by Peter Fang
Manfred stumbled towards the sewing machine, each step heavier than the previous one. He felt his vision blurring and his heart racing, but he continued to push forward. Finally, Manfred stood over the sewing machine, his hand holding the needle. He felt more afraid than ever before. He knelt down and saw the slit with one of the queen’s limp legs poking through. Manfred threaded the needle into the hole and hesitated.
“Do it now! We are running out of time.”
Manfred closed his eyes and pushed the needle in, but he didn’t push it all the way in. The queen shook violently inside the box.
“You didn’t get it all the way into queen’s heart. Do it one more time!”
Manfred tried to reach for the needle but felt a pain on his calf. He looked down and saw a six-inch snake biting down on his leg. Manfred screamed in pain as the snake injected venom into his muscle. Manfred dropped the needle and swatted the creature away from him. He tried to step on the snake, but it had already had scurried into a wall crack.
“Damn it, the minions!” Manfred cried out. “How did they break my spell? I locked them inside of the worm, but they have somehow broken free!”
The queen’s dark voice shimmered, “After all of the sacrifices I made for you and Meredith, and now betrayal is how you pay me back. First, it was June, now, you. How does it feel to be betrayed by your own minions? ”
June replied in anger, “I’m here to get rid of you, the old parasite! How many more souls are you going to waste to save your miserable life?” She blew a powerful spell in the queen’s direction and the jailbox’s narrow slit blurred. Inexplicably, thick silk fibers wove and close in around the slit. Queen’s opening to the outside world was sealing shut.
June’s cold voice almost froze time as she recited an ancient passage. As each word was spoken, red ink bled through from the woven fabric around the hole and form into words. When the whole passage was delivered, the entire tapestry paper was covered in ancient Chinese writings.
“You will be locked up in your prison forever,” June cried. “Use the time to enjoy your suffering and think about all of the people you’ve murdered.”
The queen laughed. “You think you can use this spell to stop me? I’ll deal with you later––” The queen hissed and spewed out an invisible gas into the room. Seconds later, the girl’s voice vanished from Manfred’s mind. The queen focused her energy and used her pincers to cut through the tough fibers, but new fibers grew back instantly. She kept on cutting at an incredible speed to stop the fibers from swallowing up the small opening. She released a spell to increase her speed, and she was able to keep the slit from completely shutting her in. She felt spent. Soon, fear and anger was threatening to overcome her mind. She knew that she could not lose this fight, or she would forever be staring into darkness. She recognized the spell from June––it was one that she herself had taught her during one of the advanced study sessions. The agony of betrayal once again washed over her, and she briefly lost her concentration. That was enough for the fibers to gain the upper hand and reduced the slit into a small pinhole. Focus! Don’t lose this battle. Don’t give up. She forced more energy to cut back the fibers. This spell drew energy from its target, and the only way to neutralize the spell was to soak it with a blood child’s blood. To conserve energy, she thought about severing her connection with Lão Chóng underground, but that was her lifeline to the outside world. For now, she could fight the spell while buying time to plan for her next step.
The queen sensed Manfred’s gaze looking down at her. She felt the cold stare and that needle in his hand.
“Go ahead, Manfred, finish it. Finish the job that June wanted you to do.”
“My Queen, I’m tired of this life. Please let me take Meredith with me.”
“You can’t leave me! If you leave, then Meredith will stay and rot.” The queen projected her anger into Manfred’s mind.
“Forgive me. Meredith, my love, perhaps I will see you on the other side––I love you.” Manfred lunged forward and pushed the needle into the queen.
The queen screamed, then stuttered—“gāi sǐ1-gāi sǐ-gāi sǐ-gāi sǐ-gāi sǐ.”
The eerie staccato filled the room with a nauseating resonance.
“Come with me now!” June’s voice reached a new pitch.
Manfred nodded, his eyes stoic with a fearless determination. He took a deep breath, cupped his head inside his both hands, and snapped his neck with a swift twist. His body limply fell to the floor. Dark blood slowly poured out of his mouth and drew an eerie smile.
