by Gilmore, RM
It took my breath right out of my lungs. The body. She was now just the body. I couldn’t hold it back any longer. “Mommy.” My chest bounced with the beginnings of a sob.
She pulled me through the entry and squeezed me tightly as she shut the door. The one and only appropriate time to break down crying was when your mom was there to pick you up when you were done. And that was exactly what she’d do.
I had held it all in too long. Too many days spent sleeping, not dreaming, not thinking, just dead to the world. It had all been there right under the surface, promising it would come out in one long, ugly fucked-up emotional meltdown. Sobs, coughing, gagging, snotty sobs rattled my lungs. I cried so hard, my knees couldn’t function properly and buckled, taking me to the floor. Mom let me go gently, lowering me softly to my knees in the entryway. Horrendous sounds came from my throat as I wept, harder than I’d bawled in my life. I recalled the night my dad died. I was so young, so innocent. I cried for days, weeks maybe. But I came back from that. Slowly but surely, it wasn’t so bad. Only difference, I wasn’t the cause of his death. I’d done this. I’d taken her life from her. From all of us. Me and my lovely friend Azelie.
“Mom, what am I supposed to do without her?” I asked, so pathetic I wanted to punch myself.
“You will do exactly as you always have. You will survive. It’s what you do.” She knelt to the ground with me. “You’re like your father that way.”
The thought of my dad brought new tears to the surface. In all of this mess, he was strangely tangled up in it. Azelie, the cunt-faced bitch, had dragged him into it. Just as she had Tatum, and, in some fucked way, as she had me.
I felt so tiny. I wanted to climb in her hefty lap and let her rub my head and tell me I’d be okay. Tell me I’d be fine. Tell me she loved me and make life worth it again. She couldn’t do that this time. I couldn’t accept that this time. It’d be a lie.
I looked in my mother’s aging eyes and knew I couldn’t let anyone else go. I knew we were all at risk now. No one and nothing near me was safe. I’d opened a floodgate of shit, and it was all about to come spewing down on me, splattering any poor son of a bitch in its way.
I took a few deep breaths, in and out, to quell the sobs. “Mom,” I cleared my throat, “I need to go take care of something.” She looked at me like I was insane, as though she wasn’t going to let me go. “I just need to get a few things from my place, and then I’ll be back. I’m staying here tonight. For a while.” Alone didn’t sound appealing. Neither did two boys hell bent on conquering my vagina. Mom was always the best option in monitoring loneliness and depression.
“Dylan, I want everything good for you. It’s all I’ve ever wanted.” She leaned forward and kissed my forehead.
“I know.” I stood with her. I felt awkward for walking right back out the door I’d just brought all my baggage through, but I had to leave. I had to take care of something. “I’ll be back,” I promised, pulling my spare keys, new door key included, from the hook on the wall near the door.
“I love you.” Her shaking voice told me she would cry the moment I shut the door. I should have stayed. I should have curled up with her on the couch and cried it out with her. I didn’t. I couldn’t. The longer I stayed there, the closer the evil came to her. The more vulnerable we both became.
I was on my way out the door when I said, “I lost your credit card. Sorry.” The last I let fade out as I shut the door. Surely, the death of Tatum Price took precedence over credit.
My car, my trusty little piece-of-shit, used to belong to Tatum. She sold it to me for a hundred bucks and a pair of Betsy Johnson earrings when we were twenty. She didn’t want the money, but she knew my pride wouldn’t accept anything for free. For all the shit she could toss out into the world, she was a damn good friend to have.
I swallowed back all the ridiculous and pointless emotions that were bubbling back up. No time for that shit now. I’d let some of it out. I’d gotten my cry in. I needed an emotional break from reality. I started it up and it purred like a pack-a-day kitten.
I needed clothes, things, weapons, all of which were at my place and necessary, but I had a plan and it had nothing to do with home. I needed a bitch, bigger and badder than me. I needed more than this stupid bullshit I toted around my neck. I wanted it. All of it. For me, for my friends, for my mother.
