TIMING: In the fall LOCATION: Regan and Jade's house PARTIES: Regan and Madison SUMMARY: When gremlins come pouring out of a car, Regan and Madison are forced to run, and the house is not as safe as either of them had hoped.
Regan had finished raking the sidewalk. That was important. The mat of leaves obscured the dips and snags in the pavement, and less cautious individuals might have fallen.
“Yeah, that’s the real threat around here. Leaves.”
There was hurt behind the nasal Voice today. There often was. Regan wasn’t stupid; she recognized Pubik’s voice when she heard it, which was unfortunately far too often. But this was her guilty conscience spinning up her own torment; it wasn’t real. There were few options for self-torment, when a dead albatross hanging around her neck would have felt more like a reward. “Not a threat,” Regan muttered, “they just don’t belong here.”
She emptied the bag on the front lawn instead, careful spreading the dead leaves over the dirt and any stubborn grass that still lived. Lawns didn’t survive the winter, yet most people plucked off any fallen leaves they could, as if it soiled their dying greenery. Why not give life to something else, like the fungi and salamanders?
The bag of leaves was about half empty when it happened. Across the street, the Honda in the driveway made a rumbling, sputtering noise. No one was in it. Regan froze and watched. Another sputter. The car’s engine roared for about two seconds, before making a groaning, yowling noise like a dying cat (Melody was probably watching curiously from the window). A thick plume of smoke erupted from the hood then it sprung open on its own. From a distance, it looked like mice were pouring out from the car’s innards, erupting free. Her skin prickled fiercely. Was it the strangeness of the situation, or…
The mice were coming this way.
—
At least it wasn’t nighttime when she was out for a walk. And Madison wasn’t a child, she could handle going for walks by herself. She was up in Maine, miles from her family, all by herself and so she could handle a little walk about town. It was a perfectly basic and reasonable skill to be able to do, and here she was, doing it!
Decompe Lane sure was an interesting name for a street, but maybe because of all the powerful things up here, they had more… interesting names to match. Or maybe it was a New England thing. Not that North Carolina had only boringly named streets, but still. It seemed like the sort of street that fit into her narrative and fit into this town (or at least what she’d seen of the town), and she was going to roll with that.
There was a woman in one of the yards on the street. Madison noticed her especially because of her striking white hair. That was a cool look, though not one that Madison herself could ever dream of even attempting to pull off. She liked her hair as it was. It suited her and all that she was.
She did, however, jump at the sputtering of a nearby car. She knew that she needed to get better about being as easily startled as she was, but that was something to work on another time when she wasn’t on a nice and chill walk, enjoying the cool air. Except that the hood of the car opened and something – or somethings came pouring out and she took a few steps back, not realizing that she almost bumped into the white-haired woman.
—
The mice were definitely fae. Regan’s skin was a blanket of needles as the creatures poured closer. And closer. With their pointy little ears and sharp teeth. They weren’t alone. “Hey, watch—” But a young woman (child?) nearly stumbled into her. They both would’ve been flat on the pavement had that happened. “I think they’re—are they coming toward us? I mean, for us.” Regan kept the bag clutched in her hands, squeezed tight in her fingers, which looked—she was certain she had her necklace on, so why were they dark?
The first of the fae mice reached them, and Regan kicked it off her shoe, but another quickly replaced it. The girl wasn’t doing much better. These creatures were like sand, and how were you supposed to fight that? No. Escaping was easiest. They could just go inside the house, problem solved. “Uh, over here!” Regan darted toward her front walkway. “Come on!” She winced as one of them sank its teeth into her calf, and she swatted it with a hand that looked a lot less glamoured than it should have.
—
“For us?” Madison’s voice practically squeaked (okay, so maybe it did actually squeak, more than just a little bit). “Why would – what are those?” They didn’t look like anything that she was familiar with – and that wasn’t to say that she knew everything about all sorts of things, but she did know of a lot of animals, but maybe she should have done more research on the Maine wildlife before she came up here. Now she’d have to do it all after the fact and hope that it turned out alright. But she couldn’t do that now —
— or rather, she could (easily, if she really wanted), but pulling out her phone and typing ‘small things that come out of cars and run at you’ was probably not going to give her any real or solid results.
