a band snapping… over and over.

  It was answered by another one. And another one.

  Arvak snorted and shook a few stray flies from his mane.

  Up above them, birds whispered and tittered to one another. Their wings disturbed the heavy air and the limp tree leaves.

  August was dressed smartly in a deep, forest green suit. His waistcoat was a pale cream color and the shirt under it was a dark, midnight blue. Upon his head sat a casual flat cap which blocked out some of the sun’s light but none of its heat. His eyes were a vibrant Kelly green. They had maintained this color for several months now, shifting only occasionally.

  Charlotte had been born earlier that year and that was the only explainable reason for this eye difference… it always shifted after a birth in their growing family.

  Up ahead, he could hear the other two squealing and shouting to one another.

  Here in the backwoods part of New Orleans, they had begun their own life. He had taken this entire section of the city and surrounding bayou as his own. Trespassers were killed, no questions asked.

  In the heart of it, he had built his little cottage which had since grown into a respectable plantation-style home. The siding was whitewashed and the entrance was framed with Grecian style pillars (those were new this year). The lane was paved with off-white gravel stones and lined with southern oaks. Despite this welcoming drive leading out about a mile to the main road, they didn’t have very many conventional guests.

  Blackwood Manor had quite the reputation, after all.

  He emerged into the neat clearing.

  Here the ground was built up some. The lawn was trimmed cleanly and there were live and growing things everywhere. The greenhouse was not far away and beyond that, toward the back of the manor house, lay the hedge maze.

  There was a sense of peace to the place. Tranquility. It was their own slice of the earth they had carved out and made a home in. As the rest of the world was thundering ahead through the twentieth century and embracing modern conveniences, they had decided to linger back in the simple days with their abilities and their children.

  However content they may be to linger in the past, August himself was progressive in most of his thinking.

  He was only now returning from a very spirited political rally put on in the heart of the city in front of the mayor’s house. It entailed equal rights and like-minded liberal thinkers. Many of them looked up to August. All of them knew him.

  Truthfully, he was unaccustomed to his growing notoriety. However, he didn’t dislike it. Actually he was quite basking in it.

  “Papa!” Greg was the first to get to him. The boy’s legs were longer and sounder than his younger sister’s. That, and it looked as though Lenora had been intent upon picking the wings off of a butterfly. The poor insect now lay limply in the lawn. August grimaced. Not for the butterfly’s sake, but for Heart’s. She was trying so hard to rid their daughter of… whatever it was. Her darkness… her unfortunate birthright from him.

  “It’s pretty!” Nora held up one of the delicate butterfly wings and smiled proudly over her gift to her father. At least she could enjoy pretty things…

  He knelt down into the soft grass and wrapped them both up. He didn’t have the heart to lecture Nora… that, and he knew it wouldn’t do any good.

  Arvak snorted and trotted off to enjoy himself elsewhere.

  “Mama is making soup for dinner! She said it’s cooking now!” Greg was obviously excited over Heart’s dishes. She definitely knew how to cook; August couldn’t blame the small boy.

  “Is she in the kitchen now?” The years had worn on August’s accent. The heavy German had lightened and was now mixed with a touch of a southern lilt.

  “Nuh-uh,” Greg shook his head and latched his arms around his father’s neck before nodding toward the green house.

  August rose, carrying the boy who held on like a monkey. Nora took his free hand and followed along beside him, sucking her thumb contentedly. August found himself wondering when they had both gotten so big. Greg was becoming almost too heavy to carry long distances. Something about that made his heart sink. Their babies were growing up. It also served as a reminder for how long they had made it together.

  He paused at the doorway to the greenhouse. Greg squirmed in his arms but he tried to shush him.

  Really, he knew that Heart would sense his presence regardless of how quiet he attempted to be.