My apartment was dark and cold. Not wanting to catch a glimpse of something dead or a reminder of my fight for survival, I spent as little time there as possible. Grabbing clothes, a toothbrush, a picture from my nightstand, and the gun I’d left sitting on my bed, I was in and out in record time. I had no intention of going back anytime soon. Too much had happened there. Good and bad.
I smiled when the door shut and locked without an issue. After all these years, all it took was a gaggle of dead bitches busting the damn thing in. Down the stairs, I bounded. Barking dog, unabashed tree limb, bright California sun greeting me at the end of the steps. Fuck that place. I stopped, smiled with insidious intent, and turned back up the steps. “Fuck this place and fuck you.” With one strong hand, I snatched the lowest portion of that Goddamn tree branch, and gave it a jerk. With a loud snap, it broke away. I held it in my hand; a tiny victory swelled my confidence. I threw the fucking thing at that stupid dog; it yelped and promptly shut the fuck up.
Back in the car, all the stuff I couldn’t live without in hand, I made my way to the only place I knew could give me what I needed.
The streets were filled with shuffling hobos and pregnant teens dragging their toddlers behind them. Mothers, fathers and families were roaming in and out of plain front stores. No more skeletons were dancing on sticks. No more death celebrations. No more day of the dead. That had passed and left in its wake a street filled with the harsh reality of humanity and all its God-awful glory.
Unlike my other visits, I was alone, no back up to save me if shit went sour. “Let them kill me,” I said aloud to an empty car and slid my pistol into the back of my waistband.
The sign read open. It wouldn’t have mattered either way. Nothing short of a bullet would stop me from getting what I needed.
I didn’t stop at the counter and inquire. I didn’t peruse the shelves. What I needed was squatting like a toad deep in the back. Back where the big dogs were. Barging in without asking, I shoved past the wife beater and tattoos that tried to stop me.
“I need protection. And not this piece-of-shit,” I demanded and tossed the metal Devil’s Trap to the concrete floor at her feet.
One eye glared at me. “My spells are not good enough for you?” Lupe asked around her cigar. A new one I assume.
“No.” Not even close, bitch. I held my reserve. I didn’t plan to leave without what I’d come for.
“You ask a lot. What sort of protection are you searching for?”
“Fool proof.”
“Well, mija, that will take more than a demand from the likes of you. I will need a pay-“
“I gave you the head of your grandson without blinking a fucking eye. In my book, you owe me.” If all else fails, blackmail.
She was quiet, contemplating my ability to kick her ass, I hoped. She clucked her tongue, which flicked specks of ash to her lap. My back pooled sweat under the gun shoved in my waistband. I didn’t want to shoot the scary old lady, but if it came down do it, I’d wave it around like a lunatic until she granted me the protection I wanted. The power I needed to protect what was mine.
“You do not know what you ask,” she shook her head and the waddle under her chin wiggled.
“Yes I do. No more magic, no more curses, no more dead bitches at my door. I want the power to stop it all. I need the control to protect what is mine.”
“Magic fills your soul. It’s too late.” Her one eye closed, and it seemed she was actually feeling sorry for me.
I swallowed hard as her words hit home. My soul, whatever I had left in there, had been tainted. Rubbed raw with the salt of magic and left to rot. “Then make it so it�
�s worth something. I’m done being scared. I’m done running.”
“Madam Azelie, she’s a very powerful priestess, are you sure you can get the ingredients need-“ I cut her off again. I knew what she wanted. I’d known, somewhere inside, I would need it. How she knew the name of my opponent, how she knew any of the things she did, was something to be uncovered. For now, I didn’t care. She had something I needed.
“Here.” I tossed a wadded piece of white lace into her lap.
