Bobby on a stick

by Vasileios Kalampakas

  * * *

  Mama Adele had laid out a really delicate tablecloth, the color of blinding white. A small feast had been laid out on the table, and the overpowering smell of freshly baked cornbread filled the small, homely kitchen. Steve was sitting opposite me, hesitant to start eating, constantly flicking his gaze between Mama Adele, me, and his plate. I was playing around with my fork, trying to appear as I was ready to start eating at any moment, while in fact I was classifying the potatoes on my plate according to size, shape, and complexion (an old habit I inherited while doing time in prison - it really helped with trying to not think about the showers).

  Eileen’s body was upstairs, comfortably lying in bed. Even though I could use a bit of a nap myself at that point, there was very little precious time to waste, and Mama Adele did not help things by insisting that we sat down and had supper. When she saw Eileen was out cold it seemed as if someone had pulled away the world under her feet. We told her half of the truth: some kind of trouble, the mansion burned to the ground, Eileen knocked unconscious, safe and sound but in need of rest.

  She’d known the line of business I was in and that I’ve had some shady dealings in the past, and that her father wasn’t exactly a virgin in the domain of law-breaking, so she knew that whatever it was I had gotten her into, a hospital would be a bad idea.

  God bless her soul, she grudgingly took us in, on two conditions nevertheless: one, that we’d sit down, eat supper, have some coffee, a nice long talk and perhaps a couple of beatings. Two, if Eileen didn’t wake up soon, she’d put a curse on me so vile, that I’d wish I’d never been conceived, much less born, and so evil, that’d make the devil and all his minions look like pussies (these were, to my recollection, her exact words).

  She was known to have experience in the ju-ju crafts and a cabinet full of all sorts of dead animal parts, as well as all the spunk and the ferocity of a really old black lady that had raised Eileen like she had been her own. Her dry wrinkled face nevertheless sported piercing cougar-like eyes, and if looks could kill, hers would have been a weapon of mass destruction. I noticed she was eying me with just that kind of a look, and while Eileen inside me urged me once more to tell her the truth, before I could open my mouth and speak a single word, she motioned me to stay silent, waving a bony arthritis-swollen finger and saying:

  “Robert Eugene Barhoe, you’ve got lots of explaining to do, young man.”

  I was about to point out that I was only thirty-three and consequently, according to national averages, not even middle-aged yet, but my cautious instincts got the better of me, and I simply braced myself for the beating which was probably where this would soon end.

  “First of all, who is this Indian? I don’t like him one bit. I think he’s a queer. Just wait and see.”

  Steve shot me a look of surprise, like a rabbit popping up from his hiding place only to find out the hunting season is still on. He opened his mouth to speak, but Mama Adele still had the advantage and it didn’t look like she was going to give it up anytime soon. She put up one hand with a warning finger that made us pause and watch as she unbuttoned her blouse with the other hand, slowly and decisively.

  Normally the sight of a - probably senile - old woman undressing would have been met with urges and pleas to just stop, but this was Mama Adele and I dared not. Steve on the other hand was trying to politely look away, without appearing positively horrified at the thought of seeing any sort of tits that had lost any meaningful function since before the moon landing.

  There was no other choice but to look away. Somethings are better left unseen, and this here was a case of things that cannot be unseen. It was primal instinct that made us flinch and shy away from her bare breasts.

  A frying pan connected with my head. Mama Adele then said:

  “That was because you’re a son of a bitch. And him?” she said pointing an accusing finger at Steve, her breasts juggling and bobbing like a flag made of jello.

  “He’s definitely a queer. You’d never dare look at my breasts and I’d try and kill you for it, but any real, hot-blooded man, couldn’t help taking a peep at Mama Adele’s tits,” she said and sat upright in her chair, smiling with all the pride a former, professional, well sought-after milkmaid could command.

  Eileen kept shouting a singular, persistent ‘no’ inside my head, but I found the courage (and made the mistake) to somehow defend Steve from this atrocious show of lack of any sort of reason; I failed horribly when I said:

  “He was just trying to be polite! Please, Mama Adele, button up, for God’s sake. What if he just kept staring, like some sick rapist?”

