Mayhem

by Michael MolisanI

  Residual power that a talented witch could turn to their own needs.

  When the Veil shattered and society collapsed, the world was plunged into years of barbarism. People like Maggi Lopez and Aurora Owens had fought that lawless descent. To imply either of them did it selflessly was a lie, but they changed the world. The Beast was a representation of their life’s work, their struggle against man’s feral nature, constructed to remind the world how hard they fought, how much they lost, a broken doll sewn up tight with hatred.

  Armor plate, god of hate.

  Below the broken machines, beyond the rust and grime, a bitter black soup of blood and heat, there was a symphony inside The Beast. A million souls sang, a turbine of loathing that powered The Beast with a molten heart. Margaret’s mother did not sing in that choir, she was the conductor, a flowing well of memories caught in a second of time, the moment of her death. That was her mother’s voice, Maggi’s voice, unfolding in her head, open like a can of rotten meat.

  “Offer the dying woman immortality? Threaten me with a good time.”

  A smooth, melodic rumble under the skin, spiders in Margaret’s hair, spindly arms wrapped around her. “I will construct a golem, a beast made from bones and blood, I will even make sure our might protects the hopes and dreams of your son.”

  “He doesn’t need his mama anymore. He’s got the world now. I’m ready.” Maggi answered the primordial.

  How dare she, Margaret’s mind clamped down on Maggi’s words like a rat trap. Her physical body heaved a wretch of anger.

  How dare she. Where was Alexander right now? Did he fight for his mother’s grave, did he visit her? Was he covered in filth, freezing in the Bay Area Reach to say his goodbyes?

  “Speak my name.” Margaret heard the primordial.

  When Margaret’s eyes opened, her legs were covered in spiders, black and sooty, crumbling as dust when caught by the wind, a hymn of longing.

  “Anapu Weita,” Margaret’s spoke the name with her mother’s memory. The words were cast far and wide into the waking world.

  The Beast howled.

  This wasn’t the howl of an animal. This was the howl of dying cities, crying out for mercy; or revenge. The sound filled Margaret, calming her stomach and unclenching angry muscles. The whole of San Francisco seemed to quiver at the sound, even lights dimmed behind The Beast’s great silhouette, and air gusting harder than before.

  “Don’t speak with her. Don’t speak with the primordial.”

  A new voice spoke near Margaret. Not a shadow of the past set to replay on an old Victrola, this was a living thing sharing her gantry, close enough to touch.

  Perhaps not living.

  There was a ghost crouched at the opposing handrail, her back to The Beast. She was opaque and her body blurred in and out of focus, through a collection of lenses refusing to work properly. She was cast in hues of sepia and chestnut; thick hair draped across her shoulders and wore pre-Collapse clothing. What looked like jeans and a dark sweater. The air filled with wormwood, orchid, ginger and sandalwood.

  “I’ll speak to who I please, specter,” Margaret lashed back, soaring on the wings of rage, anger dripping from her lips along with drool. “Begone.”

  The ghost with thick hair laughed. She had a narrow mouth and bedroom eyes that smirked, “I’m not that kind of ghost,” she looked around, eyes flailing wildly for a second, and face blurring out, “I’m not that kind of ghost either.”

  She can see Ramona’s bodyguards, Margaret realized.

  “Just leave us alone, go back to wherever you came from.”

  The ghost’s voice sounded healthy, worldly, but her laugh was a flat clap, a noise overheard from another room, “This is where I’m from! This is my city.”

  “Oh!” Margaret nodded, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize this was your city. What else would you like to declare to the lead battlewitch of the Antecedent Empire? Do I owe you a tax?”

  The ghost’s brows rose, and her grin skipped from a smirk to a proud smile, “Is that so?”

  If this specter had been of flesh and blood, the answer given might have been driven with terror. The kind of terror Margaret could unleash in the minds of those who had minds. A specter’s existence was a flimsy thing, something she could neither touch nor be touched by, and it would take far more than a kiss to dispel.

  “Leave us alone. This is a city of thousands for you to haunt.”

