by Somer Canon
“Work,” I replied, continuing my backwards walk towards the door. I had every intention of opening that door and running like hell for my car.
“I think not,” Grenadine said, getting up and rushing to me. She grabbed me painfully by my upper arms and threw me across the room and onto my bed.
“I’m going to start taking offense at the way you keep greeting me, Christina.” Grenadine said, sprawling out on the bed next to me. She scooched close to me so that our noses were almost touching. “Why don’t you like me?”
Of all the things that creature had said to me, this was by far the scariest. I started to realize that Grenadine was something that had been around for so long, was so old, that it had lost its damned mind. I was lying in bed with a deranged fairy.
“You need to fix your pronouns when thinking of me, Christina,” Grenadine said. “I am female. You can think of me as one.”
That reading my mind stuff made it hard for me to get my thoughts together enough to interact with the thing. With her.
“His name is Terry,” I said, deciding to return to where the conversation veered when she threw me across the room.
“I’m still thinking about the favor I’m going to bestow upon you,” Grenadine said, ignoring me. “It used to be easy. A milking cow, a bag of grain seeds that would yield greatly no matter what, or a blessing promising many strong sons. But now, I’m a bit lost in the times. It’s going to take thought on my part and that’s not something that I’ve always been willing to do for your type.”
She reached out and poked at the gash on my stomach. I flinched and went to cover the wound with my hands, but she pressed her nose against mine. Her nose was as hard and unmoving as a stone wall and she was slowly applying more pressure with every second. Her hand found the gash and she stabbed a finger onto it, making me yelp. She pressed her nose into mine harder. I wanted to close my eyes and shut out the vision of a green-eyed Anais, but something told me that showing too much weakness to this creature would be my undoing. I kept my eyes open as wide as I could and stared into those eyes like my life depended on it. It probably did. Luckily my eyes started to water, and my vision blurred. She pushed harder on the gash on my stomach. I didn’t make a noise. She pushed harder with her nose on mine. I waited in silence for the sound of the cartilage in my nose to give and break.
Then she was gone.
I gasped and sat up. When I realized that she really was gone, I flopped back onto the bed and cried for a little bit. I was scared. I was stressed. I was really confused. I needed to release some stress and I wasn’t set to meet Terry until after five and it was only two. Crying helped a little.
When I’d regained some of my composure, I checked on the status of my nose. She’d smashed it, but there was no damage done. The gash on my stomach had been reopened and was seeping red blood all over my thankfully black blouse. I got up and put some anti-bacterial cream on the gash. I’d seen those talons and they didn’t look very clean and the last thing I needed was some sort of fairy germ infection. I put on a T-shirt and went to the hotel’s gym to get my footsteps in. I shut the world out with music coming from my phone and through some ear buds. I got to 12,000 steps and felt much less stressed and much readier to see if I could resolve this situation without having to compromise my ability to do my job.
I showered and made sure that I smelled nice before I sat down at my laptop to update Anais (my Anais) of the progress that I had gotten that day and informed her that hopefully the interview that I had scheduled for the next day would yield enough for me to write up the second installment for our site. Then I opened up my favorite search engine and started doing some research on fairies.
I don’t know why I waited so long to do that search except that I am very good at compartmentalizing my life. How else could I have lived with Isaac for months without really seeing the signs that he was cheating? I had to walk in on him mid-hump with someone else in the bed we shared. I’m not the sharpest tack in the box. At least I come around sooner or later, and I was glad at first that my search had millions upon millions of hits related to fairies.
Man, there were some weird hits for that search. Just weird. And not at all helpful to me.
There was a cable TV show that I loved with all of my little fan girl heart. Never mind the name or the premise, but in this show, sometimes research was needed for a neat and tidy resolution to the problem at the end. It always amazed and enraged me at how easily information on some of the most antiquated or esoteric lore could be found in a short amount of time. The very centuries-old book that they needed was always within reach, the internet always yielded the perfect answer. It’s all bullshit and not at all fair. Real research takes hours, days, weeks and so on. The show was great, don’t get me wrong, but that detail took me out of the story.
As I sorted through stupid mass market fairy garden decorations and Tinkerbell porn, I wished that the internet was filled less with dreams and fetishes and more with that crazy off the grid stuff like in that TV show. Really. In that one afternoon, I saw more than enough gossamer-laden tiny ladies with fully exposed labia.
Finally, I found a page that seemed to be talking about the types of fairies that Grenadine would have called family. It was the type of poorly written website that would have popped up in the early 2000s that had a loudly colored background and the text was white, you had to highlight it in order to be able to read it. What I learned from this antique-by-internet-standards site was that people rarely took a fairy on and put more effort into showing them tribute than anything. They liked cakes. That explained where my other Stripey Cake had gone. Grenadine thought it was for her. There was also some talk about fairies being nocturnal, but I knew that wasn’t true because Grenadine was out and about with me in midday on more than one occasion. I saw the rumor that fairies were OCD and if you threw a handful of salt or sugar on the floor, they’d have to stop what they were doing to count all of the crystals. To me, that sounded entirely too stupid to be true, and making a mess on the floor would bother me, even if it didn’t bother the fairy.
