The First Stain

by Dakota Rayne et al.

  “I . . . I’m ashamed to say that I turned to some . . . less than savory ways to cope with my emotions,” Erin continued, her voice dropping so that Avery had to lean in to hear her. “I spent my first summer out of college frequenting the Distortion shops, accessing the Archives, trying to escape reality.”

  Avery gulped. Erin seemed to not notice the reaction.

  “It got so bad, I ended up doing something I truly regretted to get a hit once.” Her eyes stared off into the distance as she recalled the memory. “I traded my virtue for a chance to get high.” She closed her eyes and sighed. “It was the lowest I’d ever been,” Erin continued. “The experience left me feeling unbelievably dirty and I swore that I would never do it again. And I haven’t.”

  “I’m so sorry, Grandma.”

  “Don’t be. Use this as a chance to learn. If I can teach you anything, it’s to not let the words of others, and your emotions, influence your decisions. The combination of those two can really blind you to what is truly best for you.” Wiping her eyes, Erin glanced at the clock on the wall. “Oh, I need to get your grandfather. It’s time to get ready to leave.”

  Erin picked up the last bit of peach and stuffed it into her mouth before pushing herself out of the chair. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand before heading towards the family room in search of her husband. Alone at the table, Avery was struck with another thought.

  “Grandma,” she called out.

  Erin turned around. “Yes, Avery?”

  Dropping her eyes, she found that she couldn’t look at her grandmother anymore. “Nevermind.”

  Avery interlaced her fingers together and stared down at the smooth grain of the table, her face flushed. She felt her nose running as she realized the kind of pain, she put not only her grandmother through, but also her mother. She recognized the same expression on her mother’s face displayed on her grandmother’s.

  Why does it take Grandma’s pain to make me rethink things?

  A warm weight suddenly appeared on her shoulder, startling Avery. Looking up, she saw her grandmother smiling down at her with watery eyes. With a gentle squeeze, Erin stared deeply into Avery’s eyes. In them, Avery saw wisdom.

  “Though I regret what I did, I am proud to say that I never made that mistake again,” she whispered to her granddaughter. “I know that whatever mistakes you’ll make in life, you won’t fall into the same trap that I did. You’ll learn and grow.”

  “Erin, it’s time to head out,” Frank called.

  Erin gave her granddaughter’s shoulder one more squeeze before walking off to hug the rest of her family goodbye.

  Avery could hear her mother wishing her parents a safe journey. They thanked her for her hospitality in return and bade Alexis and her son goodbye. For the first time since the morning, Avery felt a measure of calm wash over her. Her mind still struggled to make sense of all that she’d seen, but after speaking with her grandmother, it was starting to come together.

  “Come out here, Jellybean,” Frank called to Avery.

  Avery smiled at the nickname she hadn’t heard in ages. She rushed out to the driveway to wish her grandparents a pleasant trip. Frank and Erin took turns wrapping Avery in a tight hug before climbing into the van that would take them to the airport. Her grandparents waved goodbye to the family as the vehicle pulled away from the house, and Avery suddenly felt a warmth spread in her stomach, dissolving the knot. It soothed her.

  In the backseat of the van, Avery saw two young girls laughing together. The one on the right turned and looked at Avery. Her breath caught in her throat as she saw her grandmother, just as she looked in the memory at Kettleman’s, glancing back at her. Her grandmother smiled and waved, causing the second girl to turn around. Avery recognized her as Tori. Tori waved to her as well before the girls dissolved into giggles once more.

  Grinning to herself, Avery realized that she would be okay. She would learn from her grandmother’s mistakes. She wouldn’t tear down the ones she loved.

  Or even herself.

  K.N. Nguyen

  About the author

  K.N. Nguyen is a fantasy author from Sacramento, California. Growing up, she often found herself immersed in some imaginary world, conquering enemy nations, and saving the day. As time went on, her love for horrible puns and nerd culture pulled her out of these worlds and brought her back to reality.

