“Sit and wait,” she said. “Just wait.”
I sat. I didn’t have a choice, and since I was already there, I waited. Lupe cleared off her lap and brushed away any leftover ashes and imaginary crumbs apparently only she could see. “I don’t know what is supposed to be happening, but so far all I’ve done is fall on my ass. Since you’re new, I should inform you this is a regular occurrence and I’m not impressed.”
“Do you ever shut up?” She shook her head and her wrinkled jowls quivered.
I opened my mouth to rebut dryly, but instead, out flopped my tongue and gibberish followed. My head knew what it wanted to say, but my mouth wouldn’t form the words. It wasn’t the lack of control I’d faced when Azelie stole my body; more like a nice hefty dose of Demerol. I jabbered on for at least a minute before I finally got out, “Don’t let me die.”
Lupe talked at warp speed in Spanish while she shuffled her deck of cards. Then, from left field, she said in English, “See you soon.”
My head swam. I couldn’t hold my body up anymore and let it flop to the concrete floor. The wild patterns of the drapes and rugs, which hung on the walls in the tiny space, wriggled and waved. The floor was cold, but it helped keep me grounded in the chaos. If I’d had my right mind, I’d have requested someone play Jefferson Airplane.
In the seconds that passed, my vision of reality left me and all I saw was a never-ending white passage. Bright and sterile and with no obvious light source, the long stretch of nothingness seemed a prison instead of a path which led anywhere like a passage should.
“Lupe?” I called out, but only my own voice echoed back. “What the fuck is happening?” I asked, but again got nothing back but my own voice. My words came normally, but I wondered if I was actually saying them aloud like it seemed, if Lupe could even understand what I was saying, or, shit, even if I was in the same room as the wrinkled old lady anymore.
I let my feet move me forward and noticed my black Converse were gone as my bare feet slapped the white floor. The sound was the only way I knew I was walking on something tangible and not Wile E. Coyote-ing in midair. Otherwise, there was no way to discern what was floor and what was wall, or ceiling for that matter. All I had on my side was a sense of up and down, and of course left and right, but only because of the reference of my own hands. Each appendage seemed to glow in the luminescent lighting.
I watched my feet slowly padding along the floor of unknown material. My legs were covered in soft cotton pants that matched the shirt covering my body: both white, both just as stark and sterile as the space I occupied. If there’d been doors lining the walls or an exit sign glowing at the end of the long, narrow space, I’d have said I was in a hospital.
What I thought would be an acid trip from Hell was beginning to seem more like a trip to the nuthouse. Neither of which were out of the question judging by my current life choices. “Hello?” I called out. My echo was gone. My voice hit the air like a bowling ball, one loud thunk.
Something scooted around behind me. I spun to see what was in there with me. Nothing. Only a space just as void as what was in front of me. Blank.
“Blank,” I said. The shuffling started again. I stuck my hand out and touched the wall; it was solid and a bit cold. “Like a canvas.” I knew I’d said it. My mouth moved, but I heard my own voice like it was coming from far down the hall.
Fear gripped my gut. I was standing in a place I didn’t know, hearing shit I shouldn’t, and beginning to feel a little on the paranoid side. Of all the horrors I’d faced in my quest for the truth behind the fangs, the idea of permanently losing my mind scared me most of all.
Aside from the incident at Embrace, I’d only experienced the effects of hallucinogens once, in high school, and I had Tatum there with me. She was high, too, but that really didn’t matter when I was seventeen. I tripped; she tripped. We ate seven cans of tuna and drank a pitcher of ten-year-old Tang and sink water. We had a blast. I wasn’t scared; I had my friend and no sense of fear. At nearly thirty, the idea of a bad trip made me want to curl into a ball and wait for my mommy to find me.
“Where the fuck is that girl when you need her?” I wanted Tatum.
“Not far now,” a familiar voice echoed behind me.
I spun around to find a leggy blonde wearing nothing but a smile and a bracelet. “Oh, fuck!” I yelled, and again my voice was one loud thud. “I can see you,” I muttered.
