by Gilmore, RM
The old woman’s one eye crinkled with a squint. As the milky iris glared at me under a wrinkled lid, my mind made up fantastical images of the hidden eye. In my head, the other eye was a swirling pool of nothingness, a pit of infinite emptiness, ready to swallow me whole.
Her withered lips squeezed around her cigar. The smoking tip jutted upward, spilling ash on the woman’s leather vest. Tiny white and grey pieces flitted over small animal bones tied along her bust. I hoped they were animals. A bird skull dangled from a strip of leather, or maybe it was some kind of intestine, at her shoulder. Bits of smoldering tobacco rolled over old boobs and landed in her lap. The sage green muumuu she wore under her apron, burned for a second before the fire went out, leaving a blackened hole where the cherry once was.
“You’re strong.” The cigar bobbed up and down with her words. “That’ll help.”
Her wrinkled hands reached and grabbed bottles and fistfuls of herbs without leaving her cloth covered chair. Thick, old fingers twirled and pinched with surprising strength.
“What’s going on?” There was no need to beat around the bush.
“Pssh.” She waved her hand at me without looking in my direction. A muddled motion I didn’t really understand.
Cyrus stood a foot from me, quiet as the grave, face still a little inflamed from his beating, but surprisingly better.
“Hey, I appreciate your trying to help me, but I’m not sure how seven herbs and spices are going to get my ass out of this kosher pickle,” I whispered quickly toward Cyrus.
“What other choice do you have?”
He had a point. What other choice? Suicide? Unlikely. Not really my thing. Homicide? Wouldn’t be my first. Might be better than this witchy nonsense I was imprisoned in. Covering up magic with more magic, didn’t seem like the best idea to ward off evil curses and horrendous bitches. Like mystical Febreeze.
“Death won’t stop this,” Lupe responded as if she’d been listening inside my head. Maybe she had. At this point, it was hard to rule anything out.
Something was amiss – either magic, in all its glory and splendor, was just another fucked up part of life, or I was fucked in the head. Crazy bitches don’t know they’re crazy, so even if it were the case, I wouldn’t know it anyway. Besides, how many other crazy fucks are out there going along with my delusions really? That left magic. Believing suddenly in something that has no physical form, nothing to kill, was hard on the heart. Mine felt like it was about to burst from my chest and run screaming out the door.
“What will?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Lupe replied, not looking up from her concoction.
Un-fucking-believable
“Then why am I still standing here?” My arms flapped up and down, slapping my thighs in a frustrated motion.
“You’re going to do me a favor.” She continued to brew her magic.
Really now? “Am I?” My retort was less of a question and more of a challenge.
She nodded slowly and closed the one eye. Maybe both, I don’t know. “You’re going to fetch my grandson.”
“Is he lost?” Was he plunged down a thousand feet below?
“He’s been lost for some time. His soul is hidden in his body and it keeps him from returning to me.”
To the land of the lost?
“And how in the fuck am I supposed to work that out?” Like I don’t have enough shit on my plate, let’s just add a side of diarrhea.
“You’re going to the valley and you’re going to bring him back to me.” She still wasn’t looking at me.
“Is this some kind of jacked up metaphor I’m missing?” I dunked my head down, trying to see her face.
“If you want my help, you’ll go to a place you’ve been before and bring Zephyrinus back to his abuela. I’ll handle his soul.” She lifted her head finally, leaving me looking like an idiot half bent over in her face.
“Why can’t you do it yourself? You seem like a powerful enough person.” Azelie could raise headless broads from the dead and send them barging through my door from states away, yet this chick couldn’t call her grandkid home?
Her hand flicked over the arm of her chair revealing an Atari-esque joystick. I fought the urge to challenge her to a game of Pong. “Strength is what you make of it. Power, eh, power comes from somewhere else,” she said, using the stick thing to move her wheelchair toward me.
I had no fucking clue what the hell she was talking about.