  “I suppose,” the ghost shrugged, patterns on her sweater shifting, “but none of them are wearing the eye that does not see.”

  Margaret paused, her blood cooling, and looked around. The sun set, casting the world in shades of copper and ink. “What do you know of the eye?”

  “I know many who wish to possess it. I know an ancient spirit who it's owed to. I know that Maggi Lopez wore it the last time we met.”

  The ghost and Margaret watched each other, seconds ticking by. Some ghosts, a very rare few, could travel of their own volition beyond the places they died. Margaret had met one such spirit in her life. It was unlikely she’d meet two.

  “You met Maggi in San Francisco? There were only two living souls here, and you’re not Aniceta Lopez.” The ghost tilted her head down, spread her arms wide and gave a nod with her chin. As she moved the air blurred, shifting shades and color. “Dread Harvester.”

  “Call me Aubriana,” the dead woman nodded her chin again, “I haven’t been the Ferry Mistress in many years.”

  For the first time in many long moments Margaret overcame her rage, a bubbling fury under her skin, receding like the tide. When she spoke again her voice was even, focused, “Ifrit ghosts, a primordial, my mother, a goddess and now Dread Harvester herself. The Beast is the place to be.”

  “Mother?” Aubriana asked as her face blurred and the expression was lost. Her voice took on a rigid tone, laced with accusation.

  “Maggi Lopez was my mother. Not by blood. She adopted me as a child.” Margaret shrugged, her neck suddenly sore, “I came here to claim the glass eye and say my goodbyes.”

  Aubriana’s face came back into focus, scornful now, lips raised and angry. There was something off about her, the way her jaw rested, as if it was not quite connected. It didn’t shake Margaret, but the conversation’s tone changed, “Maggi was an unrepentant cunt.”

  Margaret reached out her hand, dirty palm facing the ghost, “Easy, easy. She was my mother, not my friend. Whatever the two of you had going isn’t my concern.”

  As she spoke, Aubriana’s eyes turned dark, her hair twisted into dreaded branches and flesh started to fall from her jaw, exposing hazel bones and teeth. “Is that so? What if I told you I killed Maggi here? At bay’s edge, decades past.”

  “I’d say you didn’t,” Margaret raised her eyebrows, watching Aubriana twist into something unrecognizable, maybe something closer to the Dread Harvester of myth. “She went on to kill Ifrit at Carbondale, a month later.”

  “Oh, honey,” Aubriana hissed, her voice no longer a soft ribbon drug along the skin, she sounded like radio chatter in the distance, “When Maggi died is irrelevant. I spread decay through her flesh, her bones and organs, I rotted her from the inside out. When she cut my throat, she was dying.”

  Margaret closed her eyes and questioned her sanity at keeping council with a ghost. Aubriana may have kept her memories intact but was likely insane.

  “They called you a necromancer. The only necromancer to ever exist.”

  Aubriana’s exposed jaw fell away from her throat, vanishing in the air, exposing her pharynx and throat as her tongue fell limp. “It's amazing what you can do when you refuse to die,” the distant radio crackled at Margaret.

  Margaret licked her lips, tasting bitter soot and bile, “What did my mother do to you?”

  It was only now that Margaret found herself rattled, even repulsed. Dread Harvester could not harm her, but she was a visually disturbing creature, hunching forward on all fours, knuckles pressed down, her sweater and jeans giving way to leather
and tattered fabrics.

  “At the Collapse your ‘mother’ left me for dead in a San Jose hospital. I was in a coma, starving to death, my lower face ripped off. She knew I was alive, she knew she was damning me, and she took her son and boyfriend and left. She lied to herself. She told them I died.”

  “But, you didn’t.”

  Aubriana shook her head slowly for Margaret.

  Watching Margaret like a rabid animal, Aubriana’s eyes darted, skipping from Margaret’s hands, to her mouth, to her hands again, waiting, watching.