  Her debut novel, King's Blood, was released in 2018. It is the first of a high fantasy series drawing on her love of ancient Mediterranean mythology and epic fantasy.

  When she isn’t writing, K.N. Nguyen spends her time singing karaoke, playing taiko, enjoying rhythm dancing games, and traveling.

  Check out her website www.dragonscript.net

  The Burden of Sight

  By Dakota Rayne

  Cade

  I stood before the elegant array of white and red roses someone had laid upon the glossy white casket, thinking about how stupid I was for not calling my best friend when I had the urge to. I was an idiot for not listening to my gut. I’d wanted to call him, but hadn’t. I knew that uneasy weight in my stomach meant something bad was going to happen. As certain as when I knew the Cowboys weren’t going to make it to the playoffs. If I was paying attention, I would have realized that his texts had gotten shorter, less frequent, less . . . Ethan—until they had stopped altogether. I was too absorbed in my own struggles to check in on him.

  And now he was gone.

  All of him was gone, along with his corny puns, overly dramatic renditions of Shakespeare, and an insatiable obsession with B-rated horror movies. I chuckled, remembering the time Ethan got drunk and jammed out a song about Hamlet on his guitar.

  He didn’t deserve to have his life cut so short.

  The ache in my chest threatened to squeeze the breath from my lungs. I wiped away another errant tear, closed my eyes and tilted my head up to the blazing sun. The summer heat burned skin, but it did nothing to dry the tears.

  That uneasy weight settled in my gut again, filling me with a weary dread.

  Squawk.

  I opened my eyes to see a gray-feathered bird sitting atop Ethan’s casket, flapping its wings as it interrupted my mourning with another irritating caw. “Git,” I hissed as it pecked at the flowers. It ignored me and stabbed its beak at a rose petal. Haughty little asshole.

  “Fuck off, bird,” I hissed again.

  The bird stopped and cocked its head in my direction, staring me down, as if daring me to reach across the casket and bat it away. It cawed again before sticking its beak underneath the floral arrangement.

  The bird soon emerged victorious with a small paper inside its beak. It turned and flew straight at me. My hands came up, protecting my face from the impending attack. It never came. Wind from its wings tussled my brown hair, and I opened my eyes just in time to see its prize fluttering to the ground at my feet.

  As soon as I picked it up, I wished I hadn’t. The small paper was actually a picture of me, Ethan, my sister, and a few other friends standing by a fire, each holding a drink or bottle of alcohol. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t that night, but the memory still hit me like a freight train.

  Six years ago, we’d been sitting with friends around a bonfire as we did most Saturday nights. The moon was high in the sky, and we were still damp from our midnight swim. Ethan had just recovered from his last detox; his face glowed with laughter, freedom. It was one of the few days the creases of worry between his eyebrows were barely noticeable. I had taken a swig from a bottle of whiskey and passed it to him. He stared at the label for a moment despite it being his favorite brand before shaking his head. "Ya know, it'd suck if one day I beat the heroin and ended up dying of cancer or something stupid like that,” he had said. “That’d be my luck.”

  The group laughed it away, Ethan taking a swig of the coppery liquor while my gut twisted like I had suddenly swallowed a stone. The feeling his words would come true sat in my gut with a heavy certainty—the same way déjà vu feels
surreal yet inevitable all at once. I silently panicked—I think I even snatched the bottle back; I was so shaken.

  After I calmed down, I brushed off the moment as an anxiety attack. It was soon forgotten amid our usual goofball antics, and the night had passed like any other. We joked around and got drunk before falling asleep beneath stars untouched by the city lights, birds and crickets singing in the distance. I always loved the woods and the fire. They were comforting and just far enough away from the city that it allowed us to forget our shitty lives, if only for a short time.