  Steve me gave a startled look, and I saw his eyes filled with the gleam of mounting horrors, his face broken like a man who knows he’s lost a battle even before it has been fought. Mama Adele was adamant in her belief and said so with a bang of her hand on the table, her voice craggy but fierce:

  “He’d be a devil-worshiping pervert straight from hell! But at least, he’d be a man! This one’s just as gay as Mary Poppins. Believe me, I know. My last husband was gay, and I didn’t know it until our wedding night, God bless his soul.”

  “You got married? And then he died?”

  I ineffectively tried not to sound as if these two facts were actually somehow connected. Fortunately, Mama Adele seemed too focused on her tale, actually sounding a bit nostalgic:

  “Last spring. He avoided my trappings of sweet love like a fly would a spider’s web. Even when I finally cuffed him to the bed, he couldn’t get it up. He wouldn’t even look at my breasts, or say something sweet about my ass. Gay as a peacock. God bless his soul.”

  I swallowed with some difficulty. The old woman certainly had been strongly opinionated in the past, having called me a ‘beelze-bob’ and a ‘a peck of a cock’ among other less colourful and not as endearing terms. But it looked like she had finally grown really old, and thus, really weird in many ways, to the point that some courts would probably even deem she had lost her marbles for good. ‘Just like Eileen,’ I said in my mind and quite without expecting to, I picked up the jar of water and unloaded its contents on my head. ‘I’m not crazy!’ she said inside my head, and I could feel her recede to a silent corner at the back of my head, as if she was suddenly holding a grudge against me.

  Steve was looking at me as if I had just won a wet T-shirt contest. Perhaps he was trying to make some kind of signal the way his eyes seemed to flicker and roll furiously, but since I wasn’t very fluent in eyeballing lingo, he only managed to roughly convey the general idea of someone constipated.

  Mama Adele had buttoned her blouse when she gave me a remarkably constrained look:

  “All the heat gotten to you, Bobby?” she said, and tore up a leg off the roast chicken all of the sudden, careful to chew on just the thick, brown and reddish, crusty skin. I replied while acting as if nothing strange had just happened and cut myself some meat off the chest.

  “Yeah, well, it’s hotter in hell, right?” I said and Steve kicked himself back into motion trying to speak with an alarming sense of first-hand knowledge on the subject:

  “Funny you should say that, cause actually it’s not as hot as it’s cracked up to be.”

  I tried to kick him in the nuts to shut him up before he would say anything to deteriorate the already tenuous atmosphere or broach subjects that would only lead to more questions; I failed though, wildly flailing my leg as if something horrible was chewing on it. Mama Adele’s curiosity was suddenly piqued and she stopped chewing; she started asking the weirdest kind of questions:

  “What would you know about hell, queer boy? Last I heard, it’s not just some tourist hotspot you can just waltz in and out.”

  “There are ways to see, hear and feel without being there. One must only be attuned with Mother Earth.”

  There was this strange sudden turn in the way they looked at each other. Something had changed; they looked like a couple of gunslingers, carefully measuring each other as if t
here was going to be blood soon. I leaned back on my chair and unconsciously tried to keep my distance.

  “So, you’re Alabama?” said Mama Adele.

  “What makes you think I am?” replied Steve with a frown that Dirty Harry himself would have found hard to emulate.

  Mama Adele put down the chicken leg, and reached for the large table knife. I watched Steve slowly but deliberately inch his hand to the large fork still stuck on the chicken. Mama Adele said then with an unusual and rather haughty manner, in something that sounded very much like gibberish:

  “Ke-tche wake-na la-wonke a-kenai ute-na ke cho-wa demo-na-neka?”

  Steve’s eyes went wide before they narrowed to the point of being indistinguishable from a pair of dark-skinned slits. He said then without being able not to sound surprised:

  “You speak the Lost Tongue.. Ha-tche koi-noi wa-na-neka cho-de?”

  “You sound surprised, shaman.”

  “You’re not who you say you are. You’re gowa-na-di-tche,” Steve said sounding relieved but rather wary at the same time. His hand was now at the fork.

  “Au contraire, little spirit guide. I am Mama Adele. And so much more than you’re able to comprehend,” she said and then I felt Eileen inside me come to the forefront of my mind and take control of every muscle, fiber and bone on my body. I think I shouted something like ‘the fuck you are, bitch’ and then the next few moments turned into what could only be described as a pretty impressive show of how old cutlery can be given new life by putting them to outstanding use as lethal weapons. Plus I was surprised to learn that my body could move like, well.. Like a god-damn ninja.