Her old hand instructed me silently to kneel down to her level. It seemed like the dumbest thing I could do at the time, but she jutted out an old, knobby finger and pointed it sharply at the ground. I did as she asked; all the while praying to God, she didn’t have a sword or something she’d promptly whack my head off with. Instead, she scooped up a dollop of the mixture she’d put together and swiped it down my face. It felt like maple syrup and smelled like a Porta-John. Without dropping her smoke, she mumbled a string of words in Spanish. My one semester in high school didn’t help me to understand. Unless she really did say the words banana and peanut tennis shoe, but I doubted it.
Being an against-the-grain type of girl, it took a lot to drop to my knees and allow a creepy old woman to rub poop on my face, but when an evil bitch plays around in your head, you’d be surprised what you’re willing to do to make it stop. Especially when the chance of a second witch lady on your enemy list was high.
“You’ll leave, now. Drive the day until you get to a place you’ve been before. You’ll find my boy there. He won’t be alone. Bring him back to me and I’ll give you what you’re looking for.” Her hand rested on my forehead.
“What’s all over my face, lady? You generally rub shit on the faces of people doing you favors?” I asked, instead of shutting the fuck up like I should do.
She scoffed, “That shit on your face is the only thing keeping your devil at bay.”
Umm, what?
“What exactly am I looking at here? Curse wise. Soulless, living-dead thing? Or just a dead thing?”
“Go get my boy.” Her hand left my head and waved me on like I was an annoying child at her feet.
“I don’t even know where the fuck I’m going,” I stood and shouted.
“You’ve been there before. You’ve been with my boy,” she promised.
“Gah! What are you talking about lady? Cyrus, back me up here. I’m going nuts!”
“Lupe, please don’t toy with her. She won’t take it well. She’s not the type,” Cyrus spoke like he was bored.
“Your eyes have seen Zephyrinus in a place away from here. A town in a valley. You saw him and he saw you,” her wrinkled old lips talked freely while still mashed around the butt of her cigar.
“A town in a valley?” I stopped bitching for a second and tried to think. No sleep, no food, no way out weighs heavy on brain function. “Fresno? Are you talking about when I was in Fresno?”
She shrugged and nodded at the same time.
Jesus, why didn’t she just say that from the get go?
“Who is he? If I saw him, I need to know where so I can find him again.”
She grabbed my arm with the hand not covered in poop-smear. Her grip surprised me. The tighter she squeezed, the narrower my vision appeared. Tighter and narrower until only a pinpoint of light was exposed and my fingers tingled from lack of blood. Behind my eyes, not really in my vision at all, a familiar scene began to unfold. A tiny pixie girl, a vampire pixie to be exact. Tatum standing near me. A campus filled with students lugging books and chatting on phones. The girl gabbed on in front of me. I was seeing a time that had passed months ago. A time before I was vampire tainted, a time when I was just a girl ready to write a book, before vampires and blood and voodoo curses. My eyes trailed from the tiny blonde girl to a group of students standing yards away. They stood in a circle. Words in my vision were mostly a mumble, but my memory of the fleeting moment reminded me of the feeling the group of students gave me. How uneasy they made me. Someone mentioned witchcraft in that convers
ation, I think. Then suddenly, as if I was standing on a skateboard careening out of control, I was suddenly inches away from the face of an olive-skinned boy, standing in the circle of people. I didn’t remember him honestly, but I tried my damnedest to memorize each feature on his face. Without warning, my vision returned and I was back in the magic room. Lupe had taken her hand away, and all eyes were on me.
“What in the holy fuckle donkey was that?” I asked, out of breath.
“Do you really want to know?” she asked with a sinister sneer.
Without words, I shook my head quickly.
“Now. Go. Move quickly. Your time is fleeting.” The words she used didn’t match her accent or socio-economic class, but took nothing away from the urgency they held.
Cyrus pulled me by the arm toward the entrance to the hovel.
“Quickly, mija. Your shit-smear has a shelf life,” Lupe’s grandson called from behind us, cackling like a damn hyena as if he too had been inside my head.