  Now, I regretted the effort I had put into forgetting that night and wishing I didn’t have these wretched, noxious feelings in my gut. Standing in front of Ethan’s casket proved how wrong I was—and how real that vision was. Even if he called me crazy and chased me out of his life, I should have tried, or begged, or even dragged him to the hospital just like the time I’d dragged him out of the woods and tied him to the chair when he was struggling with detox. I should have trusted that feeling, but it felt so much like my typical anxiety, that I was overthinking and catastrophizing everything like I always did.

  I shoved the photograph into the back pocket of my jeans as more anxiety churned my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it was the same as that night, or if I was just overcome with grief. I looked around the cemetery for a clue, something that could point to the next tragedy, but among the small gathering of people, there was no one I knew.

  Why do I have to feel it right now?

  “There was nothing you could have done,” a raspy voice from behind me said.

  I looked over to see a scruffy man in a worn denim jacket standing beside me. He motioned with his chin to Ethan’s coffin. “It is unfortunate, to look upon another and know the injustice that they will endure. But everything Fate allows has a purpose. The difficulty is in discovering what that purpose might be and how we fit within it.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked the weirdo crashing my best friend’s funeral.

  The man nodded but his eyes did not stray from the coffin or the gray bird, which was now back to crooning atop the glossy wood.

  “Fate is a nihilist who cares not for the plight of humanity. She cuts, ties, and weaves our lives however She sees fit. To meet whatever end She has in mind. Humanity does much the same with their choices, and yet they say they are not so cruel as Fate herself.” The man chuckled. “And then there are people like you, Cade.”

  “People like me?” The fuck?

  The man shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. He’s gotta be crazy. Yet, at the same time, wasn’t I, for listening to him like he was making any kind of sense? Oddly, though, he had a comforting presence about him. Like a familiar loneliness. After a long pause, the old man continued, “There are those Fate allows within her graces. A select few to know—to see—the grace She has bestowed upon humanity.

  “Let us . . .” The old man looked left, then right. I followed his gaze. A young couple I’d never seen before was weaving their way through the cemetery towards the coffin. I motioned the batshit crazy philosopher away from the funeral setup into the shade of an overhanging willow so the newcomers could pay their respects too.

  A few more strangers had gathered. My heart dropped. Even Ethan’s parents weren’t here. None of my old friends either. The old crew was not exactly the timeliest bunch, but I wondered, and not for the first time, if their lives diverged from each other as mine had. Did they give up on Ethan? Did Ethan think I gave up on him?

  Tears forced their way forward. I did abandon him, didn’t I?

  I looked away to avoid crying and froze.

  Beyond the small area of headstones, a brand-new Honda Civic rolled into view and stopped along the curb. The breath all but punched out of me as I saw who got out. A door slammed shut and I watched the older man come about the front of the car and help my mom to get out of the passenger seat. She took a purse that was probably Gucci—or at least Coach—from the front seat and pulled it over her shoulder. The tepid feeling in my gut erupted into an acidic burn.

  Damnit. I was going to puke.

  I throw my arms up. “Fuck this. I’m leaving.”

  The man grabbed my arm, gentle but firm. “That would not be wise, and you know it.”

  I stared back at the man like he had five heads, but he ignored me to watch the bird who was now hightailing it toward the couple. I had nothing to say to my parents, who could never accept that degradation and violence were not a valid form of currency befitting healthy families. I had nothing to say to my parents. They didn’t belong here. They had ridiculed Ethan, snubbed their nose at him—as if they were better than him. As if domestic violence was somehow more ‘high-class’ than the substance abuse brought on by the treatment of Ethan’s war-related injuries. No one was perfect. Everyone had shit to hide.

  “You don’t know shit, old man. They don’t deserve me.” My heart stammered in my chest as I swallowed down anger. Today was definitely not the day for my parents to bait me into coming home. I scoffed at their audacity. Their not-so-subtle manipulations. I was sick of being a coward, but that didn’t mean I had to play their game.