  Mama Adele lunged at me with the table knife, aiming for a good clear cut of my throat. But everything suddenly felt like we were underwater: her movements were slow and cumbersome, even for an eighty year old woman coming at me with a knife. She moved like she was surrounded by jello. And so did Steve, who had picked the fork up and was bringing it down with quite some force from what I could read in his ridiculously taut face, looking more and more like his real problem was a bad case of constipation. To make matters worse, the fork was still attached to the chicken.

  While my body moved in its own ways, in ways that Eileen was probably to thank for, I had all the time in the world to think about what had just happened, seeing as everything seemed to move barely a notch faster than a Jewish snail on a Sabbath.

  First of all, Mama Adele had this little weird moment of speaking in tongues, along with Steve who maybe had the bigger picture here. Then Eileen’s spirit took control of my body at what must’ve been a very fortuitous time, because I don’t think I could have dodged that knife fast enough to maintain the ability to swallow without getting wet every single time.

  Not only did I dodge that knife, but I actually craned my neck backwards in a graceful move, with the knife missing me by no more than an inch, then thrusting the table away with my legs. Even as I fell, I saw my hands extending to touch the wall, leaving my body lying horizontally in mid-air, perched between the table and the wall. Mama Adele realised she had missed and was giving her knife another swing, only this time she was apparently - and this was a disturbing and painful thought - aiming for my balls.

  With the corner of my eye I could see Steve finally realising the chicken was still hanging by that damnable fork, and he was duly making some very clumsy efforts at separating the two: he looked very miffed about it though, I’ll give him that, and even as he swung the fork and the chicken above his head looking like a world-class hammer thrower, I could see he was quite frustrated but also determined to literally, pull it off.

  All that sitting back and watching the fight unfold in front of my eyes like a cheap B-rated film, did nothing to hamper what Eileen was doing with my body. We were quite literally two people in one body, so while I craved for some pop-corn and soda to watch the action, Eileen was making the action happen.

  It struck me as odd, that while there was this apparent struggle to the death between the three of us, I felt calm and relaxed, as if this was happening to someone else. From a logical standpoint, there was really nothing I could do, so watching and fretting about it wouldn’t be of any help.

  So I just watched, as Mama Adele ripped my jeans open with her knife right at the seam of the crotch, missing the holiest of holies by a curly hair’s breadth. No worries then I thought, and abruptly saw the room spin, watching the ceiling give its place to the floor and then come into view once again. Only this time my knee had connected violently with Mama Adele’s face and I was surprised to find out there were so many cheap dentures still available in the market.

  I put my hands deftly on the floor, kicked out and away and hit her in the groin. Before she had time to even breath, I had managed to coil myself like a spring and then use the momentum to snap back upright, putting all the extra energy into a left-handed fist I swear could have knocked out a even a horny hippo on a rampage. Unfortunately though, she wasn’t a horny rampaging hippo.

  I know I felt her jaw crack and the force should have been enough to snap her neck. It was a killing blow, for sure. Whatever Eileen was doing with my body, and she was doing it extremely well, she didn’t mean to just stop Mama Adele: she was trying to kill her outright. The problem was that Adele, or the gowa-na-di-tche as Steve had called her, wasn’t on the same page.

  The hook sent her reeling off the table, but somehow she used her hands like a fourteen year-old gymnast and turned her fall into a somersault that send her almost flying across the kitchen and a few feet away into the small living room where the TV was still on, showing a very familiar guy with wiry hair, smiling on a beach, wearing silly red shorts and surrounded by a plethora of large boobs that I wasn’t able to simply discard as trivial under the circumstances.

  Steve was finally able to pull the fork free of the chicken. When he talked, I noticed that his mouth moved and I couldn’t hear a thing. I half expected to hear everything slowed down and sounding bad-ass or perhaps like an amateur satanic ritual does, just like when your Walkman is running low on batteries. Instead, I heard myself as clear as day:

  “You had your chance, bitch. I’m gonna put a whole new meaning on elderly care,” to which Adele replied with a toothless grin, licking her lips with what I’d wish wasn’t her real tongue:

  “Mama’s got a brand new bag o’ tricks, bitch,” and then she came at us with super-elderly speed, knife in one hand and a very heavy-looking glass vase in the other.