The things were at them now, nipping at their legs and Madison kicked one away, wincing slightly as it hit the pavement a good dozen feet away from where they were standing. The woman called out to her and Madison didn’t even entirely notice the way that the woman’s body was shifted (mostly on account of trying to not get bitten by tiny half-inch-tall things). “I’m coming!” She ran to where the woman stood, looking over at the door to the house. Except apparently the tiny things could read minds or something, because a whole lot of them zoomed over to the door suddenly, blocking their chances of making it inside.
—
The mice were blocking their way to safety. Did they know how many dead mice Regan had handled over the last couple of years? Perhaps this was about revenge. And revenge could not be met with calculus alone. Regan didn’t ask—she grabbed the girl’s wrist. They were going to ram through the rodent blockade. She had never been known for her athleticism, but they had the advantage of proximity, and the mice were still gathering. Without warning, Regan bolted over some of the mice and wrenched the door open. She slammed it shut behind them, and a few mice managed to sneak in, probably clinging to them like ticks. They skittered off to some unknown corner of the house, afraid. Or planning.
Regan pressed her back against the door, her breath vibrating through the wood. The bag of leaves went slack against her thigh as her muscles finally unclenched. Mice got into homes all the time, but even if a few more pursued them inside, surely most of them would scatter in other directions, right?
It got dark so early this time of year, and everything looked muted—the green of the bisexual couch, the wall of photos, even the nudes. Regan habitually reached for the light switch, but when she flicked it, nothing happened. She looked up. Right. She had blown those bulbs yesterday. Darkness it would be.
“I live here,” Regan told the girl, lest she think they had just broken into a random house. Though the door had been unlocked, so it would have been evidence of negligent homeowners. Regan and Jade took excessively good care of their house. “We will wait out the mice in here. Let’s see where they are…” Regan pulled the shades up and scanned outside through a window twice as thick as most. Nothing. She was silent for a moment. Still looking. Was she somehow missing them? “I don’t see them anymore.”
—
The woman’s hand wrapped itself around her wrist and then bolted toward the door. Madison wouldn’t have been able to debate or argue with the woman even if she wanted to (and she didn’t want to). The little bitey things were not something she especially wanted around herself and so she was already planning on running toward the door (or at least somewhere away from them), and going inside somewhere seemed the best course of action. The bitey things (she needed a better name for them) were not the fastest things in the world, but they could bite and she didn’t really want to get bitten (because she was sane and most sane people didn’t actively try to get bitten, right?).
Once inside, she picked at her cuticles for a moment, trying to figure out where to send her nervous energy. But of course she was nervous, and the other woman had to be nervous too, right? So they could be that together and figure out what to do to fix this situation. She’d be brave! Madison would help and figure things out and not mess up. Hopefully. She just maybe needed to invest in heels, because maybe those would help her fight things off. She preferred her sneakers, but she’d have to see about ordering some that were not meant for just winter.
“It’s a nice house.” She couldn’t see it too well, but it had nice vibes (or she thought it might), and it felt like the right sort of thing to say regardless. She watched the woman open the windowshades and Madison looked through the window too – though there was something different about the window that she couldn’t quite place. She placed her hand on one of the window panes, trying to feel out what was different, but now wasn’t the time (even if she wanted to poke around the house more). “I don’t see them.” She squinted, scanning the yard outside and the cars in the street. Just then, as if out of nowhere, a whole bundle of bitey things (what was the proper term for them) dropped down from the ceiling and onto the floor. “Where – they – where did they come from?”
The bitey things started running at them and this time Madison grabbed the woman’s hand and pulled her in the direction of another room, hoping it wasn’t filled with more tiny bitey things.
—
The knock of knuckle against sturdy glass made Regan turn her head. The girl had noticed the unusual thickness of the windows. No time to offer a lie. She yanked the shades back over the glass, then paced the perimeter of the room. As she stalked by the wall of photos, she pulled those miniature shades down over the nudes, too, for good measure. There was a child here. The Jordana Brewsters and ulcer photos were appropriate enough. “Yes, it’s nice. I won’t have these f—mice tarnish it.” Or bite her again, but that was secondary to bespoiling what she and Jade had labored over.