  Charlotte was lying on her back on a knitted blanket and gurgling happily as she kicked her tiny, plump legs around. She had managed to grab fistfuls of grass and was inspecting them curiously. Her dark hair was like down on top of her head and her eyes were bright and fascinated by everything that was living around both of them. She definitely took after the goodness in Heart.

  Heart herself was knelt into the grass beside the baby and working the earth and nurturing her plants.

  He couldn’t see, but he had no doubt that her face was streaked with dirt and her dress was peppered with the dark stuff. He forced away a cringe and instead imagined cleaning it all away from her and helping her take the soiled dress off…

  “Mama!” Greg finally broke silence as he squirmed away from August’s arms and slid down to the ground. He moved forward but was distracted by a large group of flowers. Without a thought, and in his childish good nature, he picked two of the Rain Lilys and handed both to Heart. “One is for you and one is for Lottie!” His face was split wide with a delighted smile at what he had done. He contentedly plopped his round bottom on the ground beside her and started poking at the earth around him.

  Nora hung back by August and remained mostly quiet, murmuring something to herself in a language August understood though he didn’t know how.

  “I was kept longer than I planned,” he finally spoke up as he crouched down and showed Nora a thriving group of purple aster, “the rally grew a bit… animated…” Nora sniffed the pretty flowers before pulling a stalk up by the roots and offering them to August. Her face was lit as brightly as Greg’s had been. However, she had also done twice the damage to the poor plant. How could he turn her down, though? She was offering him some flowers and that was a sweet and kindly action.

  “Thank you,” he spoke clear English to her. Hopefully she would give up on this nonsense baby babble… or maybe what concerned him more was that it wasn’t nonsense.

  He turned back to Heart, “they’re calling for a new mayor… one who can make a difference in the city and one who isn’t stuck in the old ways so to speak. The old way of thinking…” He straightened as Nora darted out of the greenhouse and off to find some other kind of adventure. As long as she didn’t come back with a dead mouse or anything else that wasn’t still breathing, he was fine with letting her go.

  He paced around the greenhouse as he continued speaking quickly so as to not let her get in a word of opposition, “I spoke to Eve too… she was there in support of the women’s rights movement,” he poked at some thriving aloe, his other hand behind his back, “apparently more than half of the city wants me… The entire French Quarter is in my favor and the idea is spreading. I’m not sure if it is out of fear of me or liking me…” he spun to face her. The power had always drawn him. The need to control the city had always been there – they both had known that. But now it was within grasp and he was definitely going to take it.

  After all, too many people would be afraid to oppose him and end up as Arvak’s dinner.

[augustmakkabaus]

Wrap My Roots All Around My Bones

And when they come for me When they call my name Cast my shadow from a bellow’s flame Cause I’ve loved you for too long I’ve loved you for too long I’ve loved you for too long So let the storm come Old heat of a raging fire Come and light my eyes Summer’s kiss to electric wire But I’ll never die

“And this is what used to be the old dining room. As you can see, we have converted it for the sake of putting up a few extra display cases… that and their old dining room table was unsalvageable, unfortunately.”

  Damn, that table was a good hardwood too. Only blemish on it was from Lottie’s paints.

  The tour guide paused and the people flocked away from their original large clump around her. They spread out over the dining room and even into kitchen. They were browsing and reading the text plates nailed into the walls around the room. Display cases showed various pieces of china, old tea pots and teacups, along with table clothes, wash rags, and so on. It seemed many things had been preserved in what had been the near ruins of the house.

  It would seem thieves had been too terrified to cross the property line to plunder the house. So, apparently it had sat nearly untouched for almost a century.

Good.

  As it should have been… alone with nature. Heart would have been happy with that.

  As the group broke away, August was the only one who remained standing before the petite blonde who was chatting lightly with a guest.

