A big hand closed over her wrist and the mag-lite was yanked from her grasp. A pause and then six D-cell batteries’ worth of painfully bright light shone right in her face. The pain in her head spiked and the roller coaster took another swerve; her stomach could not keep up. Buster released her and stepped back as Lynne bent over at the waist and vomited, then fell to her knees, hands flat against the cave floor and helpless against the heaving of her gut that continued long after her stomach had emptied.
She finally stopped and looked up, squinting against the beam of the mag-lite.
“What’s wrong with you?” Buster actually sounded concerned.
“You gave me a concussion, you jerk.” Lynne spat foul bits out of her mouth. “Quit shining the light in my eyes.” She reached out toward the cave wall and slowly clambered to her feet, feeling like she’d pulled every muscle in her abdomen.
“Well, I think you broke my arm. Look!” Buster moved the light to shine on a massive purpling knot on his right forearm. “Look what you did.”
Lynne couldn’t tell if she was swaying or the cave was, but at least Buster sounded marginally more sober. She tried closing her eyes but that made the swaying worse. She fumbled at her belt, surprised to find her own flash still clipped to it, then turned it on and shone the light around, spotting her hard hat. Bending over wasn’t an option so she knelt to pick it up and settled it on her head, hissing in pain as the fitting strap touched her left temple. Her ribs ached from Buster’s tackle, her left shoulder was going to have a heck of a bruise from hitting the wall, and she’d twisted her right ankle.
Lynne set her jaw and told herself she wasn’t seriously injured. Then another wave of nausea hit and she suddenly had to sit down and lean back against the smooth rock wall, taking slow deep breaths.
Buster, surprisingly, sat as well, settling a few feet to her right and stretching long legs out, crossed neatly at the ankles. He fumbled chunks of tequila-soaked glass out of his coat pocket and threw them into the darkness, hissing as the alcohol entered cuts in his fingers. “Jesus, you made a mess.”
Lynne closed her eyes and gingerly sett the back of her hard hat against the wall. “I made a mess? You drink way too much, Dude. Plus you’re a total asshat.”
Buster grunted. “Maybe I whoop it up a little too much. So what? It’s not a crime that I’m aware of.”
“No, but banging my head against the wall is. Not to mention selling dinosaur bones.”
A brief pause. “Well, I didn’t meant to. Besides you really hurt my arm.” He sounded like a sulky school boy.
They sat for long enough that Lynne found herself humming the old song as her thoughts wandered sluggishly. She drifted, knowledge that she shouldn’t fall asleep struggling against the cotton batting in which her mind wanted to wrap itself. Buster said something about money but her thoughts were sluggish – by the time she thought to listen he had gone quiet.
Her attention perked up only slightly when Buster stood up with a grunt and shone his mag-lite at her again.
“So now what am I going to do with you?” His voice was slow and musing.
She knew she should feel alarmed, but found herself giggling. “I’ll just frolic in some autumn mists. Don’t mind me.” Her hands and feet felt like ice. She raised her flashlight to illuminate his face.
His eyes were cold. “It’s a shame that you came in by yourself. You tripped and hit your head. Got a nice concussion, maybe even fractured your skull.” He crouched on one knee next to her, mag-lite shining on the puddle of vomit. “You suffocate on your own puke and even though I don’t find you in time, I’m a hero for trying.” He twisted the lens on his mag-lite and placed it on the ground so it cast a pool of light around them, then reached out and slid one hand behind her neck, squeezing the palm of the other over her nose and mouth.
Lynne let out a muffled squeak and tried to jerk away but her head exploded with fresh waves of pain as Buster squeezed harder, forcing his hand harder over her mouth and pinching her nose firmly shut.
There was a deep rumbling sound to their right. Buster looked over his shoulder as Lynne grabbed at his arm to try to force his hand away. Without aim or intent, her hands grabbed and locked down on the still-swelling knot where she’d hit him with the mag-lite.