Manfred’s last breath triggered a disturbance deep in the corridor of the abandoned warehouse, and Meredith stirred. She sniffed the air and pushed herself up against the cold concrete. The heavy chain around her wrists clanked as she rose. The cell she sat in was bare beside the last meal she had enjoyed: a young runaway. Body remains were scattered around the floor. She pushed aside a half-eaten corpse and walked across the room until her arms touched the door. The cold steel pushed against her skin, but she could not feel anything. The last short-term memory she had was Manfred’s handsome face. She smiled and its dried, scaly skin stretched to the limit. Flashes of the past flew across her eyes and she remembered who she was. Her degenerated mind didn’t recognize many things anymore, but her memory of Manfred remained strong. Her nose was twice as sensitive as a bloodhound's and she picked up molecules of Manfred’s blood. She searched for Manfred’s mind and called out to him, but she only received silence. She also picked up the queen’s injury. She didn’t know who Queen was, but she recognized that Manfred died at her hands. Anyone who harmed her husband was a mortal enemy. She locked in on the queen’s location and rammed the iron-cast door.
After countless experiments by Manfred trying to extend her life with spells and medicines, she had degenerated into an unrecognizable figure. The poison Manfred injected into her to kill off the cancerous cells also made her mad. Spells he used to extend her life also damaged her mind. Recently, out of desperation, Manfred fed her the parasites, hoping to communicate to her, but that also failed. Instead, the parasite took over her body and transformed her physically. She grew scales, and her nails turned into talons. Extra appendages sprouted from her ribs and she could no longer speak. The queen asked Manfred to stop with the experiments and let her pass, but he refused. He fought with the queen almost daily, asking for new ways to extend her life, but the queen said there was nothing else she could do to help her. Manfred didn’t believe her, so the experiments continued. Meredith slipped further into the abyss of dark magic. Soon, words came out of her mouth that Manfred couldn’t even understand. The language soon degraded into animal-like growls, and she sometimes didn’t even recognize him. The queen warned Manfred that eventually Meredith would have to go because the dark poison would make her uncontrollable.
“Manfred!” Meredith cried out desperately. She pounded against the door over and over again until she made a dent in the steel plate. The chain thrashed as she turned and pulled it with all her might. One of the iron-cast studs groaned under the force; its hinge separated and ricocheted off the cell wall. She swung her arms hard and the chain link broke in half. She opened her mouth over on the other chain. Streams of corrosive juice dripped from her mouth and the links smoldered. With a strike of her arm, the last chain shattered into pieces. She turned towards the door and spit out more acid onto the door and onto its hinges. Smoke filled the cell and the door creaked under its own weight.
Moments later, Meredith pushed through the door with her four arms. The large metal frame bounced away and clashed onto the floor. Loud bangs echoed into the empty warehouse beneath. There was no one there, nothing. She sensed Manfred’s faint blood trail. It was coming from the tunnel beneath. She quickly darted across the corridor. She reached out her arms and her long nails scraped across the iron staircase like cleats. She leaped into the air and landed at the bottom of the stairs with a heavy thud. Strong scent trails provided her with an easy map into a tunnel behind
a hidden door. The scent was getting stronger and she could pick up the queen’s scent as well. “Manfred!” she screamed in her mind, but it came out as a wet growl this time. Her legs tightened and with a burst of energy, she darted into the dark tunnel.
The queen sensed the disturbance from Meredith and felt a looming threat closing in from the tunnel beneath the antique shop. Fifty yards, forty, thirty, twenty…soon Meredith would burst from the backroom where Manfred had constructed a manhole. Ten, nine…the threat stopped just beneath the manhole. The queen could sense it even from that distance––she was being stalked. She sensed Meredith’s dark power from that distance. The queen knew at that moment that she could not stop Meredith. Somehow, Manfred had neglected her repeated warnings and had transformed Meredith beyond anyone's ability to control her because the dark magic had wholly consumed her. With the queen’s hand busy fighting June’s fiber spell, she really didn’t have much left to fend off any new threat. The queen had a split second to decide what to do. With a murmur under her breath, she severed the connection with Lão Chóng to preserve energy. She knew she had one shot so she waited for Meredith to make the first move.