It appeared that my only options with Grenadine were to do what I could to keep her happy and wait and see what she decided with what to favor me. I really hoped it wouldn’t be a head on a platter or anything like that.
Later that night. I was naked in bed next to Terry and filing down a broken nail. He was watching some sort of reality show on the television. I’d discovered that Terry was much more comfortable having sex in the missionary position. He was a little boring, but he was good looking and I was having a good time having sex with him even if it did make me think that it was how my grandparents did it.
“So, are you keeping Stephanie updated on what you’re finding out?” Terry asked me suddenly, startling me.
“I didn’t realize that we were best buds,” I said, keeping my attention on my ragged nail.
“You told her you’d keep in touch,” Terry said sternly, turning to me.
I looked over at him and frowned. He stared back at me for a moment and then looked back to the TV.
“I think that she thought that she was going to get something from this. I mean, she helped you, don’t you think you ought to help her?” he said.
“With what?” I asked, annoyed. “It was her article in the newspaper that brought me here. I’m interviewing people that she’s already talked to. What is it that she wants from me?”
Terry kept looking steadily at the TV, the muscles on the side of his face flexing as he clenched and unclenched his deliciously square jaw. He was struggling with something, so I sat up and turned to him, maneuvering myself so that I was straddling him and looking into his face.
“I don’t like games,” I said simply. “So, what’s up?”
He kept his eyes off of mine and tried to move his head away, but I had a good grip on the back of his neck and it was easy to keep swinging my own head around so that I was always in his line of site.
“This isn’t me,” he said finally.
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br /> “Huh?” I asked with extreme intelligence, as one usually does when using such a complicated word.
“I’m not a person who uses other people.” He finally locked eyes with me. His hands buried themselves in my hair as he gripped both sides of my head. “I like you. I really do, and I really like this little thing we have. You don’t ask me questions that I’m not comfortable answering and you’re fun to be around. This isn’t using. But what she wants me to do is just…I don’t know. She’s my friend. Has been for a long time, but I really don’t like what she wants me to do.”
I just stared at him. So many words had just tumbled out of his mouth and not a single one of them answered my question.
“She thinks that she can get a book deal out of this case eventually and she wants to use what you’ve found out to add to her data,” he said quickly, like he was confessing to a major crime.
“So?” I said back.
He looked at me like I was dense.
“She can use the files from Killer Chronicles. As long as she references the site, that’s totally acceptable,” I said.
“No.” Terry said, pulling my hips closer to him and wrapping his arms around my waist. “She wants me to tell her things that I’m supposed to get out of you while we’re together so that she can get them published before you. She wants it to look like she’s doing all of the work and you’re stealing from her.”
I sat back, leaning away from him and scrutinized his face.
“You had to have heard her wrong,” I said. “That’s just entirely too evil to be real life.”
“She’s constantly texting me and calling me. She’s badgering me to try to get you talking about it after sex, like pillow talk. She’s actually trying to dictate to me how I should open the topic of conversation. I don’t know what to say to her. I don’t want to get her mad at me, but I don’t feel good about using someone like that, especially someone who trusts me enough to go to bed with me.”
I could tell that Terry was extremely relieved to be able to confide in someone about this. It was something that was really weighing on him. I kissed him lightly and wiggled my hips into him playfully.
“Just blame it on me,” I said to him. “Tell her I refuse to talk work in bed. That way, you won’t look like you’re short-changing your friend and I won’t have to worry about her making me look like a hack.”
“She’s really persistent,” he said. I could tell that my hips were getting the bigger portion of his attention because his pupils were dilated, and he was intently watching my breasts.
“Let her be,” I said softly. “I’m not hurting anybody, and neither are you. You just keep telling her little white lies making me sound evasive and she’ll have to get off of her ass and do her own damned work.”
“You think it will be that easy?” he asked, taking one of my nipples into his mouth.
“I’m not going to be here much longer,” I said breathily, leaning back, really angling my hips onto him, feeling his eagerness pushing against me through the bed sheet.
“That’s such a shame,” he said, getting on his knees and pushing me back. He was getting us back into the missionary position. Again.
I slid onto my stomach instead and angled myself onto all fours. I turned and saw that he had paused, trying to figure out what I was doing. I stretched out and got a condom from the box that I had gotten from the convenience store next to the hotel and handed him one. He knew better than to argue and rolled it on quickly. He then looked at me again, at a loss. I don’t understand how; my business was pointed right at him.
“On your knees like that,” I guided him. “Grab my hips with your hands. Yeah, like that. Now I’ll just move back and you’ll slide right in.”
“Jesus God!” he exclaimed as I backed onto him. I couldn’t help but laugh but laughing caused me to clench and I sort of…well I “spit” him out. This caused him to emit a surprised squawk that caused me to laugh harder.
We eventually got back on track and I was pleased that this was a position that Terry could manage without being awkward, which said to me that he didn’t enjoy a submissive sexual position.