  The specter no longer blurred, she was crystal clear, and Margaret could feel rage radiate from her. The hate bound up in The Beast was a force of nature, a tidal wave. This hate was concrete, and very human, it could have turned milk sour and wilted leaves. Margaret realized that for the first time in her life she was talking to someone who didn’t worship the almighty Maggi Lopez. This was someone who didn’t want to hear war stories, who didn’t balk when she spilled the truth, and now, alone with The Beast and a sleeping Ramona, Margaret could speak anything.

  “If Maggi ever regretted how she treated me, she hid it well,” Margaret swallowed, and the words came easy. “She was an alcoholic all the years she raised me. I could deal with her fists, pain doesn’t scare me. But, every time she told me how she wished she’d never adopted me, how she wished I was dead, how I was never worth her lover’s life, it was the most painful thing I knew. I never learned to forget Maggi’s cruelty. I wish she was here, right now. I’d call her an unrepentant cunt too.”

  There it was, all the cards on the table, everything that Margaret had wanted to say. She could have told a hundred stories, talked for hours, but none of it really mattered now.

  Minutes passed, and Dread Harvester did not move, save for her eyes. They locked on Margaret’s and changed from a washed-out chestnut color to ivory and deep beryl.

  “What was your name?”

  Harvester spoke finally, her head twisting up. As she did her tongue fell sideways, a thick and languid rope.

  “I’m known as Lady Mayhem. You should call me Margaret.”

  From her lap Ramona coughed, squirming like a child waking at a start. Margaret turned away from Dread Harvester and laid her hand at Ramona’s back to keep her from accidently rolling off the gantry.

  “What’s going on?” She asked.

  Margaret glanced back to where the specter had knelt, perhaps a few feet away, but she was gone, lost in the shadow of The Beast. “Nothing.”

  “Mayy,” Ramona turned, looked up, watching with her big brown eyes, “don’t lie to me.”

  “Witches lie. Good witches lie.”

  Margaret offered a thin smile, dirt and grease streaking her face where sweat had dried. She had begun to shiver again in the chill air.

  Ramona pulled herself around and crouched next to Margaret, wiping at her eyes, “I can feel your anger, it's like a fireplace.”

  Margaret weighed Ramona’s words, then pulled herself to her feet, one hand gripping the rail tightly. “Do you know, Ramona, that I love you? Do you know, that I think of you as my own child? I taught both you and your sister since you were old enough to touch and taste magic, but you were always my favorite.”

  Ramona reached her hand out for help. Her fingers were impossibly soft on Margaret’s. “Why didn’t you have your own children, Mayy?”

  “I can’t,” was all Margaret answered.

  “I know that you love me,” Ramona nodded. She was spreading her calm across Margaret now, helping her. The press of rage, the ascent of The Beast, her mother and Harvester, all of it had been exhausting. “And we all know that I’m your favorite.”

  Margaret was surprised at that last part, but her voice faltered. “I’m going to talk to your father, when he comes back from campaign. I’m going to tell him something he won’t like.”

  Ramona nodded, knowingly. Her dark hair was pasted across her face, her skull, “You’ll tell him you’re Margaret Lopez.” Margaret didn’t answer; she simply let out a deep breath. It was not so much a sigh, but the exhalation of a diver coming up for air. “You know he’ll hate it. So will my sister.”

  “I’m a little too old to take a smack across the face.” Margaret’s jaw tensed.

  “I’ve spent the last few years studying Antecedent politics, and our servant states like House Owens.” Ramona released Margaret’s hand, stepping down a few stairs. “You’ll shake the hornet’s nest for sure, but maybe I can help.”

  Margaret was watching Ramona when she spoke, and as she turned away there was something different about her. The young woman so petrified of heights earlier had vanished. Ramona moved on the steps confidently, her barriers sound.

  The same barriers she’d dropped earlier. Margaret had never considered diving further into Ramona’s mind when she’d offered her calm; it never occurred to her that Ramona would have lied.

  Margaret’s own words bounced around her skull, “Good witches lie.”

  “Let's get down from here. I need a drink.”

  Margaret & Townsend by Karolina

  Jędrzejak (RinRinDaishi)

  10:35pm January 17th, 39 Veilfall

  San Francisco, California

  “What do you think would happen, if you were pregnant with a no-name child? If a johnny decided to play for the Lopez name?” Margaret’s voice was a careening hiss as she stumbled over her words, weighted by inebriation.