  I couldn’t see what Steven was doing since I had focused on Adele. I stood there motionless as a stone pillar, and I saw in that same slowed down vision Adele coming closer and closer at an alarming pace.

  A part of me wanted to duck, run, sprint away, make myself scarce, slide under the table and magically disappear faster than was possible, preferably at some point in the past. Another part of me wanted a sawed-off shotgun loaded with some double-aught buckshot, and an itchy trigger finger would be happily supplied by yours truly. I do not consider myself a violent person who believes armed confrontation is the best way to resolve a clash of interests, but seriously, the bitch tried to cut my throat and then my dick. She’d be so full of lead that the she’d become Radioactive’s Man nemesis, at least until they next rebooted him.

  But I did nothing of the sort. And Eileen seemed to be doing nothing at all, while I could clearly make out the reddish glow in Adele’s eyes, as well as the blinding sheen of the knife in her hand which was certainly pointed the wrong way, and was certainly past the ‘I’m just fucking with you’ range. Which was a troubling thing, considering that the large, heavy vase had been launched, and the smart money was that my face was the target.

  I thought that something had gone horribly wrong in a very small amount of time. Eileen’s spirit seemed to have suddenly remembered that it had let some sort of spiritual stove on; duly and without warning she’d left everything hanging, without extending the slightest courtesy of returning control of my body to me,
or at least killing the screaming bitch first and then doing the spiritual equivalent of laundry.

  As I saw her toothless, gaping maw grinning with the excitement of an easy, assured kill, I also felt my body swiveling to the right from the waist up. I arched my back slightly backwards and saw the vase in all its glory from a very prestigious point of view, flying right past my nose, spilling very tiny droplets of water in its path.

  Only a foot away, Adele’s hand was already half-way through its downward stabbing motion and the knife wasn’t going to miss. She had actually jumped in the air with bent knees, adding her weight to the force of the stab and presenting a somewhat smaller target. It seemed unreal.

  Still, it looked real enough when I suddenly swooped under her arching arm with a superbly fluid motion and punched her straight in the nose with the back of my hand, while with my other arm I blocked her strike and gripped her arm in a vice. It was superbly executed and though I know nothing about martial arts, I instantly knew this would have looked great on a Jackie Chan film. There was though, a small mistake that complicated things at the last possible moment and gave Adele a fighting chance, and that was a plain and simple, pretty standard, knee-in-the-nuts move.

  First of all, I was in pain, and even though Eileen was in control of my body, I could sure as hell feel it reaching every inch of my body, spreading like a wildfire from the groin outwards. Secondly, I had little time to reflect on why or how Eileen’s spirit had proven to be so adept at unarmed combat, but I was pretty sure that it had been conditioned in a woman’s body because the way I moved seemed to leave the precious stones quite vulnerable to someone with a cause.

  While I reflexively released Adele’s arm from my grip with one hand, my other one reached for my nuts, a reflex that never served any purpose other than leaving one unable to block any kind of hit, unless using one’s head as a blocking aid counted.

  I started to slowly but surely fall down on my knees in an ironically dangerous example of the saying ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak’. I saw the sinister look on Adele’s face and thought that it all felt suddenly very much like game over, with no credits left and all the pocket money gone, forever. I saw Adele’s knife hand swooping down from a corner of my eye, going in for my throat once more, this time not to cut, but to stab.

  One of her legs was about to meet my jawline and her free hand was just standing there, looking somewhat left out of the whole action. On a closer inspection, having nothing else to do while my body was unable to save us from a deadly stab and the many others like it that would probably ensue, I noticed her hand had gone slightly limb. And then I saw in great, shining detail a pitched fork squarely stuck between her forehead and an eye that seemed to be incredibly soft and squishy.

  The other end of the fork was connected to Steve’s hand, which in turn was thankfully still connected to the rest of Steve. I felt the pain numbing my senses, and the time flow normally once more. I was panting from the exertion feeling too weak to even attempt to get up, while Steve kept uttering the same kind of gibberish from before, the fork in his hand glowing with a bluish, white-hot intensity that seemed definitely wrong.