People who prefer one over the other and don’t spread out seem to have issues understanding that sex should be safe, consensual, fun and not some sort of deep experience that moves heaven and earth. It’s just a fuck. But he was a temporary distraction, so I went with it and got out of it what I could. It was good, it’s not like he bored me to tears or anything, he just wasn’t the type of guy that I wanted to do that with in a long-term committed thing.
When he collapsed onto my back, panting and thanking God, I squirmed out from under him and went to take another shower. When I came out, hair wrapped in a towel and a fluffy terry cloth robe hiding my body, I saw that Terry had dressed and made the bed and was back to watching television. I smiled at him, completely relaxed, and started to gather clean clothes for myself, making a mental note to locate a laundromat to get my other stuff clean.
“Did you mean what you said?” Terry asked me.
“I just said a lot of things,” I said. I talk a lot during sex.
“About telling Stephanie that you won’t talk to me. About blaming my inability to deliver to her what she wants on you,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
“It’s going to make her really angry,” he said fretfully.
“You know something that I just noticed about you?” I asked.
“What’s that?” he asked, looking nervous.
“You don’t cuss,” I said. It was true, I hadn’t heard even so much as a “shit” slip out of his mouth.
He actually blushed.
“My mom doesn’t like potty mouths,” he answered sheepishly.
“Well neither did mine, but once I hit, like 16, there really wasn’t much she could do about it at that point,” I said, smiling at him.
“I don’t want to be unbecoming or crass,” he answered softly. I took a little bit of offense to that but decided that it wasn’t worth it to tell him so and continued dressing myself.
“She’s going to start bothering you if I tell her you won’t talk to me,” Terry said, opening that tired old subject again. I sighed heavily and started putting on my shoes, turning my back to him.
“Christina,” he said, trying to nudge me to respond.
“Terry!” I said, saying it louder than I meant (that crass and unbecoming comment was still pissing me off). “Stephanie can kiss my fucking ass if she thinks that I’m going to just hand over all of the stuff that I’m gathering on my own. If she had even a shred of gumption to her, she could be doing exactly what I’m doing. OR she could use my findings as reference material and offer me compensation for the help. Otherwise, I am not worried about her being pushy or manipulative. I’m only staying here two, maybe three days longer and then I’m out of here and she will no longer be a problem to me. Okay? Can we drop this? I’m not concerned!”
“She can play dirty,” he said softly, shaking his head at me in disappointment.
“Let her,” I said. “I’m hungry and would love a big deli sandwich. Is there a Quizno’s or a Subway around here?”
Terry felt his defeat and nodded.
With a nutty fairy bothering me, an overly ambitious reporter didn’t even show up on my radar of things to freak out over. Ms. D’Agostino could feel free to fuck right off.
CHAPTER TEN
I was feeling like a bit of an ass the next morning. Terry hadn’t been able to get away from me fast enough after we’d gotten a couple of subs for dinner and I knew that it was because of my unnecessary outburst. I went and got bagels, doughnuts, coffee, and even a coffee cake and took it to the police station. When I sashayed in, Terry saw me loaded down with bags and steaming cups of coffee and smiled so big that I was certain that his face was going to crack.
Once he’d been filled to the brim with complex carbs and sugars and had had enough caffeine to wake the dead, I sat on the edge of his small press board d
esk and smiled down at him.
“Uh oh,” he said, chuckling softly. “Women only smile at me like that when they want something.”
“Hey, fair trade!” I said, throwing my hands up defensively and wearing my best and brightest smile. “I brought food as an apology and I intend to continue the apology tonight.”
“But…” Terry said, waving a hand for me to continue.
“No ‘but’,” I said contrarily. “I’m just also here in a professional capacity, that’s all. I wanted to make sure you were good and buttered up for tonight, not for this.”
“Okay. but…” Terry said again. I laughed and put my foot into his crotch, gently using the pointed toe of my dressy shoe to prod him where he lives. He jerked and pushed my foot away quickly, looking to see if we’d been caught, his face as red as an apple. I laughed carelessly and sat in the hard little chair across from his desk, folding my hands in my lap primly.
“I’d like to see that note that was found in room eight at the Green Hills Motel,” I said simply.
“The state police or the FBI took it, I think,” Terry said, scratching his chin and jumping up from his desk and going to a wall of files.
The office was a large room occupied by about ten desks and every wall was covered with open shelves of files and boxes. It was a mess and not a way that I would choose to organize so much information, but Terry seemed to have a handle on where everything was located.
He came back to his desk with a fat manila folder and put it down gently. He opened it and carefully turned the pages over until he found what he wanted, and he handed it over to me. I looked around at the other busy people munching happily on the food that I brought in and took the paper. It was the account of the maid from Green Hills and attached to the sheet with a paperclip was a fat envelope containing several different photographs including some of the letter that Katherine had told me about.
Katherine had described the note perfectly from what I could see. The handwriting was abysmal and looked like it had been written with the left hand instead of the right, or vice versa. I couldn’t really see much from the pictures about what exactly the writing surface was. Was it old nasty paper? Was it leather? If so, was it Matthew Hart leather? Was this Grenadine’s handwriting? Would that matter to my work?