Buster shrieked and let go, spinning around on his knees to shake her off but Lynne—as disoriented as a sparrow in a hurricane—held on. Eighteen years of rock climbing gave her one ferocious grip, and she felt the fractured edges of the bones in his forearm shift and grind as her hold tightened.
“Ohgodohgod let go!” he screamed and slapped at her. There was a sudden basso growl and beyond the very edge of the pool of light Lynne saw something large and terrible… move.
Buster saw it too, and his scream filled up with terror. He jerked frantically; with an unsettling pop something in his arm gave way under Lynne’s hands and she released her grip and fell backwards. Buster staggered away, then tripped and fell out of the light. There was a wet crack, a few thuds, and then silence.
Grimly ignoring a head that felt like it was about to split in two, Lynne rolled onto her hands and knees. Her own flashlight was dark and lost somewhere, but if she could crawl to the mag-lite she could gain a weapon. After what seemed to be a mile her hand closed on the big flashlight and she clicked it off, then held her breath and listened.
No noise from Buster. Only the sound of huge lungs moving air—inhale, exhale, inhale again.
Lynne got a knee underneath her then staggered two steps, almost falling, before being caught gently in an immense, soft-furred wing. She ran her hands along velvety skin to the warm, scaly shoulder, then across a broad chest and up until she rubbed the jawline, triggering a deep rumbling purr as if from a monumental cat.
“Puff,” Lynne whispered, leaning her head carefully against the dragon’s shoulder. Then darkness spun her away.
42-year-old Jackie woke up blinded, in the hospital in Kamloops.
She was just a consultant on the project, but the company still covered all Lynne’s out-of-pocket costs for care. They had even offered to pay for a driver and part-time domestic aide when they found out Lynne didn’t have any family to help, but she turned them down. She would find her own way, she firmly told the insurance adjuster who had visited her in the hospital. She’d been through the drill before.
She didn’t turn down full payout of her contract, of course. There was independence and then there was stupidity. She had briefly debated asking for a bonus, but decided that might be pushing it. As she left the train station and turned right toward the warmth that meant she was walking west, Lynne fingered the little green-enameled dragon figurine in her pocket. The searchers had found it next to her outstretched hand when they followed the pink mason’s string to where she lay at the edge of the drop-off. She had been airlifted to Kamloops and was already in surgery by the time Buster’s body was recovered from the crevasse beyond.
Lynne pointed her toes like a dancer and skimmed her feet along the surface, white cane tapping the path ahead. Her case worker had warned her it might be years before a guide dog became available, and that she needed to learn to be self-sufficient. She had assured the case worker she would be just fine.
*There is something across your path, five steps ahead* the voice whispered in her mind. In four steps Lynne reached her cane out, tapped and discovered a fallen bicycle, and with Puff’s voice guiding her passed it safely. She reached into her pocket again and rubbed the tip of a finger across the miniature jaw of the little green-enameled dragon figurine, triggering a tiny rumbling purr like that from a miniscule cat.
JB Riley writes and edits technical healthcare proposals for a major US-based corporation, but has loved reading and writing speculative fiction ever since discovering The Chronicles of Narnia at Age 8. When not trawling the shelves at the local bookstore, she enjoys travel, hockey, beer and cooking. JB lives in Chicago with her family; which currently includes a 90-
pound dog, a 15-pound cat, and a 5-pound cat that scares the hell out of everyone.
STEPHANIE LORÉE
GINNY AND THE OUROBOROS
The cop eyes her photo I.D. “Virginia Washington. That an alias?”
Ginny shoves her hands in her coat pockets and doesn’t mention her nickname. “My mama’s got a sense of humor.”
“She know you’re wandering the streets this time of night?” he asks, drumming the fingers of one hand on his holster.
“No,” she says. “She’s dead.”
The cop frowns and mumbles something into his walkie-talkie that sounds like the make-believe language she and her little sister invented when they were young. All jargon and slang and official-sounding TV-type talk. Ginny’s mama called it Pig Latin, but Ginny learned later it wasn’t nothing like Ig-pay Atin-lay. Though now she thinks the term is appropriate for cop-speak.