  “A conversation must still be had. But not for them.” He turned back to me and poked me in the shoulder. “For you.”

  “No, old man. You’re wrong.” I looked at my parents as they made their way toward us.

  Instead of getting angry, the stranger sighed. I forced down another wave of fury sparked by my parents’ presence as the man resumed speaking. “Do you believe in Fate, son?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said, as my mother and father stopped a good thirty feet away from where I was standing.

  The man scoffed, then replaced it with a soft smile. “When Fate cast her decrees, I, too, brushed them off. It is something I regret. I suggest you not follow in my middling footsteps, son. Take the hint the universe is giving you.”

  Before I could protest, he held up a finger. “Take a look around you, Cade. There is a truth you are missing . . . and there is a darkness nestled within that truth—like the tiny specks of dirt pressed into a well-loved blanket. Many will hate you for knowing what they cannot.”

  I shivered as the old man spoke, his words hitting too close to home, though I didn’t know yet what they meant. I replayed that night in the forest with Ethan. Despite the shivers reverberating down my spine at this old man’s words, they seemed intentional. Practiced. “And who are you?”

  “A friend.”

  “Pff. I’ve heard that before. Ethan didn’t have friends that quoted Shakespeare.”

  The stranger let out a full-bellied laugh. “Shakespeare? That is a prestigious comparison for such a simple analogy.” The man pointed a gnarled finger at the gray bird who now sat at the edge of the funeral area, right above where my parents had stopped. “You see? Normally, crows gather at funerals and sing hymns to the dying. But that is no normal crow.”

  “No. Crows are black,” I said, again wondering what obscure point this man was trying to make.

  “According to some, the presence of a crow is a bad omen. It is said that if a crow calls three times outside your home, death will take a loved one by dawn. But gray crows are rare. Folklore suggests that they are an omen of a different nature.”

  As the old man spoke, my stomach churned. That feeling of certainty rose again, forming a lump in my throat. Compelled, I glanced around the cemetery. The area surrounding Ethan’s coffin was occupied with what few family and friends his truncated existence had mustered.

  The man’s voice brought me back to the now. “I know I sound like a mad man. I suppose it comes with having lived so long.” He shrugged and leaned back against the willow tree, folding his arms across his chest. An awkward silence fell between us. I looked around at the few people loitering. Whispering.

  “He cared a lot about you,” the stranger said. “But you knew this.”

  “Don’t you think I fucking know that? I was the asshole too busy with classes, work, and—” tears
cut off my words as memories of me staring down at my text messages, lying, blowing Ethan off because I was too worried about finding a couch to crash on to notice how sick my best friend had become. “I should’ve at least called,” I admit. “Had to hear about this from his sister.”

  The man nodded. “True, there was much you could have done.” He motioned to the casket. “There is still more you should do.” His words hit with such certainty I didn’t know if I was angry or shocked.

  I clenched my jaw and turned to stare at the ground simply to avoid telling the bastard off in the middle of Ethan’s funeral. Ruining this would only make things worse. I balled my fist against my slacks and took a shuddering breath. When I looked back up to give the old man a piece of my mind, he was focused again on the priest; bible open, mid-prayer, now joined by Ethan’s parents.

  Father Malloy finished and walked up to the casket and began speaking. Ethan’s father moaned, while his mother’s shoulders bobbed up and down in silence. I was too far away to hear the priest's words to Ethan, but a part of me wanted to know what kind of solace he was bestowing upon my best friend—if any at all. Hoping it would quell the trepidation I’d been hiding for the last six months.

  The old man pointed to the priest. “It begins.”

  Ethan

  Ethan leaned over the wooden fence that faced the front yard as he lit another smoke. He should probably stop, but what did it matter now? It wasn’t going to shorten his lifespan any more than the cancer already had. Smoking was something to do. An excuse to step out of the house, take a break from seeing the grief on his son’s face as they both tried to make the best of a shitty situation.