  This had been his house. His dining room. Memories flooded back as his eyes wandered across the room. Hell, even the…

  “The papering on the walls is still vintage to the house. In spots, it was unsalvageable so the New Orleans Historic Society tried to match the paper as close as possible. Also, as I mentioned before, some of the furniture, lighting, wood work, and so on are replicas… they’re what the family probably had in their home at the time. Sadly, mold and mildew ate at a lot of the original wood. Also, sadly,” the blonde clenched her hands over her heart, “Hurricane Katrina took her toll on this beautiful historic place as she did with the rest of New Orleans.”

  How courteous of them, August found himself thinking. They went through all that trouble to fix up his home for his inevitable return from death.

  “Any questions?” The tour guide was looking around at her group. Her large blue eyes were bright and welcoming. Nobody raised a hand or spoke up, though. “Right then, on to the parlor. This is where the family spent most of their time.”

  August snorted but hardly anybody paid any attention to him.

  He couldn’t recall spending any more time in the parlor than any other part of the house. Actually, he recalled spending more time in his study or outside… the parlor certainly was not his favorite part of the house. Then again, there were those few times with Heart in there…

  He found himself in a daydream wondering if that sofa was still preserved.

  “Here we have it!” The tour guide waved around and brought them all to a stop once more. August made a face. It wasn’t his parlor… well, it was, but it displayed relics from the children’s old nursery, too. “You might be wondering why there are a great deal of children’s things on this side,” the perky lady waved over to her right, “the upper stories have not been renovated yet and are not quite safe to put on display and tours. But we want you to see the sweet things that the Makkabaus children owned and would have read or played with. No doubt, August and Heart Makkabaus spent many hours reading fairy tales and nursery rhymes to their children.”

  Or maybe Grimm’s stories… and tales about brave witches and dastardly worlocks… lots of violence and bloodshed… not that Heart approved.

  “Is it true?” One dark haired lady finally asked, “The ghost stories they tell about this place?”

  “There’s a whole book on it in the novelty shop.”

  August snorted again from the back. He was flattered now. He had his own novelty shop… they did. All of them. They were all alive… or going to be alive. He certainly was not going to be leaving his only son at the bottom of the swamp.

  “And they never found the bodies of the family?” Another, taller (though not as tall as August) man asked.

  “Never… August Makkabaus and his son sank into the mud… probably so deep now that we wouldn’t even be able to find their bones. Heart Makkabaus’ body was searched for… to give it a proper burial… but,” she shrugged and made a sad face, “it was never located. The citizen’s who took them as a threat worked very hard to ensure they were never united again… not even in death.”

  August’s face turned stony cold, his eyes flicked momentarily to an angry red. He could recall his own death as if it had happened just the day before.

  He remembered feeling the mud sucking at his ankles and then his knees. It had worked its way up his torso. All the while those disgusting witches had forced his Heart and his Greg to watch. He had sunk into the bayou… panicked due to the mud and slop. He recalled reaching out mentally for Heart and spending his last few moments with her. It had been a long-coming death spent choking on mud and swamp water for life that would not come.

  Gray-blue eyes flickered back to life and he brought himself back into the parlor. He forced himself to face the cheerful tour guide and banish those memories.

  “Is it also true that on the foundation you can still read the etched words by August Makkabaus himself?”

  “It’s true!” the lady smiled, “it still says ‘I will never die’ right in the stone foundation of this house… that’s on the last part of our tour. Apparently he was just as possessive as everybody claimed he was. Their family was sort of feared by the community.”

  Sort of. Ha.

  And it depends on what community you’re talking about… by the coven, yes. Everyone else, no.

  Everyone else had practically worshiped him and Heart for what they had been… royalty.

  Something else distracted August just then and he turned from the tedious conversation. How could these people discuss something like the entire eradication of his family so calmly? It was irritating him.

  In one of the display cases to his left there were some of his journals as well as his edited books for Heart.

  He smirked and reached out, resting a hand on the polished glass covering the books. The plate beside them described how he used to edit Heart’s treasured novels… much to her chagrin, he added. Secretly she loved it, though. He knew it. He had always known it.