“Your eyes are open, aren’t they?” she asked just as cryptically as she had for days.
“Can we cool it with the cryptic? And why are you naked?”
She shrugged and her perky boobs jiggled about. She didn’t specify which question the jiggling shrug was for, and in a way, it didn’t really matter. She stood in front of me in the flesh. Literally.
“Where are we?” I looked around at nothing, expecting to see contrast in my surroundings.
“You’re right here,” she said sarcastically.
“Where is here?” She stepped closer to me. “If I’m here, where the fuck do you think you are?”
“In your head, fucking dunce. Jeez.” She scrunched her face and shoved past me, further down the hallway.
One slender arm stuck out to her side, touching the tips of her fingers to the wall while she moved down the hall and away from me. Where her fingers touched, the wall darkened from luminescent to dingy, aged white. As she moved slowly, foot by foot, the space changed. Walls and floor became discernable; black scuffs along the floor and chips in the paint along the wall. The hallway darkened until a few yards ahead was pitch black.
“Where are you going?” I asked and followed behind her, scared to be alone in the changing space.
“I’m not going anywhere.” A dense, black shadow flittered across the hall in front of her. A scurrying sound followed quickly behind. “I never get to go anywhere.” She sighed like a whiny teenager.
The scurrying sound echoed from above my head. I searched the murky ceiling for the culprit of the clicking and ticking which followed me. Nothing. “Do you hear that?” Watching above me, waiting for something to move, I took my eyes off Tatum for a long minute. “You’re not hearing this?” I asked and looked at her.
A long line of deep, red blood streamed down her back. The black shadow scurried up the wall nearest her fingers and crouched along the ceiling above her head. The sound it made while it moved made my stomach turn. She never stopped moving forward or acknowledged the presence right above her.
As she moved closer to the blackness ahead, I couldn’t help but wonder where the blood had come from and why she was so Hell-bent on walking away from me.
“What’s down there?” Asking the only question my head could make my mouth form, I lifted my arm and pointed one finger ominously down the hall in the direction she was headed, noticing the matching plastic bracelet on my own wrist as I did. She didn’t turn to look at me right away, but stopped walking for a moment. Another thick strip of blood flowed down her back and over one plump cheek.
She turned her head slowly to look over her shoulder at me. Every inch she moved pushed another ooze of blood down her back. When her eyes finally met mine, a thick fall of gloopy red stuff glugged over her shoulders like some kind of horrific cape. “I’m down there.” Her fingers tapped the wall lightly while her pretty head slid slowly off her shoulders.
In a slopping mess, Tatum’s head splattered to the now-linoleum floor. In an instant, the dim walls and floor flashed white and the self-illuminated space returned. In the center of the nearly glowing space, Tatum’s body collapsed. Her shoulders hit the floor, sending a thick spurt of blood from her stumped neck. My hands clamped over my mouth to cover a scream, which caught in my chest. The spray of blood splattered across my arms and stained the stark walls in a way eerily more terrifying than the aged scene we’d been in moments before.
Blood glugged from her neck and pooled under her naked body. I stood in shock; unable to do anything but breathe, even that was a challenge. Thick, red goop f
lowed from her body toward me. I watched with wide eyes as the liquid reached the tips of my bare toes. The red of my polish nearly matched my best friend’s blood.
I shook my head back and forth. “No,” I said and dropped my hands to my sides. The ticking scurry, which had followed the shadow moving about the space, crackled behind my head. I stopped breathing. The thing that had haunted Tatum moments before she lost her head was right behind me.
Tatum’s warm blood slid under my feet. I swallowed back fear and spun around. A grinning, toothy, nearly-black figure dangled from the ceiling above; not completely human, and yet like no animal I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stop the scream that came next. It was long and loud, and brought a wider grin from the beast that hung above me.