A dispatcher on the end of the line says some Pig Latin back that makes the cop inspecting Ginny scowl.
“You got any weapons or drugs on you? Anything I should know about?” he asks.
“I don’t smoke,” she says. “Don’t do none of that.”
He nods like he believes her, but she can see the fake painted in his eyes. They’re blue as storybook skies and touristy pictures of the Mississippi River and that baby she found last year in an alley and never told no one about but God. She has nightmares of a blue like that.
“Turn around and put your hands on the wall,” he says.
She shrugs and places her palms against the cracked, brick building, spreads her legs shoulder-width apart without him asking. She keeps her face forward and watches her breath fog and disappear into the dark, trying hard not to think how this cop will be the first person who wasn’t her sister to touch her in a long time. How she hopes he doesn’t remove her thin gardening gloves.
He runs his hands over her arms and sides, down her legs to squeeze her ankles. He dips inside her coat pocket and grunts. “The hell,” he says. He rummages inside the pocket and scoops out the clump of dirt Ginny’d dug up not an hour earlier. Holding it out for her, he says, “What’s this?”
The lump of soil is still damp, and it drips a bit through his white fingers and muddies his palm. Inside it, a worm has wrapped itself around an acorn like a dragon guarding the last known world. She sees this even if the cop can’t.
“It’s for school,” she lies, then tacks on some truth. “I study at Jackson State.”
He sniffs the soil, frowns, and shoves it back in her pocket. “You got class in the morning?”
“Yeah, bio lab.”
He lifts her hands from the wall and positions them behind her back. The cuffs click closed around her wrists. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“What’m I charged with?”
He hesitates. “Loitering.”
She rolls the bullshit around her mind for a moment, sliding into the backseat of the cop car. When the cop settles up front, she says, “What’d Dakota do this time?”
Startled, the cop glances back at her, and she notices how pretty his face is. No lines around the pale eyes or between brown brows. He hasn’t been a cop long enough for the city to sink into his skin, but it would happen soon.
“A detective wants you to answer some questions,” he says.
He drives cautious as an old lady, weaving around potholes and buckled macadam and trash tossed aside like trivial memories. A lonely shoe, a sofa cushion gone moldy, bags with shiny logos, and cups with golden arches, a tire, a broken doll, a hobo. Ginny slouches, studying the images flashing by her window. She draws comfort from the soil in her pocket, tries to reassure the worm of her presence as the radio chirps more Pig Latin.
“Hey,” she says when it’s silent, “thanks for giving me back my dirt.”
The cop shifts uncomfortably in his seat. “Sure.”
“And for not being a jerk. Nicest arrest I ever had.”
He glances in the rear-view, and she catches his soft smile. “Sure,” he says again.
Ginny thinks maybe his blue eyes don’t look nothing like that baby. Maybe they’re just eyes like skies she’s never seen and that’s why they scare her.
“Get whatever you like, Ginny baby,” Mama says.
Ginny looks around, sees the dresses hanging like flower petals. Her hand glides over the fabrics, soft cottons and scratchy sheer laces. She’s never seen so many beautiful things in one place. As if God took all the pretty from the world and strung it up on racks.
“Anything?” Ginny asks, unsure.
Her mama nods.
She’s never gotten new clothes before, only hand-me-downs from neighbor kids and the Salvation Army. Now, the unfaded colors and sharply creased materials threaten to overwhelm her. She considers running down the aisles, grabbing everything within reach, and stuffing it into the cart. But she restrains herself and straightens her spine. At six years old, Virginia Washington knows this is a moment to savor.
She chooses a green dress. Plain fabric, smooth as spring-soaked grass, with daisies blooming along the waistline. Later, she chooses to forget how her mama hides the dress in her purse and carries it past the cashier, or how the sewed-on daisies fall off the first time Mama does the wash. Ginny does not want to remember the way green fabric turns brown when stained with blood.
The cop shop is old, broken. A square building that squats on the corner of two streets with busted pavement and decorative orange barrels. Moss creeps over the barrels, and roots push between cracked concrete. The cop shop stares at the intrusion defiantly, but the ivy still climbs graffiti-covered walls.