“They came from the car. Did you not see?” That Honda was probably still smoking out there, releasing carcinogenic fumes to the wind. Regan would call the authorities if no one else beat her to it. Once she dealt with her current problem. Because she could feel them closing in, smothering her skin with needles.
Regan straightened her spine, whipping her head side to side, alert and searching. But where she should have looked was up. One of the mice fell on her shoulder, sinking its teeth into her clavicle. She could hear her flesh tear—its teeth left a round mark like a punch biopsy. Regan smacked at the creature and it fell—she’d hit her own shoulder instead—but now the bite throbbed and her lungs begged to answer it. That could not happen here. She bit her own tongue to contain it, and at least her teeth weren’t as sharp as the other ones masticating her body. More mice landed on the floor and beelined for whoever’s legs were closest. Regan kicked. One careened across the room like the floor had just been polished. Where did they come from?
Regan’s hand was pulled. The girl. She bristled at the contact—under more typical circumstances she’d have pried her hand free—but moving further into the house wasn’t a bad idea.
And then she saw it. The kitchen. Mice rained down from the vent above the stove, scattering across ceiling and floor. That answered that question. The vent was vomiting the little creatures faster than Regan was able to shake them off. “You handle these ones!” she instructed the girl, though her faith was piddling—the child had seemed overwhelmed by only a couple of the tiny creatures. “I will prevent their entrance!” Regan grabbed the bag of crinkling leaves and charged into the kitchen, pulling the bag’s opening around the vent, sealing it. Like it was the only way into the house.
—
“You know you can curse if you want to.” The woman seemed to have wanted to say the f-word, but maybe she’d stopped on account of Madison, which was courteous and all, but wholly unnecessary. “I don’t mind. You can say the harsher word of ‘freaking’ to describe the mice.” The decor around the woman’s house wasn’t necessarily something that Madison would have chosen at first, but everyone liked different things and the blobs that looked medical might have had a special meaning. She’d seen Grey’s Anatomy. She knew that medical professionals could find all sorts of weird (no offense!) things endearing and worth celebrating.
She nodded. “Yes, I saw – I just – well, I don’t get – I didn’t think mice lived in cars.” Or at least, not typically. Maybe they did up here though. She didn’t do a lot of research on mice in Maine before she moved here. Mostly because it wasn’t a research topic that she thought she would have to think much about, except that maybe she’d been wrong about that. She was, in fact, often wrong about quite a few things. Which she had no trouble admitting (perhaps it was too easy for her to admit things like this sometimes), but the car-mice weren’t something that she’d even considered being wrong about, mostly because she’d never much considered their existence in the first place.
Madison heard the sound of flesh tearing and made a face, though she had next to no time to react before a mouse had run up to her leg and started gnawing on it. She kicked it away, sending it careening across the room. Thankfully, the woman was at least microscopically agreeable when it came to moving into another room.
She’d always hated the book Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and though this wasn’t the same, it did also involve things that shouldn’t fall from the sky falling from the sky and causing more trouble than they should have. “I – yeah. Sure.” She hoped she sounded sure of herself, but even she could hear how her voice squeaked and came out disjointed.
The woman seemed to have a much more clear idea of what to do, and so while she wrapped the bag of leaves around the vent, Madison went to work trying to pick up as many of the mice things as she could. Except the more she looked at them (and the more they kept biting her), the more they really couldn’t be mice, could they?
There was a crash and the bag full of leaves was now full of leaves and mice and she watched, horrified, as the mice things grabbed the bag with their teeth and took off running. “Should we just use… tape, or something? I don’t know if that’ll work but…” her voice trailed off, then punctuated itself sharply with a “hey! Ouch!” as a few more of the things climbed up onto her and she kicked them away, wincing as they smashed into the wall opposite her.