  Adele was now frozen in place, her knife lying on the floor. Steve’s veins were jutting out like someone had run a thick cable through them, and he was generally looking very fierce, pissed off and quite certain that Adele was a bad person, seeing how he kept trying to twist the fork deeper into her skull.

  A moment later, she threw her hands into the air and fell on her almost lifeless, arthritis-ridden knees. In her last moments, she spoke with a venomous quality that reminded me of snake bites and show-biz journalists:

  “Ka-che-tne, ka-weka-te, boy,” she said and crashed on the floor, appearing to be, for all intents and purposes, dead as a dodo.

  Steven was panting as well, his face marked with the signs of incredible effort but immense relief as well. I tried using the table as something to use as a standing aid, and did so with moderate success, while the pain receded with each passing moment, turning into a numbing sensation.

  There was some silence while Steven pulled up a chair and just sat there, looking at the floor, his long hair in front of his face waving slightly by the wind of his breath. He reached for the inside of his jacket then, brought out his feathery hat, unfolded it and put it on his head all curled up, looking shoddy and wrecked, as if he had been carrying it in his pocket this whole time.

  He looked at Adele’s body with a degree of disdain that could only be comparable to that shown towards a pile of dog poo, and said with a gloating roar:

  “Who’s the queer boy now, bitch?”

  I felt the enormous sorrow in Eileen’s spirit when she said inside my head:

  “Now I remember everything.”

  Speaking for myself I said:

  “What do you mean everything?”

  “She means everything, man. Every single thing,” replied Steve whose hard gaze fell solely on the old woman’s body lying on the floor, looking inappropriately gruesome with the fork sticking out of her forehead.

  “What does that even mean? For starters, what the fuck was that all about?” I said with just the right tone of indignation considering I had almost died. That was the third time that day, and the sun hadn’t even began to set.

  “Ask her,” said Steve with a weary voice.

  Though thought is advertised as instant, it does take a little time to formulate in a thing as rudimentary as the human brain. In that time, Eileen had already spoken to me, saying the exact same thing.

  “Ask him.”

  I sighed. I sounded a bit confused, and understandably so I would believe, when I said with the slightest hint of ennui in my voice:

  “She says, I should ask you. And you say, I should ask her? Is there possibly a way for you to sort it out and just give me the gist of it when you’re done?”

  My eyes caught the mess on the table, and I singled out the single salvageable thing: the chicken. My stomach made all the sounds usually associated with being starved, and then some. I sat down, dug in, and ripped a wing off the chicken. I immediately started munching away like someone set to enter into the Guinness World Book of Records as the human eating machine.

  Then I heard Steve say:

  “All right. You know, it’s a bit complicated.”

  I sucked the soft bits of flesh still stuck around the bone joints and said after I swallowed and while I reached for the chicken’s leg:

  “I can handle complicated, so long as it’s not trying to stab me.”

  Eileen had gone silent inside me, but I could tell she was listening.

  “Some of the things, you might not like. Some of it, I’m pretty sure you won’t,” Steve said looking thoughtful.

  My stomach was churning like the Atlantic Sea, and I let out a small, rather polite little burp before replying:

  “I don’t think personal preference is an option. If it were, I’d taken my chances with Falconi.”

  “Right. Where should I begin?” Steve asked rhetorically.

  “The start is always a good place,” I replied smartly and smiled encouragingly.

  “No, that would be very confusing. I’ll start with something that’s been bothering me for a while.”

  “Yeah, well?” I said, and though I had some suspicions, I couldn’t believe it even when I heard it from his own mouth:

  “Well. Here goes.. I’m gay,” Steve said with a bright smile, I choked on a chicken bone and almost died, for the fourth time that day.

  IV

  I was sipping at some sludge that Steve had made insisting it was coffee, and though a large array of scientific tests could factually prove he might have been telling the truth, I could not think of it as anything other than a cup of swamp water with some mud thrown in for flavor. He made lousy coffee, but perfect Heimlich maneuvers.

  We had been talking for the better part of an hour, old Mama Adele still lying on the fl
oor since no-one had bothered to even move the body out of the way, not even for the sake of appearances and good taste. I’d learned that there was some solid reasoning behind that as well. Some of the things Steve had said though still didn’t fit, so I asked more questions, expecting some kind of answers. I was surprised at how more often than not, the answers bring about more questions:

  “So who turned Eileen into a crazy person?”