Without another thought, my feet made their move to run in the opposite direction. Only a few steps in, the slick, syrupy life force, which had made its way underfoot, caused my already-clumsy feet to lose traction and slip ass-first to the floor. Red splatters hit the white walls and seemed to be closing in on me, soaking through my pants to the skin. I’d slammed into the puddle of blood next to Tatum’s body, my head hitting last, thankfully. My eyes closed in pain. When I opened them, they fell on Tatum’s slender fingers. Her plastic bracelet only inches from my face read Dylan Hart. My head took a second to try and comprehend what I was seeing.
In that moment, the scurrying sound reached my blood-soaked feet. Without looking, I pulled my heavy body up and over the naked one behind me. I pushed myself to my feet as soon as I could and faced my beastly stalker.
“What do you want?” I screamed at the black figure now standing on the other side of my dead best friend.
A wide smile spread across the space where a face should have been. It raised its long finger and pointed at me. With every movement it made, a scurrying ticking sound followed, like a horror movie spider clicking along a surface.
“Over my dead body!” I yelled. The shadow lunged at me. I had no weapon, nothing to protect myself with but the body at my feet. I grabbed the only thing I could. Tatum’s blonde hair clung to my hands in a sticky, slopping mess.
“Or mine,” the severed head in my hand spoke.
I yelped and hurled Tatum’s head at the shadow that was now pulling itself over her body. It hit the core of the thing and bounced off, hitting the wall that seemed even closer than before. It was a solid being, not a shadow like it appeared.
“What’s happening?” I screamed in confusion. I’d asked for every minute of my torment, but none of it made any sense. The thing stalking me in my stark-white vision stood before me, nothing between us.
The grin appeared again and I didn’t stick around to see what was coming next. I turned on my sticky heels and booked it toward whatever the fuck was at the other end of the hallway. My feet slapped the floor, each step seeming to stick more than the last. My breath came heavy and sharp. Smoking and cheeseburgers ensured I’d never make it out alive if it came down to a foot race.
The walls felt like they were nearly touching my shoulders. Bottlenecking the further I ran, the hallway seemed to be an enemy with an agenda instead of just a space where I was surely losing my fucking mind. Ticking and shuffling echoed through the space and tickled the hairs on my neck. I used my hands to feel along the walls. They were moving, squeezing together inch by inch until my fat ass couldn’t go any further.
I turned to the side to squeeze through but the pressure was too much and forced me to stop. “Fuck, I want to wake up! This is bullshit!”
The walls tightened until I was forced to turn back the way I came. I pulled myself from the narrow space and turned to face my stalker head-on. There was no other option.
I turned, nose to nose with the thing that wanted only me. Green eyes stared back at me, a wide grin spread across her face. “What…?” I was more confused than I’d been in the months since I’d begun my journey. I looked into the face of my enemy, and she was me.
Cold hit my face in a gust that filled my lungs, and I closed my eyes against it. The frigid temperature stole my breath and for a second, I panicked. My arms flung out, grasping for anything. Suddenly, my lungs filled with air and I sat up with a loud, guttural inhale. My eyes were wide and struggling to take in the dim space.
My heart thudding in my chest, I huffed air in and out trying to comprehend the terror I’d narrowly escaped. Lupe clucked her tongue and fiddled with something, clicking and shuffling. I swallowed hard. My eyes focused finally on the old woman. I hadn’t left my spot on the floor.
“Mija, you’re so loud.” She shook her head. I felt like she was talking to someone else. Her tone didn’t really match our relationship status.
Breathy, I said, “What… in the fuck… was that?”
“Not what you thought?”
I felt my hair, wild and jutting out in all directions. “How am I empowered? All you accomplished was scaring the shit out of me.” I smoothed my mop down with shaking hands and pulled it back into a sloppy bun.
She laughed one sharp noise. “I did nothing but send you into your own mind. If you were scared, it is only yourself you are scared of.”
What she said was absolutely true. I’d always been more afraid of my own bullshit than anyone else’s. But we weren’t talking about insecurities and self-assurance; we were talking about things my brain couldn’t even imagine, let alone drum up in some sort of spirit quest. “I saw myself,” I admitted, hoping she could elaborate on why.