  His fingers flexed over the surface of the glass, his eyes closed and the pain within him thudded dully. The glass cracked under his gentle touch.

  August yanked his palm back quickly lest anyone notice. There was a spider web pattern of hairline cracks now covering Heart’s books.

  He wanted them back.

  “They also say, on certain clear nights, if you stand outside in the middle of the bayou, you can hear Arvak crying. They say it sounds like a woman’s scream mixed with the roar of a lion…”

  “And they also say if you stand in the old hedge maze for long enough, you can hear August and Heart Makkabaus laughing and talking…”

  “What do they say?”

  August overheard the teens talking and he leaned in close, “they’re plotting their next murder… you,” he whispered into the young boy’s ear before slipping away and pulling his fedora down over his eyes. They shifted from pale blue to deep amber. An impish smirk spread across his face.

  In the foyer, there were family portraits covering the walls. Each one had a text plate underneath it or beside it.

  He paused in front of the one taken shortly before he left for World War I. There he was in his U.S. uniform. That was a joke… actually, he didn’t recall Heart ever having this one taken in the first place. His head tilted to the side and his eyes flicked to the text beside it.

  August Makkabaus shortly before leaving his wife and three young children to join in the American cause for the First World War. This photograph is rumored to have been kept on Heart’s person at all times. It was only by luck that she was not carrying it on the day she died.

  So nobody had ever learned that he did not fight for America but for his native land.

  Huh.

  August moved away from the portrait…

  Wait… Heart kept a picture of him on her person?

  His eyes narrowed suspiciously. He hadn’t ever seen it anywhere on her… he was pretty sure that was a silly, romanticized rumor.

  He allowed his eyes to scope out the rest of the room. They roved up the pale blue walls and toward the ceiling. The old place creaked and groaned in the light wind outside.

  This was his home. These people shouldn’t be wandering, speculating and stomping all over his place… the place he had built for his Heart and their growing family.

  Outside, the clouds rolled over the sun. The southern live oaks bent in the growing breeze. The temperature dropped and people came darting into the house around him as a downpour began outside.

  “What happened with the weather!?” One girl asked her mother, “It was just gorgeous out!”

  “You know what they say about this place?” August leaned down to her, “God, Mothernature, nothing controls the weather here… nothing’s natural because the master and his lady aren’t here and the land knows it. It obeys no one but them.”

  The girl stared at him as if she recognized him from the pictures but she didn’t say anything. She was struck dumb.

  August’s eyes sparkled hazel out of mirth and he was the only one to move to the front door. It took great self-restraint not to burn all of these people right out of his house… out of his bayou and out of his city.

  New Orleans would be his again but first, first… well, a king needed a queen and he needed his heirs. Lenora and Charlotte were already accounted for.

  August stepped out into the rain and immediately it parted around his form. The droplets continued in a constant sheet all around him… everywhere except right above him. He gazed up toward the sky and laughed as he finally spun with his dry arms outspread.

  “Enjoy my house while you can,” he turned back to the people. A few were watching him and now even more keenly. Several were murmuring among one another, “a change in the wind, isn’t there?”

  With a snap of his fingers, a ball of flame erupted into his palms. The few oaks left in his front lawn (there used to be a whole forest of them…) bent and swayed in strange ways. It was as if they were bowing toward him and not toward any particular direction of the wind.

  He had almost forgotten how good this felt… to just have powers again. It filled the void where Heart was no more… for now.

  He could still feel her in the trees of this place… in the hedges and in the grass and flowers. She was everywhere around him.

  He tossed the ball of flame onto the ground and it burst, spreading a circle around him. It burned despite the sheeting rain.

  August had always been one for theater and dramatics. This fondness was probably even written down and recorded somewhere on one of those wall plates nailed into the boards of his house.

  With a snap and a pop, the air rippled and August was gone entirely much to the astonishment of the people watching him from within the shelter of the house.