Cyrus pushed open the glass door releasing a jingling bell noise from above us. The sun hit my skin and forced my eyes into a squint. Music and noises of people hustling about filled my ears. Trumpets and horns blared into the air. Kids giggled and yelled for each other in Spanish. My eyes finally adjusted and took in the sights. The once dead street was now filled with people. Rose wreaths adorned the heads of women and girls. Painted skulls and skeletons danced on sticks jutted upward above the crowd. Shit still smeared down my face, I stopped and gawked at the scene.
Sombrero wearing skeletons jiggled at the ends of sticks carried by overzealous men. Women twirled their huge, layered skirts as they danced in the street. Girls, covered in roses, carried bowls of fruit behind young boys with faces painted like skulls. My nerves were shot. I had no room in my psyche for such shenanigans.
“What is this?” I muttered to Cyrus as he continued to pull me toward the car, me stumbling behind him.
“Day of the Dead,” he responded bluntly.
How befitting. A day to celebrate dead things. I thought perhaps I should reconfigure the black shit on my face to a skull like war paint and join the crowd. Maybe the evil things at my back wouldn’t recognize me. Maybe they’d pass right over me in the crowd. I could get lost in a sea of death. How poetic.
Cyrus shoved my fat ass in the car, shit smeared and all. My limbs began to feel a bit tingly like they were taking a nap. I could feel the blood in my head rush elsewhere, quickly leaving it in a fog of knowledge and fear. I knew my name and where I was, but my superior brain function ceased. Reality had grabbed a beer and kicked its feet up on my coffee table. The asshole was making itself right at home.
The muscles under my skin crawled and my stomach turned. A fluttering in my chest reminded me I was still alive, but threatened to flitter right out and hit the windshield. I was a fairly tough bitch, but even I could only hold the crazy in for so long before it burst through my seams. Now that shit was knocking at the door.
Cyrus pulled into the crowd of people lining the streets. Workers of some kind were setting up parade barriers along the sidewalks and blocking off the side streets as we passed. I didn’t say a word. Didn’t dare open my mouth for fear something unearthly would spew from the depths of my trembling soul. I felt tears well up behind my lids. Opening my eyes wider to avoid leaking a telltale tear down my cheek, I focused on my breathing, in and out, in and out. Slow and steady. Flashes of Azelie cackling like a cartoon villain invaded my head. I cringed, while she laughed the laugh of victory. She laughed at me. She laughed because she’d won. She had overpowered me.
Like a switch had been flipped, fear turned to rage. The thought of that woman taking me over, taking me and all that I could ever be, filled me with a fire I’d never felt before. Survival was all that mattered. Staying alive, whole, and pure. Okay, not soulless and zombified anyway.
A steadying breath poured through my lips. I used the back of my sweaty hand to swipe the shit-smear from my face. “Get me to Fresno.”
“What’s the plan?” Cyrus asked, sounding more like a minion than a cohort.
“I’m gonna kill a bitch.”
That is when Manslaughter becomes Murder One. The plan.
Chapter Four
We drove along the freeway, the daylight coming to a head in the sky. Cyrus’s driving was better this time around, but it wouldn’t have mattered to me either way. I was focused on one thing, and it was my own preservation. Over the hours in the car, my nerves had leveled themselves out. There was no guarantee they’d stay that way, but it gave me time to let my muscles and nerves take a chill pill. And I still smelled like shit.
Hours had passed since we weaved through the skeleton partygoers in the streets of East L.A. and we were in the flat, farmland area of the Central Valley. A place I never thought I’d visit again. Up ahead, a packed gas station reminded me of my first trip to Fresno.
“Do you need to stop?” Cyrus asked, his swollen brows and nose finally returning to a normal shape.
Very conscientious of him worrying about my urinary tract.
“No.” I’d pissed in that bathroom once before, a time that seemed like years ago, but it had not even been a year ago.
Flat land stretched on ahead as far as I could see. Highway 99 seemed a fairly popular route otherwise. I guessed it was just about the only thing to get you to that place. I didn’t think another freeway ran through Fresno from the rest of the state.
“How are you feeling?” Cyrus asked, suddenly filling the silence.