“You have already touched the darkness that waits. I opened your mind to accepting it all. Once you’re in touch, you will have power,” she said around her smoking cigar.
“What does that even mean?” I groaned and let my body fall back to the floor.
“You are the key to your own salvation.” She stopped for a minute and snuffed out her tiny stump of a cigar. “In your mind, you’re the worst monster you can imagine.”
She didn’t know about Tatum. She didn’t know about anything I’d done. Yet, she was more right than she could ever know. “I’m just a fucking loon.” I draped my arm over my face. I’d been terrified to admit that fear to anyone else, and it felt good to say it aloud to someone living.
“You’re many things; the sooner you realize this the sooner you’ll find your power.” She shuffled her stupid cards.
“Now I have to go find this power? I thought that’s what you gave me!” I sat up on my elbows and glared at her.
She shook her head. “I gave you an open door. It’s up to you to walk through it.”
“Good idea.” I pushed to my feet on shaky legs. I wanted to be at home, in my bed, under my covers, hiding from everything I now knew existed. If I was the worst monster my head could find, it terrified me to imagine what more was out there. I needed to get Lupe her payment, because power wouldn’t do shit; I needed protection. “Tell me what I owe you so I can get the fuck out of this place. The faster I can go, the faster I can get whatever ridiculous thing you want from me. I’m going to need that protection portion of our agreement, like yesterday.”
“I don’t have time for your pride to break,” she said, flipping another card over and laying it precariously onto her lap. Whatever game she had going on with those cards had held her interest for far too long. “I trust we are the same. Not women who need too many words or sugar-coated explanations.” She was right. “What I need from you is as simple as the air you’re breathing.” My gut clenched at the idea of an even trade. “I need the blood of Cyrus Atossa.”
Huh? My jaw dropped. I could not imagine why she needed it, and there was a huge part of me that didn’t really care. Cyrus seemed perfectly capable of handling the world he loved to protect so damn much. A trade was one thing, but harvesting blood from someone I considered a friend all in the name of my own survival?
“Yes,” I answered. “I can do that.” The look which crossed her face could only be described as fear. As if she was afraid of my quick response. “I will not be killing anyone. I’d sooner kill you,
in fact. But I will get you your blood.” I didn’t even bother to ask why. At the time, it really didn’t matter.
Her jowls wiggled when she nodded approvingly. She dug around on a shelf within her reach and pulled out a glass jar, which had probably once held pickles or the like. “Bring it back warm,” she demanded and stuck her old hand out for me to take the jar.
“I’ll be back with the blood.” She made a noise in her throat and handed me the mystical blood receptacle. “To the top?” I joked.
She closed her one eye and nodded once. I swallowed hard and nodded back. My back pooled sweat under the metal of my gun, and I fought the urge to wipe it away with my t-shirt. I took the jar and hesitated. I didn’t want to leave, not really. I wanted the comfort of home, but my head told me Lupe’s botanica was the safest place I could be. With one last motivational nod, I turned and shuffled away on terrified legs.
“Ms. Hart.” I turned around at the doorway. “Don’t bring guns into my store.” She struck a match and lit a fresh cigar. “I don’t like ‘em,” she puffed. My eyes went wide. I nodded and hustled through the curtains.
Any worry I’d had of the grandson, whose name I was quite certain I’d never actually known, ratting me out was gone. If he mentioned my giving him a gun, he’d have to answer to his grandma for accepting it in the first place. It didn’t stop him from fucking with me in retaliation, but he wasn’t the one I was afraid of anyway.
The nameless grandson stood behind the counter, both hands spread wide against the yellowing top. A uniformed officer stood on the public side of it. The officer looked in my direction, confused. I smiled sweetly at the cop, hiding every ounce of fear and deception I possibly could in that one gesture. The grandson stared a hole in the side of my head. I turned my smile on him and he glared at me. He knew what I’d done. Whatever had warranted the police was none of my business. I had my own unlawful existence to contend with.
“Excuse me, officer,” I said politely when I walked behind the cop. The space was tight and he had to step forward, closer to the counter, to let me pass.
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