—
Fae. The girl hadn’t realized these were fae, and Regan was going to keep it that way as long as she could. If she wanted to think a curse had almost come out of Regan’s mouth instead, Regan didn’t care. She winced as the girl began plucking up the fae with her bare hands—a terrible idea. “Don’t—at least get oven mitts!” This was not working well, but at least a few were spatter on the walls now. Meanwhile, the sack was squirming in Regan’s hands, and she was struggling to keep it sealed around the vent. It felt like the tap of the creatures was starting to slow… in this specific spot. Elsewhere? Well…
They needed to trap the captured ones somewhere that would not result in them scrambling free. Regan’s eyes hovered across the kitchen—cabinets would be useless, the closet even worse. There was the disposal in the sink, which seemed excessively cruel even considering their options (worth revisiting). The freezer… the freezer! The plan crystalized: catch, freeze, tend to any injuries (the child, not the fae), and explain it away.
Regan pulled the bag away from the vent and quickly tied it off. A few of the little fae continued to tumble down. Something quick and dark darted around the corner and pounced on one of the creatures. Lullaby, just as swift as Jade.
She clenched the bag shut, not trusting her own knot. “Yes! Tape. Good thinking. Over there,” she gestured toward the squirrel skeleton on the counter, which guarded a drawer. “Grab it and help me close this tight. Then we will clear out the freezer and catch the rest. But—oh, uh…” The freezer was certainly full. And not entirely of food. She taped off the lumpy bag and kicked a couple fae off her ankle. “Everything on the counter! I will concern myself with it later.” She hoped this sensitive child didn’t have an equally sensitive nose and stomach. If the carcasses didn’t offend her, the crunching sound of Lullaby chewing on small bones just might.
—
“Fine!” She squeaked. “I mean – yeah, of course! I wasn’t trying to sound fed up or anything, I think I am just alarmed!” That had to cover all her bases, didn’t it? That only made sense, and if it made sense right now then it had to make sense in general. Except that this strange woman with white hair was really strange and that was not the kindest way to think of things but Madison could help it. She’d apologize to the lady after. Madison grabbed the oven mitts and stood, ready to tackle whatever would be thrown at her this time. Which, apparently, could be a lot of tiny things that wanted to bite. She’d coached kid soccer back home in North Carolina, but none of them bit. She did recall vaguely that she might have been a bit of a biter as a toddler, but that didn’t mean she deserved to have these things go after her now, did it?
She had to remove the oven mitts to get to the tape. Why was the woman hesitating about the freezer? Madison had plenty of junk in hers – though she also did make a very good effort to have frozen fruits too. Health, or whatever, right? “It’s fine if you have too much ice cream in the freezer. I’m not going to judge you!” That sounded truthful, right? It had to sound that way, because it was and therefore it had to sound true and good.
Except that when she opened the freezer there was not, in fact, only ice cream in there. There was much more and a lot of things she couldn’t even process what they were. They just looked dead. That was all that she could say. She began following the woman’s instructions, bringing each item over to the counter, trying to think about it like AP Bio, when they’d dissected things. A good fourth of the class had gotten sick but Madison had pushed through. Not because she liked the fact that things were dead but because it was a route to understanding things, and she’d always wanted to understand things. Math gave her concrete answers, and even though biology was a bit more in flux, it gave her an understanding, though it had at times made her want to carve out her own organs to figure out just how different they were from her siblings.
“Okay. The… stuff… is all out.” She didn’t even make a face, just grabbed the bag of bitey things and shoved it into the freezer, slamming the door shut. “If there’s too many more, we might need another freezer. Have you got one of those?”
—
There was ice cream in the freezer—vanilla for Regan, a regular rotation for Jade, but the girl was about to hold, in her arms, death that was not by chocolate. Regan could hear a heavy exhale when the freezer opened and a wall of decomposing (but properly stored) carcasses was festering in front of her. It must have been awe. Understandable. Regan would have been similarly rendered speechless. She tried to ignore the ache bending her ribs as each dead animal was marched past her, onto the counter as instructed. The girl was careful, but her hands were not Regan’s.