  “Mama Adele was the agent, that’s for sure. But she was just an instrument. A tool. Someone else was behind that. She, it, whatever you want to call the go-wa-na-ditche, was doing it on behalf of someone else, for sure.”

  “And Eileen is in fact this powerful guardian spirit?”

  “Yes, it is clear to me now, as it is painfully clear to her. She’s an aka-ne-wha-dhe, a guardian of the spirit-world.”

  “And you’re gay? Really, gay? I mean, like, you’re into men?”

  Steve sighed and rolled his eyes before answering with some hesitation:

  “Yes. I like men. Sexually.”

  “How come you’re not wearing leather and feathery hats and that kind of.. Oh, I see.”

  He smiled and nodded, twiddling his thumbs with some nervousness. I had to know so I asked:

  “You’re not into me, are you? I mean.. I can’t say this, but do you -”

  “Get a hard on when I see your ass?”

  “Sweet Jesus and Virgin Mary, don’t say that!”

  “I don’t, Bob. I was just messing with your head. Can we get on to the important stuff now? Like why was Eileen caged by that demon?”

  “So, you’re saying you’re not gay?”

  “I’m saying I don’t have the hots for you, man. Just get past that, and focus, please?”

  “Yeah, okay, I should stop thinking about you, thinking about my ass.”

  “Good. What has Eileen been telling you?”

  “Not much. She’s pretty withdrawn. Feels like she’s in shock. So, she wasn’t really crazy?”

  “No, not really crazy. That was just her imprisonment spell. A lock on her spirit. Even someone as powerful as her needs time to realise she had been living under a spell for decades. Played like a puppet, and by none other than the one person she thought cared the most. Must’ve been like a back-stab through the heart.”

  “But she’s not really Eileen then either. At least not the Eileen I knew. Hasn’t called me papa-bear either since she’s been inside me.”

  “I guess not. Though some of her, the real Eileen, must have been part of that persona that limited her true self, the Eileen you knew and were married to. It’s not something airtight, something deterministic.”

  “So, whom was I married to for two weeks?”

  “Two weeks? That was the entire duration of your marriage? The honeymoon lasts longer than that.”

  “By Las Vegas standards, it’s like half a lifetime. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and this might sound like something a cheap son of a bitch would say, but hear me out. I was young, rash, and adventurous; I had just done this job at a small but profitable motel. I had gate crashed this wild party where anything seemed normal enough, and while I was drunk off my mind, mostly on the feeling of success of a job well done, I saw Eileen wearing a silly red hat, painted blue, and wearing a bikini made of less cloth than your standard handkerchief. I just felt I had to do papa-Smurf before I died, so I used my charm on her and before I knew it, I was wearing a ring, and singing the Smurfs theme, doing eighty in a rented Lincoln convertible headed for Memphis to meet my in-laws. The grandpa-smurfs.”

  “And that’s how you got married? How come you didn’t run off when the drinks wore off the next morning?”

  “As I said, I was feeling adventurous, and rash.”

  “Her father was pretty loaded, right?”

  “Well, yeah. That might’ve played a small part. You know, base human instincts like greed can turn a good man into a shadow of his former self. Plus, at first I found the whole craziness kind of charming. And the sex was awesome. Weird, pretty fucking weird at times, but awesome.”

  “And then what happened?”

  I slapped myself hard on the face, and went rigid. Then Eileen took over and she didn’t sound very happy about what she could remember, in lucid detail:

  “I’ll tell you what happened, mani-chi-kwa, spirit guide of the Alabama. Bobby here, sweet ol’ Bobby, took advantage of my weakened mental state, and led me to believe he really cared. Like this dead bitch here who had been my captor and jailer for all these mournful years. Let her spirit be carried away to the void, when the time of reckoning comes.”

  I placed my hands on the table, and felt Eileen’s anger pulsate through my veins:

  “I searched inside this man’s mind and soul, and found out some shred of love for me was true. But his wickedness overcame his better human nature, and wealth blinded him. That was why he took off with whatever he could find in that safe, and why he has to repay me for this act of mine: Bobby Barhoe, I forgive you. I only feel loss and sorrow for the mother that bore this child you call Eileen into this world, for she had a sweet soul, and was an innocent creature. But the father.. The father must burn.”