  The weather immediately cleared up, the rain vanished and the chirping of the birds returned.

  The tour guide stumbled outside and warily approached the now dying flames. She and a few others kicked the remnants out and gasped as they saw words scrawled across the ground in the ash. It was August’s famous handwriting:

  “Ich werde zurückkehren”

[augustmakkabaus]

Some days I try hard To watch my mouth To say the right things But the wrong just slip right out Oh, I ain't no Southern belle No Georgia peach I guess all my good graces are too far out of reach I sleep so deep each night I'm lying in the bed we made And when I get you off, babe Well you know it's give and take So I don't feel bad When I get mine Oh, I'm getting used to walking on a thin line Sometimes I'm doing things half-ass wrong Sometimes the words I sing are just some half-ass song I get lost and I get found Oh, and I'll be good until I need another round 'Cause I want whiskey when I'm sick And a man when I'm well But it's nice to have them both sometimes When I feel like raising hell

[augustmakkabaus]

Take Me To Church - Hozier

[augustmakkabaus]

If I Live or Die - Cuff the Duke

[augustmakkabaus]

I want your energy, I want your aura You are my destiny, My mantra

Go down in history Go down together, Into infinity, Forever

[augustmakkabaus]

Into The Wind - Lord Huron

You've been gone for a long long time You've been in the wind, you've been on my mind You are the purest soul I've ever known in my life

[augustmakkabaus]

Death Is A Wall, But It Can't Be The End

You are my protector and my best friend Well they say that you're gone and that I should move on I wonder: how do they know, baby? How do they know? Well, they don't

“Who was she?”

  August was jolted out of his thoughts as he heard a woman across from him speaking up, addressing him, obviously. When his eyes moved slowly to meet hers, he saw seated across from him a dark skinned woman who wore an understanding and sympathetic smile. She was dressed in a simple pair of faded blue jeans and a button up purple blouse. Her light jacket was a darker purple and complimented her nicely. She looked like a pleasant young woman, all together, he decided.

  “What was that, I’m sorry?” His German accent made him stand out here in the Midwest of America. His head tilted to the side slightly and his fingers flexed around the journal he had been staring blankly into.

  “Your wife?” The woman nodded a bit toward his ring and he looked down at it as well and ran his fingers over the cool metal, flexing his left hand into a light fist.

  “Oh,” he swallowed and shut the journal slowly. It was antiqued, faded and worn in many spots and fragile.

  Charlotte had managed to reunite him with his body and, after a very brief time together, he had set off on his quest to find Heart with nothing but an address and a name that Lottie had kept track of. Their family was broken, defeated, beaten down and scattered and he felt the tear of it as the pieces floated through the wind. His powers were minimal now as his body had returned mortal. His abilities were locked within Heart and hers within him.

  “I’m sorry,” the woman shook her head and looked away. She flushed a bit, embarrassed at having pried into a total stranger’s life.

  The subway rattled on and the lights flickered a bit. Clink, clink. The wheels clattered against the tracks.

  “Her name was Arabella. We were married a long time ago,” he broke the silence and smiled sadly. He vividly remembered her face that last time he had seen her before he had been drowned and stripped of his powers, “she was my heart.”

  The woman’s head tilted to the side a little and she nodded with understanding as a small smile crept over her face. She sensed that there was a powerful story to be had from him. She had a feeling this wasn’t the type of story one heard every day, it was the type of story poems and fairy tales were based off of, “what are you doing in Chicago?”

  He looked up toward her, his eyes a dark gray and a little vacant. He had only been back on this earth for a week and already his mind was swimming with the differences and he was still trying to wrap his brain around everything. “I’m looking for something.”

  “Oh,” she shifted and looked away from him as the conversation died again. Her heart sank.

