Bloodbath

by Stephanie Ahn

  That’s as far as I get before there’s a frantic jingling of keys outside the door. Tricia jumps—Aden grips her arm. And then Joshua Powers comes crashing through the door, covered in sweat and swinging a duffle bag the size of a felled tree. He scoops Aden up and kisses his face all over while Aden complains of smudged glasses, then ropes his wife into the embrace too. I finish my tea and quietly take my leave.

  ***

  I visit Jenny with the intention of telling her what I told the Powers’s. But her tiny, oh-so-neat apartment has been cleared out. The bareness of the place looks wrong. Dirty, even. When I call her, she’s changed her number.

  But something gleams in the depths of the garbage disposal. I borrow a coat hanger from a neighbor, unfold it, and use the hooked end to fish the object out. It’s a white gold engagement ring, scratched to Hell and back everywhere but on the diamond itself.

  I sell the ring to a pawnbroker who delights in objects dripping with traumatic memories. He counts out a thousand dollars in cash, standing in front of a wall lined with wrist watches, pocket watches, faces ripped from grandfather clocks, modernist clocks without any numbering, digital clocks, even sundials. I find Ms. Talley at the shelter where I last met her. She doesn’t run this time, at least not until I’ve told her what happened to her children and put the thousand dollars in her hands. She lets me walk beside her just long enough to get to the bank, cradling her baby to her cheek.

  Ms. Talley doesn’t cry. She doesn’t have to. Her baby mourns for the both of them, wailing at the agony of two empty puzzle slots in its little heart.

  ***

  A week after the funeral, I stop by Isabella’s place to tell her I’ve found that subway busker who explodes rat skulls, and she’s ready to take on an apprentice. If Isabella’s willing, of course. Izzy surprises me with news of her own—news that’s broken to me by the sight of a sleepy Nikki exiting the extra room in a nightgown, her silver bangs a poofy mess and a toothbrush sticking out of her mouth. She’s Isabella’s new roommate; her stuff’s already been U-hauled over, and she just needs to unpack the cardboard boxes left in the living room.

  Isabella takes about ten minutes to decide on the busker’s offer. She spends seven out of those ten minutes gay-zing—I mean, gazing at Nikki as her new roommate munches a bowl of cereal. And then Izzy says yes, she wants to learn magic.

  As I leave, I catch Nikki looking at Isabella the same way, a bit of milk dribbling out the side of her mouth. Isabella doesn’t notice, too busy tying up her hair while reading something on her laptop. I’ll let those two oblivious idiots figure it out for themselves.

  ***

  Someone bumps into my shoulder in the hallway leading to my apartment. I turn to apologize and glimpse a Bobcat baseball cap turning the corner. Then I enter my apartment, slip on a paper envelope, and spend the next ten minutes pressing an ice pack to my head.

  The envelope contains a key and a letter from Bautista. She says that she’s going through Joy’s will, and I’ve been left with her notebook of prophecies. Convenient, since I already have that.

  I discard the ice pack, retrieve the notebook from my desk drawer, and flip through the used pages. Not a single prophecy left unsolved. Nothing else. No way for her to talk to me beyond the grave, even though I desperately wish it.

  A breeze blows stray hairs into my face from behind, too cold and impersonal to be Junhyun. When I turn around, my desk chair is spinning lazily, my beaten-up coat draped over its back. I lean out the open window, trying to catch a blur of movement on the sidewalk, a familiar head of hair crossing the street. No Lilith. So I try twisting to look skyward; the end of a tufted tail whips out of sight. I almost laugh at that, but I don’t want to be rude. So I pretend I saw nothing, go back inside the apartment, and shut the window. I find Joy’s notebook on the floor where I dropped it—and see that it’s flipped to a random page near the end. On the page, in spiderweb handwriting, are the words:

  Hey Hairy. I just woke up at 3AM and I’m pretty groggy, so bear with me. I had a dream of you. You with my tapestry, the big one, ya know? Central Park, right before the sun rises, in front of the tree that looks like the one in the tapestry. You had the tapestry laid out on the ground, and you were waiting. Dunno why, just waiting. It was probably important.