  Steve looked rather concerned and wary suddenly, fearing that a guardian spirit to say such a thing was perhaps going to far in the pursuit of justice and spiritual balance. He asked then:

  “Surely aka-ne-wha-de, you have been wronged terribly and justice must be served, balanced restored. But we killed this demon’s host, and you’re awakened and free. What good will come of that burning that you speak?”

  “Mani-chi-kwa, you are an example to your people and your tribe. But you are but an infant, a small child caught in a terrible wind. I fear I have been too late to wake. I have to thank you, and even Bobby here, for what you started. But do not make the mistake and think of me as a plagued human spirit anymore. I am Aka-ne-wha-de, and I shine brighter on the lonely path each soul must take.”

  With that being said, I was released from her grip and felt a great burden fall away from me. I tried to talk to her, but I felt nothing. She wasn’t there. I sounded a bit panicked when I said to Steve:

  “Did you know this would happen?”

  “Wild spirits such as hers are fickle, and rarely converse with mortals so candidly. We should be thankful that she shared all that with us.”

  “But, I don’t feel her inside me, at all. Is that normal?”

  “I do not know. Perhaps she has returned to the spirit world. Perhaps she roams.”

  “So, what does that mean? Was she serious about burning her father? I mean, Eileen’s father? Novorski, anyhow.”

  “I can’t say.”

  “So, where does that leave us with the shards? I mean, doesn’t all this count as extra? How many more do we need? How do we get into the after-world?”

  “Easy now, Bobby. You could be collecting shards from ants, and mice, and even rocks. But then you’d need a lifetime. That’s why I thought your best bet was Eileen, a living, breathing human being, who seemed to love you truly, and freely give her soul. It looks like I was both wrong and right at the same time.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The guardian’s spirit saw the good in you, and the ritual I performed allowed her to free herself from her bonds, and find shelter in your body. But her true self lay dormant, and didn’t wake up until she had to face the demon, the gowa-na-di-tche. That was when she realised who she really was, and what had happened to her. It seems that now she might want to do something about setting things right before returning to the spirit-world where she belongs.”

  “Alright, that’s cool. That’s her thing, happy to help and all, but where do I stand? I mean, that’s really fucking mind-blowing, guardian spirits, demons, spirit-prisons, Eileen not being crazy, me somewhere amidst all that supernatural mayhem, but Falconi will have my ass, and you know very well that no matter how long and hard I run and hide, my days will be considerably
shorter and miserable to the point I’ll likely just show up and let him put me to the ground sooner rather than later. So, I’m asking you? Are we good? Are we still on, like John said? Are we going to get to the damn parking lot, bring John back to do the job and get Falconi off my back, or have I almost died four times today just for the laughs?”

  And right about that time, I saw Eileen, the flesh and blood Eileen, looking like she’d been run over by a truck. I saw Steve reach for a large spoon, idly sitting inside a bowl of gravy and then I heard the sound of Eileen’s laughter, which I was honestly glad to hear after a while:

  “Put that down, Steve. It’s me, the Aka-ne-wha-de, you don’t have to make a complete ass of yourself.”

  “How can I know you’re not the demon who robbed that flesh once more for himself?”

  “Steve I thought you were good at this sort of thing. One, the ‘demon’ as you call him wouldn’t have to wait all this time to get inside this body. And two, which is I’m really surprised you forgot but I’m eager to believe is due to the shock and stress of all this, you killed the host so you send the spirit to the spirit-world, and now he can’t come back unless he’s summoned. Anyone did any summoning while I changed bodies? I wouldn’t think so. I mean come on, nobody watches Supernatural? Buffy the Vampire Slayer? You know, that sort of nonsense?”

  “You talk funny,” said Steve sounding like a ten-year old boy who wanted to know but feared to ask.

  “Yeah, well that’s because earlier, I wanted to feel like Aka-ne-wha-de again. You know, sound bad-ass, really unforgiving, regal, that sort of thing. Plus, I really wanted to make Bobby here know I was serious. The hard-ass guardian spirit that won’t take any bullshit is something to be feared and respected, while Eileen is just, well, Eileen.”