  “She was beautiful, you know,” since he was entirely mortal, August had begun to feel more than he could ever recall having felt. He remembered Heart not by her powers but by her touch, not by their strength together, but by the softness of her eyes and pale skin. “She had these eyes,” he waved a hand in front of himself as if trying to convey the power of them, “and her hair…” a hazy look fell over his face, “it always smelled like flowers and sunshine. You know, like if you lay in the grass all day long in the middle of summer? And the way she danced… when no one was looking, obviously,” he cast a glance toward the woman as he smirked a little, his smile was wistful, “she would dance through the fields as if she was in a trance.” As his face lit, his nose crinkled a bit and the woman leaned in a little closer, “and,” he continued as he realized he had a captive audience. He had never appreciated any of this until right now, until he was mortal and all thoughts of power had slipped to the back of his mind, “and there was a connection where she would sense me there and just… pull me into her orbit.”

  The woman nodded encouragingly, her own eyes grew a little dreamy at his powerful descriptions of this mystery woman.

  “You know, they always say a man can ruin a woman and pluck her flower, scandalizing her forever. I challenge that,” he readjusted himself, speaking with his hands and leaning in closer to her as if he was sharing a secret, “I hold that a woman is just as capable of ruining a man. I was perfectly content and happy before she came into my life. She consumed me, drove me crazy, tormented me and pulled me from my path. She ruined me utterly and I was smiling the whole time. What could be more sinister than that?”

  Their eyes met and the woman smiled softly as the love showed through August’s eyes for this Arabella he spoke of.

  “We would lay out in the fields after dark and watch the stars change over and we would rename the constellations whatever we wanted because we ruled the world,” he laughed and shook his head, his eyes redirecting toward the floor, “sometimes I think I took her for granted… I know I did.”

  “You must have really loved her, though,” the woman smiled kindly toward him and brought his eyes back to her.

  “The way she moved… with such grace, and even when she was angry with me… she wouldn’t always show it. She accepted me for what I was and for who I was. Have you ever been so in love,” he fidgeted in his seat as he tried to convey the passion of these words, “that you just feel that pull that connects you together? And,” he paused as he struggled to find the proper words and his hands motioned for him, “and no matter what happens, you can always feel her there? It’s like… she’s in everything around me, every being and in the very ground. Dragging me in and pulling me I know not where.”

  There was a silence that descended between them as the woman blinked and pulled herself away awkwardly. The passion of his words and the look in his eyes left her feeling at a loss. She struggled to think of something to say in response.

  “What happened to her?” The woman finally asked and August looked up again.

  “We were torn apart as circumstance would have it,” he looked into his clasped hands and licked his lips slowly as he thought back to that day. He worried his lower lip for a second, “apparently happily ever afters aren’t always forever.” He felt a warm tear trail down his cheek and he cleared his throat as he pushed it away. “Except there’s some love that overcomes fate and time.” When his eyes flicked up to the woman’s they were glittering bright and hazel.

  He reached to his side where he had set the journal and passed it across the space between them. She hesitated but finally took it carefully and flipped it open.

  “But this is dated for January first of 1907, “she gasped and glanced toward him, “this was a hundred years ago!”

  “I know,” his face brightened and his eyes danced, full of life and mischief, “that’s my birthday,” he nodded toward it and she read a few sentences silently, her lips moving with the words, “but…” she blinked and she looked back up toward August, aghast as she put all the pieces together, “that is impossible…”

  The subway stopped and more people boarded, August looked up and his eyes fell on a pretty brunette. He had been watching her get on this very subway for the past four days. Always at the same time and place.

  Her hair was chopped short and her eyes were a sparkling hazel. His fingers rubbed over his ring pensively as she took a seat and stared straight ahead. The woman sitting across from August followed his line of sight and frowned a little as she looked between them. She got the distinct sense of something that wasn’t quite right, yet it wasn’t wrong either. It felt more ethereal than anything else – there was something supernatural about what she was witnessing.

  “Do you believe in fate?” August turned to her, his eyes were still light and she found herself nodding despite her uncertainty.