Inside, Ginny is escorted to an interrogation room. She recognizes it from the one-way mirror, glaring fluorescent lights, and the stick-thin table and chair that would shatter if she bashed it over a detective’s head.
The blue-eyed cop eases her into the chair and leaves with a little nod. She learned his name is Stephens from the desk cop out front who’d greeted him and gave Ginny a nasty, puckered expression. Stephens had frowned and whispered, “Ignore him, he’s always ugly,” once they were out of earshot. Replaying it now in her mind, she smiles and decides she likes Stephens.
They let her sit in the room for some time, arms still secure behind her back, dirt humming in her pocket. The worm grows weaker; its grip around the acorn slackens and sickens her stomach. She watches the mirror with a bored, blank gaze but says, “Please don’t waste my time.”
They make her wait anyway.
When the detective finally enters, it’s with a puff of perfume that makes Ginny want to puke. It reeks of dead flowers, of lies that make a person sweat.
“Do you know why you’re here?” The detective crosses her arms and looks down her pointed nose at Ginny. She’s an older lady with steel roots in her bottle-black hair and a long, line-riddled face that reminds Ginny of wrinkled bedsheets.
“Kinda philosophical question, but I guess you mean my sister,” Ginny says.
The detective lays a mugshot on the table. A man stares out like he’s devouring the world with his eyes. The markings on the wall behind him say he’s over six feet tall, and Ginny thinks his loam-like skin would be beautiful in sunlight.
“Recognize him?” the detective asks.
Ginny shakes her head.
“Robert Jamison, goes by Bobby James. Twenty-two years old and already wanted for burglary, assault with a deadly, and a slew of misdemeanors. But for the most part, our Bobby prefers arson. He’s burned six homes in the past week, one of which nearly cost the lives of two squatters inside.”
“What’s this have to do with me?”
“He’s been seeing your sister,” she says.
Ginny furrows her brow. “Dakota don’t have any boyfriends.”
The detective shrugs. “Right now, she’s wanted as accessory to Bobby’s most recent burn-job. When’s the last time you saw your sister?”
The chair below Ginny squeaks as she adjusts hers
elf. She slides her tennis shoes along the linoleum, feeling the cool push of wooden floorboards through her soles, of poured cement and copper piping and the deep, dark press of earth. Fat roots slink through the ground and stab toward her position above them. The worm inside her pocket whimpers. She hears the soil sing.
The last time she saw Dakota, Ginny came home to her sister passed out in front of her door. Bruises and malnourishment had turned Dakota’s brown skin yellow, and meth had rotted her teeth. Ginny carried her inside, made the sofa into a bed, and removed Dakota’s worn sandals. She whispered lullabies and stroked her baby sister’s hair until she fell unconscious beside her.
In the morning, Ginny discovered only emptiness: couch, purse, and refrigerator. The only things Dakota left were shadows under Ginny’s eyes, hollows in her cheeks, and dead leaves in her garden.
“Don’t know,” she tells the detective. “Couple weeks.”
The detective paces around the table, circling Ginny like a vulture. “Your sheet stretches back to juvie. Been in the system, never leaving. You and your sister’ve made trouble since you crawled out of your mother’s belly.”
“Guess you know all about us then.”
“I know your type.” She narrows her eyes and rests a hand on Ginny’s shoulder. “Dakota’s in a lot of trouble, and the best thing you can do is help me find her. She’s still a minor. She can make a break of it, get clean.”
The detective’s acrylic nails bite into Ginny’s collarbone in a way that is part comfort, part threat. They carry the smell of beauty parlors and Swisher Sweet cigarillos and remind Ginny of her mama.
A cold finger snakes down her spine. In her pocket, the worm hisses.
“Look,” Ginny says, “I got nothing to tell you. Dakota comes and goes. I’d like to see her as much as you, but unless you’re gonna hold me on trumped-up loitering shit, I got a class to wake up for in five hours.”
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