Geez, that was about as bad as asking me what I was thinking about. I hated chick questions as much as I hated chick-flicks, chick-lit, chick-drinks; you get the idea. Why the fuck did I need these things just because I owned a vagina?
“I’m feeling like I need a beer.” A cigarette would be just as splendid. “I’m smoking in your car.” I wasn’t usually a cigarette dick, but extenuating circumstances and all.
He didn’t say no, so I took it as an invitation to smoke it up. I rolled the window down, even I didn’t like the damn smoke in my face. Sweet smoke filled my lungs with the first exquisite drag. I closed my eyes and let the cooling smoke escape my lips. Attempts to quit recently have been futile.
“Can I drag that?” Cyrus asked as though he was a regular smoker, and not a beautiful specimen of a human being whom likely never touched a carbohydrate in his life, let alone inhaled cancer-causing, skin-wrinkling cigarette smoke.
“Sure.” Suspicion rose in my head as to why he’d ask for a drag. Was he planning to toss it out the window? That prick. He’d better not; I’d kill us both clambering after it.
I handed him the lit cigarette hesitantly. He took it gently from my finger and he pulled a drag. A second later, fancy smoke rings billowed from his perfect lips.
My brows were lifted to the sky when he handed it back to me.
“Did I lip it?” he asked.
“Uh, no, I just didn’t think you smoked.”
“I guarantee you, there is a lot more you don’t know about me.”
Likewise, buddy.
I had two choices, either ignore the comment and continue to obsess over my impending death and/or life of torment, or take the bait and maybe shed some much needed light on a billion and one things.
“Oh, yeah? Like what?” My usual banter was lacking to say the least. It was probably squashed to death by unadulterated fear and hatred. No, no, that usually fueled my fire. Maybe it was exhaustion. Hunger was in a close second. If I dropped a few pounds by the end of this hurricane of shit, it might all be worth it.
“You want a list?” he chuckled a bit.
“Lay it on me. And stop chuckling like we’re headed to Disneyland or something. I’m trying really hard to maintain here, and the thought of you laughing is making me want to punch you in the throat.” My voice was bland and steady, not matching what was actually coming out of my mouth.
It was quiet in the car for a long time after that comment. It made no sense to want to punc
h him in the throat. I supposed, in his utterly annoying way, he was trying to make me forget about my situation a bit. It crossed my mind that perhaps I wasn’t holding it together as well as I’d thought. Maybe my need to kill that tiny little bitch wasn’t as strong as I’d originally assumed.
“I’m sorry you’re scared,” he said finally.
Am not.
“Well, it is what it is.” What a fucking liar I was.
“That’s a lie and you know it. Whether you want to admit it to me or not, you’re scared. You’re scared and rightfully so. Azelie d’Entremonte is a terrifying individual.”
“You should know with your in-depth monster knowledge.” Snark was just squirting from my lips like verbal diarrhea.
“What exactly do you think I am?”
He loaded that question with hollow points. How did one answer a question like that? You’re a drop dead sexy vampire boy and I’m not sure I’m okay with that or not. I mentally scoffed. Either I was okay, and had learned and accepted what I thought was true, or I wasn’t and I was just avoiding the inevitable. If this were a movie, there sure as shit would be vampires – but this was reality, and modern vampires were creatures created by producers and authors for tweens and horny housewives. Any form of legit ‘vampire’ myth mentioned nothing about sexy underwear models and their ridiculous ginger vamp bosses. Everything I’d ever learned about ‘vampires’ defied what I’d witnessed thus far. Fuck my life.
“I honestly don’t know. I’m pretty fucking confused actually.” There, I guessed I could be honest about something.
“Do you want to stay that way?”
Jesus, what is he trying to do to me?
“Fuck, no! Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course, I want to know. Will I believe you…I don’t know. At this point, I guess I can’t not believe. If magic and curses and evil voodoo bitches are real and dangerous as fuck, why can’t vampires be real?” Hey, that made a lot of sense. Finally, something that came from my mouth did.
“Well...that’s not entirely accurate, but it made a lot of sense.”