  At the center of a roughhewn table, stained a thousand times over in beer and hard spirits, was a collection of off-white candles, burning down. The lot of them had melted into a series of sharp peaks and valleys, casting a flutter of yellow light across Margaret and Ramona. The soft glow erased some of the lines at Margaret’s lips, stealing a few years away from her face. Ramona, on the other hand moved in and out of her own shadows, eyes playing across the room like a billiard ball.

  “I don’t want to be Empress.” Ramona answered, quietly.

  Margaret leaned back, her head spinning. She eyed the antique tumbler made of green glass in her hand and considered downing her drink but thought better of it.

  The two witches sat toward the rear of a fishmonger tavern, perhaps a half mile north of where The Beast stood. It was narrow, cramped, and the walls were made of mismatched wood and lacquered heavily, creating patterns of red and brown, caked in the dried flow of laminate. The bar had been decorated in a collection of old-world trinkets, faded painting prints of lilacs and brass letters mismatched to read words Margaret had never heard, like “malacy” and “rasale.”

  The tavern smelled of salt and musk, warm beer and pungent liquors. Mostly men drank here, save a few women who were burly in the shoulder and tan of face. Several games of cards played in hushed tones, while fisher teams discussed the day’s work and netters chatted filthy descriptions of their latest conquests. An old man, older by far than anyone else there, played concertina near the bar. His face was cracked like asphalt and his eyes were pale like an ocean sky before a storm.

  “You don’t get that choice,” Margaret shook her head, releasing the green glass tumbler and crossing her arms. “A Lopez child can’t just become a prostitute and abandon the blood she was born to. You don’t get a common life.”

  Ramona showed her teeth, sneering. They were devoid of decay, a blessing of her station. “Do I look like one of these fishmongers? Do you think a holy whore of Aphrodite skulks in the shadows of Crafton offering blowjobs for a dime? Do you think that, Mayy?”

  Margaret blinked for a second, then threw caution to the wind, knocking back the last of her drink. The quality was maudlin, it burned going down.

  “I don’t know what the fuck to think.”

  “I’m a woman grown, Mayy.” Ramona leaned in, “A servant of Aphrodite, I don’t turn tricks, I’m Hetairai. I choose my consorts, and they pay me as I demand. It could be coin, it could be favor. All of them must love me and their love is tithe for Her Lady of Desire.”

  Margaret was, to a certain degree, r
esigned that Ramona’s world would be different from her own. She’d kneel at the whims of gods and make her own magic. The gospel according to Maggi Lopez didn’t have to be absolute rules of the post-Collapse world, and Margaret wouldn’t live to see where Ramona’s path took her.

  How can I tell her that? How can I tell her that I’m jealous?

  Not jealous of whatever boon had been granted Ramona, rather Margaret found herself profoundly jealous of the regard that her niece now bore Aphrodite, affection she had always coveted, quietly.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand,” Margaret’s intoxication bled through her words. “The men I took to my bed were paid for what they gave. When it was dark, quiet, I needed them.”

  There was a desperate sorrow as Margaret spoke, memories consuming her, stroking her hair and cooing in her ear, syllables rolled off her tongue and spread into the tavern. So too did her melancholy. The chatter and gossip dulled, and men who played cards fell quiet. Not one could have answered why, but their thoughts drifted to times long past, the people they had kept close, who they had loved, and lost.

  Ramona, in her immunity, offered a smile. She wasn’t prodding at Margaret, she was genuinely admiring, “We’re not so different, I guess.”

  On the verge of tears, too drunk and lost in a ballad of hazy memories as beautiful as they were horrible, Margaret realized her niece no longer needed her. As a friend, maybe an ally, perhaps. Ramona had found her path in this world, something greater and more majestic than Margaret ever knew her to be. She was truly a witch in her own right now.

  Looking to the floor, coated in something glossy, Margaret nodded to no one in particular, “It's a big, bold, new world that we live in.”