Hers were full. She’d already taped off the bag so she set it aside for now, but there were so many holes to tape up. Why was the house so full of holes? The trickle from the vent had ceased, but there were still fae trying to squeeze themselves out of cabinets; she could see their tiny arms clawing out, so numerous it made the cabinets look furry along the crevices. She did her best, tearing off piece after piece, but there were holes she never anticipated. Maybe if she vacuumed up or froze all the ones that managed to get in, it would act as a deterrent for the others. Some kind of chemical signal. And—what? Another freezer? If only. She might be able to convince Jade to agree to one that could fit a deer. “I’ve been meaning to buy more freezers, but right now, this is the only one available. Here!” She picked up the lumpy, vibrating bag and shoved it toward the girl. “Quickly. I think between the vacuum and some buckets we might be able to—”
The screeching brakes of a heavy vehicle sounded outside, muffled through the thick windows. Regan glanced toward the living room; she could see the vague shape of a large truck. Her eyes snapped back to the scurrying fae. She expected to see them scaling her like a mountain, planting their sharp teeth and claws into her flesh like flags… but they were frozen. All at once, they turned toward the living room, their little heads tilting in unison, ears twitching. And then like a thrashing tide they surged together, away. They were absorbed into whatever cracks and crevices they got in from; some into corners of the kitchen, others squeezing beneath the door. One popped out of her boot. “Ow,” Regan hissed, stomping and missing it. The little menace bit her on the way out.
But now she couldn’t spot a single fae, and that hair-plucking, prickling sensation along her arms had calmed. No more fae, other than the ones in the freezer. Regan did not plan on freeing them.
She looked toward the child. Her shoulders slumped. She wasn’t sure when she last drew a breath that didn’t provoke her lungs, but, surprisingly, she hadn’t come all that close to screaming. Well, okay. Once. “I think… that truck is going to have problems. I’m going to tell them.” But before she could take more than a couple of steps toward the door, the engine roared on and the truck was on its way, sputtering more than it probably should have been. It wasn’t too late to get the license plate—maybe she could look them up and give them a warning before—too late.
“And now they are gone. I need to… I will figure out who to alert. There must be someone. Neighbors might know the truck.” If she could even do anything upon learning more, which seemed unlikely. More knowing without any control over the situation. She should have been used to that by now. Regan looked at the child, who wouldn’t be able to help either, and who had been patiently waiting to hear Regan swear. “Feck.”
—
There was something extraordinary about how assured the other woman was. Of course, there was always a chance that her read on the situation was all wrong, but there was also plenty of a chance that it was all right. Just right. Whatever the correct way of phrasing things would be. This woman did seem like she’d care about correct phrasing of things, but the bitey things seemed to take precedence as far as current issues went, and Madison was grateful for that. Maybe she’d be judged later on. If that meant she could hang out with this strange woman again then she’d accept it. She wouldn’t enjoy it, and the very thought of it all made her stomach twist in more than a few different ways, but it was okay. It wasn’t as though being judged was entirely foreign to her.
“I’ll go freezer shopping with you!” She eagerly offered, even before she could stop herself. Well. There was a time to be judged but also a time to spend time with the woman again. So, an overall net positive. A win. For now though, she took the bag and shoved it into the freezer, pushing the door shut as tight as she could.
Then, remarkably, the bitey things turned in unison and ran off.
Madison would have said that that didn’t make any sense, but none of this had made any sense, and so it wasn’t as though bitey things running away suddenly was any more less sense-making. Not really, at least. Maybe she could still go shopping for freezers with the woman.
“If you need someone to ask around about the truck, I can… do that.” She sniffed a few times. “I was a Girl Scout, so I have experience going door to door about stuff!” She nodded with far more confidence than she actually had. “Just, like, y’know, if it’d be helpful and stuff.” Her posture straightened up again. “Or I can stay here and watch the freezer. Or just… leave.” Which was probably what the woman actually wanted. The woman swore, though it sounded more like a different world kind of swear. She thought English, but the woman had maybe a small Irish accent and from what she knew from Derry Girls, that was not a mistake you wanted to make. “Just, uh,” she pulled out a crumpled receipt from her pocket, writing her number on it. “If you need anything, you can text me here. Thank you!”