The first thing Meredith saw from beneath the manhole was Manfred’s listless body. By the way his neck was lying, perpendicular to his shoulder, she knew Manfred was long gone. She was about to leap from the cover when she saw the sewing machine nearby. Even in her dissolved human mind, she recognized the housing that belonged to the queen. She still remembered who the queen was and how she could do things that no one else could. No one knew more magic spells than she did. Her acid gland was spent, so she couldn’t spit from that distance. With a loud growl, she leaped from the manhole and reached out with her four arms. Each arm stretched out with long talons fully extended toward the sewing machine. In a second, she would reach the box and her four arms would tear the queen into pieces. But just before Meredith landed on the sewing machine, she saw Manfred get up and walk towards the manhole. Meredith claws dug into the sewing machine but the distraction made her unbalanced, and she fell sideways onto the ground. She could not believe her eyes because it was clearly Manfred himself walking towards the manhole and waving at Meredith to follow him.
“Manfred!” Meredith leaped in his direction. She caught up to him with her long arms and turned him around. It was indeed Manfred, beaming at her with that familiar smile. She was relieved but still in disbelief; only moments ago, she had seen his frozen body on the ground, yet now he was walking and smiling before her. She wanted to touch his face with her hands but she couldn’t, and then she realized something was crawling up her arms. She looked down and saw fibrous strings growing out from Manfred’s arms and onto hers. She tried to pull her arms away but the strings were as sticky as a spider web. The harder she pulled away, the more she was ensnared into the trap. She looked up again at Manfred but saw an empty face. His eyes were cloudy and staring past her. She screamed in agony and tried to turn to attack the queen, but when she turned to face her, the room looked different and she could not find the sewing machine. She knew it was a mind trick, but she could not break the spell now because she had already been enchanted once she touched Manfred—he was the bait. The only thing she could do was to retreat. She tried to fight off Manfred's body to create enough space to crawl back into the manhole, but the strings grew stronger around her body, soon digging into her armored skin, and she felt Manfred’s body crushed against hers.
The queen’s vile laugh echoed in the room. “Have a taste of your own medicine!”
Meredith wanted to retreat back to the warehouse, but she knew she couldn’t make it that far. She found a chamber right beneath the manhole and it opened up into a room. There were large cages in each of the corner and some food rations piled against the far side of the wall. It was a dead end. The fibers were digging to her flesh now and she felt Manfred’s bones breaking against her body. She tried to fight loose but couldn’t. Finally, she knew the only way to fight back was to let the magic wash over her. The strong fibers quickly consumed her entire body.
She sensed someone nearby. It was her son Baobao crawling in from a dirt tunnel. She was surprised and happy to feel her son's presence.
“Baobao!” With her last breath, she called out to her son.
Baobao crawled over and used his enormous strength to rip through the fibers around Meredith's body. The loose strings quickly clung on to him and covered his body and let go of Meredith. The fibers engulfed Baobao until he could no longer move.
Meredith hastily crawled away from Baobao's ensnared body before she passed out. The fibrous spell triggered the acceleration of her evolution into a core, and her body transformed into hard-shelled cocoon. The cocoon’s side cracked, and burrowing legs grew into the ground.
Back in the shop, the queen slowly revealed herself again as her spell wore off. She moved her body away from danger and rested in a corner. Meredith’s long talons had punctured her body. The damage was severe; it felt as if someone punctured her right lung with a long blade. She coughed up blood and felt even more spent than before. She tried to call for Lão Chóng, but there was nothing––no reply from the voices of her minions down below. There was a sense of panic growing inside of her. Is this it? After hundreds of years working her way back, she could only hope that the minions inside Lão Chóng would figure out a way to take control and come back to her. She felt alone again, like several times in her life, naked and fighting for her survival. It reminded her of that fateful day eons before when she was burned for days by Lord Yang.