  “So, how should we address you, great guardian spirit?”

  She looked spiteful, youthful and bossy all-in-one. Her face was familiar, but this was a whole new other person.

  “First thing, stop the sucking up. Second thing. Bobby, are you sorry for what you did to Eileen?”

  I kinda hoped that sort of a question wouldn’t pop up, but I that’s just my string of luck.

  “Wha-at? Well, yeah, of course. No, really. I mean, she.. You.. She, I’m pretty sure it was she, meaning another person, well technically the same but-”

  “Cut the evasive crap. Are you sorry?”

  I paused for just one moment and said just what really came to mind:

  “Yeah. I am. She wasn’t that bad. Or that crazy. Maybe she was that crazy, but I shouldn’t have taken advantage of her like that. That’s just like stealing candy from a baby, and believe me, I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “I’ll take that as a yes. You can call me Eileen. I’ll call you Steve and Bobby, or whatever I damn well please at the time. Are we cool?”

  Both Steve and I nodded with some apprehension before I added:

  “Yeah, positively; but listen, I’m in a bit of a spot, I’m sure you’ll have noticed by now. So could you lend a hand, or should we just be on our way ’cause the clock’s ticking and-”

  “I don’t like that tone. I didn’t hear you say ‘please’.”

  “Right, sure. Please?”

  She beamed with a smile and said:

  “I was going to anyway. We’re in this together anyhow. I’ll scratch your back and you’ll scratch mine. It’s only fair.”

  “Meaning?”

  Her happy face turned into an angry scowl when she said:

  “Burn this bitch. The daemon host’s body can’t return to mother Earth. And then we’ll burn my father. Well, Novorski.”

  My propensity to see the larger picture and innovate came to the fore when I proposed:

  “Do we really need to resort to something that base? Couldn’t we just shoot the poor bastard?”

  Steve couldn’t believe I’d suggest such a thing and stabbed me with his eyes.

  “No, we need to burn him,” she said and sounded quite adamant about it.

  “Why so much hatred, Eileen?” asked Steve trying to straighten out his sorry-looking feathery hat, while I took the opening and popped my own much more pertinent and important question:

  “I can think of some reasons, but to tell you the truth I don’t care so much about the sorry son of a bitch. I haven’t killed a man yet, but there’s a first time for everything. How long will that take? I need to be at Topeka tomorrow, and have John ready to go at an epic vault with a mean blowtorch.”

  “I’m fascinated by your willingness Bobby, and though I should be concerned, I think that’s instinct talking. You won’t have to kill anyone. Not a human, at any length. Novorski’s a demon, just like she was,” said Eileen and tasted the sour cream before spitting it out on the floor, the taste making her grimace.

  “No shit?” I asked with genuine interest.

  “No shit,” she replied as she walked over to the fridge, opened it and rummaged about.

  “So, what does that mean?” said Steve, still trying to save what little remained of his feather hat.

  “I hope you can help me find out. And I can help you get your friend John back. Isn’t that what you want?” Eileen said, and unscrewed a bottle of iced tea.

  “Well, yeah. I think.”

  “Don’t just stand there then, burn this thing.”

  “What, right here?” I said, feeling awkward.

  “Do you want the neighbors to say a few last words?” she said and gave me the eye.

  “I guess not.”

  “Good. I’ll watch some TV while you go about it. Then we can pay Novorski a visit.”

  “Watch TV?” I said, thinking I had simply misheard, and in fact she had said ‘become one with mother earth and all the living spirits’ or something along these lines. Her answer flattened me on the spot:

  “Yeah, ‘Married with children’ is on.”

  I thought that there was something seriously wrong with the world at large at that point, but then again, who was I to judge people, never mind guardian spirits of the after-world no less.

  “Never mind. Pretend I didn’t ask. Hey Steve, any ideas on how to torch this thing?”

  Steve’s eyes were out of focus, lost somewhere between the TV and Eileen, gazing something far beyond mere mortals eyes. Or it might’ve been that he was just woolgathering. Nevertheless, he managed an answer of sorts:

  “Yeah. With something flammable. Like, gasoline. Or maybe bourbon. No, not bourbon.”

  “You have a drinking problem, you know that, don’t you?” I said, put a finger in the bowl of sour cream, tasted it, and found out it was delicious.