  Fuck it, I’m going back to sleep.

  That’s the end of the note. I read it over and over until I doze off in my chair, my coat blanketing me from knees to nose. My dreams smell like sidewalk hibiscuses in springtime, even sweeter for the way they cut through the gasoline and gutter.

  I wake up around 5 a.m., swing my coat onto my shoulders, and exit my apartment. There’s a plastic bag swaying from my door handle, weighed down by half a dozen Asian pears. From my mom, Junhyun tells me. I thank him and take the bag with me to Joy’s apartment, entering with the key Bautista sent me.

  Joy’s tapestry is in her trunk, right where Nikki and I left it. I unfurl it one last time and hang it up on the wall, just to look at it. Gods, it’s beautiful. The rippling patterns look organic, effortless—they can’t be that way unless Joy placed every stitch with clear intention, spending as much time planning as weaving at the loom, budgeting smartly during every shopping trip for the right hues.

  Or maybe it was a more natural, intuitive process. Maybe there was magic involved. I’ll never know.

  It’s eerie… none of the dancing fairies have defined faces, but I swear they’re all staring at me. I lean closer, but that just breaks up the images into clusters of seemingly random color. Oh well. I guess some things in life are just meant to be ambiguous.

  I roll the tapestry back up and tuck it into a long, black plastic tube, feeling oddly like a criminal the whole time. I keep it slung onto my back like a guitar as I walk to Central Park. The clouds are angular, pink-orange boats traversing a watery turquoise sky. I get to the gates just past six, minutes after the park’s been opened up for the day. As I walk down the path, I pass by musicians setting up their equipment, a quick-portrait artist doing warm-up sketches on a bench, an early bird jogger who’s just starting to get winded.

  I step over the shin-height rope fence bordering the path and wander into the green. I squint at the trees I pass, comparing details to the ones from the tapestry. I’m starting to think I’m not looking closely enough, I must have missed the right tree a while back—and then I’m face-to-face with a thick, gnarled trunk warped by two knots in its side, knots that Joy had depicted with swirls of deep purple. The branches are far-reaching, skeletal fingers trying in vain to hold onto their browning leaves. In the tapestry, those branches are so laden with fruit that they dip down like servants offering champagne.

  I sweep my foot over the dirt at the foot of the tree, pat it flat, then cover it with a crackling carpet of fallen leaves. I extract the tapestry and roll it out onto its makeshift bed.

  And I wait. It’s so strangely quiet. I’ve never known Central Park not to have music playing in it, or children shouting, or dogs barking. The air is fresh but still. Like the whole park is holding its breath with me.

  ...Minutes pass. Maybe I should be sitting? But if someone’s coming to meet me, I want to be ready. Or perhaps they’re already here. I cock my head at the tree.

  “I’m ready when you are, buddy,” I say.

  A twig snaps.

  I turn around. No one’s there. Then a pattering of feet on the grass, too light to be an adult’s, too quick and precise to be a child’s, coming from behind—

  I whirl around, but the tapestry is already gone. The hair on the back of my neck raises. My fingertips tingle and my skin lights up. I don’t feel a presence so much as the energy it disturbs as it rushes past, like the wind from a passing subway train.

  And then there’s a voice. Inaudible, inhuman. Like the unfolding of sheet music in my head, someone committing their music to my memory.

  Thank you for bringing her back to us.

  I stand motionless, the words resounding in my head long a
fter the footsteps have faded. Then I sit down with my back against the tree. I open up my grocery bag, pick out an almost perfectly spherical pear, and bite into it. A saxophone is being tuned across the path. A Corgi puppy dashes by, trailing a leash and a shouting owner. The breeze blows a handful of leaves into my lap.

  The sun comes up.

  HARRIETTA LEE: FLYTRAP

  COMING 2020-2021

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