The queen sensed Manfred’s body was moving, even after his death. The spell from the queen had residual effect on the corpse and it was twitching. It suddenly stood up and walked towards the exit.
“Where are you going, traitor? You are not going anywhere!” The queen took in a long drag of air, and Manfred’s body collapsed to the ground. She checked the manhole to ensure the fibrous spell would tie down Meredith for a long time.
The queen sensed Lão Chóng was also injured, and they both had lost their connections with their zombies and infected human puppets around the city. She needed time to think, and it was best to keep herself invisible while she heal. With a whisper from her lips, the sewing machine became invisible to the human eyes. Under the cloaking spell, she grew deathly concerned about her ash boxes: now Meredith had possession of them inside the warehouse. With the three boxes—the Elder, the Weave, the Sonnet—Meredith could use them to heal quickly and become more powerful. It was only a matter of time before she would attack her again.
She regretted entrusting Manfred as the custodian of her most valuable possessions. What a dreadful low-life!
She let out a long, bloodcurling cry and slashed her nails against the walls inside her cold chamber, leaving long, deep cuts behind, but the walls quickly regrew themselves. She heaved as she tried to regain her composure after the outburst, and then refocused her energy with a chant. She needed to find a way to get closer to Maria, and then she could figure everything out.
Ansen and Maria left the shop. On their way back, Ansen noticed Maria was deep in thought, her brows creased with concern.
“So, what really happened back there?” Ansen asked Maria at a crosswalk. The light just turned red.
“I am not sure, but I felt a connection with that guy and the sewing machine. It’s almost like it was a piece of furniture that I used to own, and it was part of me; then I felt the machine was talking to me…” Maria shook her head and looked up at Ansen. “Never mind; I sound crazy.”
On their drive back, Maria suddenly jerked in her seat. “Shit, I think I left my purse at the shop—”
“Are you sure?” Ansen looked at Maria to make sure she was not joking. “But we didn’t buy the typewriter. Why would you lose your purse?”
“I don’t know—maybe someone stole it. Damn it! I can’t find it.” She frantically searched inside her bag and rummaged through all of the pockets.
“Why don’t you try to
call the place?” Ansen suggested as he made a U-turn at an intersection to head back to the shop.
“Shit, my phone is out of battery,” Maria swore. She picked up Ansen’s phone and tried to search for all the antique shops around Chinatown.
“I can’t believe his shop doesn’t exist in the search. Do you remember what the name of his shop was?”
Ansen shook his head.
They drove all the way back. This time, they were lucky to find a parking spot right outside. Maria literally ran back into the alley, but they found out that the shop was closed. They walked down the staircase and knocked on the door. The shop’s door was locked and no one was answering.
“Were we only gone for an hour?” Maria looked at her watch.
“Looks like he closed the shop early. How the hell are we going to check for your purse now?” Ansen crossed his arms and stroked his mustache.
“He kicked everyone out,” said a voice behind them. It was a small Asian kid wearing a Seahawks jersey. “I live next door, was out playin’ and then heard someone yelling. Came over to see what’s up and saw the dude screaming at everyone to leave. The old man was flippin’ mad.” The boy then pointed at the sign stand, now lying flat on the ground near the stair entrance to the shop.
“Thanks, kid. Do you know why he asked everyone to leave?” Maria asked.
The boy shrugged and said, “Don’t know. Gotta go.” He dribbled the ball and walked away.
Ansen and Maria stood on top of the staircase and wondered about their next move. Finally, Ansen said he was going to take a peek. He walked down the staircase and peered inside the room. Maria also came down and looked over his shoulder. Through the iron bar on the window, they saw an empty room, but the lights were still on and the music was still playing in the background.
“I bet he’s still in there.” Ansen knocked on the door, but there was no response. “Hello? Mr. Manfred? Are you there?”