Her one good brow lifted with intrigue. Old knobby fingers explored the cloth. Fiddled with it. Peeled it open. It crackled with dried goo. Goo that had spent days in my pocket drying around its contents. Her eye met the thing in her lap and a sinister grin spread along her face, shifting the smoldering cigar, and wrinkling her skin.
“This will work just fine.” She lifted it to inspect it closer. “If you’ve slain Azelie d’Entremonte, you will need more than protection, more than power. You will need supremacy.” I nodded in agreement. She knew what I needed. She understood now. “There will be many things coming for you now.” I nodded again, knowing everything she was saying was likely true. No more skeptic, it wasn’t allowed. No going back now…back to the lie of reality. She sucked her teeth. “An excellent choice.” She turned it to face me. “Very well preserved.”
Still in perfect condition, as if still alive outside of her body, unaffected by its ride in my pocket. One crystalline blue eye stared at me from between two aged fingers. Azelie’s perfect blue eyeball, my penance, my salvation. Her sacrifice.
“Let’s do this.” I knelt at her feet and gave myself over to her command. Any woman who could sever her own grandson’s head without dropping her smoke was an ally to have. There was no better way to acquire an ally than to offer your salvation up on a silver platter. Whatever she had in store for me was better than sitting around Mom’s living room waiting for the next dead bitch to come barreling through the door. Azelie’s death only stopped her from coming for me. Marienne, and her pathetic quest for perfection, was burned to ash along with whatever threat she presented. It didn’t matter. Something in me, maybe it was that fancy intuition Cyrus mentioned, knew it wasn’t over. I’d killed the baddest bitch in the south. Bad things didn’t like a challenger. I knew, just as I knew I would never be the same, it wasn’t over.
This fat lady won’t be singing anytime soon.
Chapter Eighteen
In a bed, for the first time in days, my muscles finally began to relax. My eyes were so heavy they felt like they weighed fifty pounds each. Though I had spent two days sleeping on the train, I’d sleep for a decade more if I was allowed. Before she let me go to bed, Mom made me eat something. She said I’d feel better, but all I felt was hollow. I’d been hungry, starving even, but food didn’t seem to defeat that sensation. That hunger churned inside.
No matter how I fought it, my chin quivered the second I turned the television off, and the world was silent. I was finally alone, really alone. I had gotten what I was searching for and had nothing left to think of, other than all that had transpired. Even still, I felt strong. I felt powerful against all things. My own fucked-up emotions even. Lupe said it, if I could defeat Azelie, I could do anything, even if I had to cry it out first. And, cry I did.
Tears felt like they were squirting from my eyes like a cartoon character. I stayed silent. My mom had cried enough for the both of us while she waited for me to come home. There was no need to get her up and in my room fussing over me. I was big enough to cry alone. It didn’t happen often, rarely would be a good word to describe it, but I was a human. It was what we did.
“Tatum, love you so much. I’m so sorry,” I whispered into the dark of my room. Snot and tears mingled on the tip of my nose. “So sorry.” Quivering, ragged breaths sucked in and out through my mouth. “I’ll make it better. I promise.”
I cried, solitary and loathing, for what felt like hours. My body ached. My sorrowful eyes burned at the corners. I had nothing left in me to give but sleep. There was much to be accomplished, but it would have to wait for another day. Cyrus, Mike, Tatum, all of it. Later.
I turned to my side and stared at the picture on my night table. The one I’d brought from my apartment. Tatum’s perfect smile gleamed next to me. Our wide grins reflected the feel of the happiest place on Earth. It’d sat on my table at home for years. She’d given it to me as a house-warming gift when I left Mike and got my own place. She said it would remind me that I didn’t need a swinging dick to be happy. One with batteries would work just fine.
I lay there, lost in memories of better days. Even the time she cold cocked poor Cyrus in his own house popped in. I smiled at the thought. No matter how devious, her plan to hook the two of us up had merit. It came from her rotten little heart. She was always trying to look out for me, even if she was a raging snatch about it sometimes. I’d even miss the raging snatch part.
I blew air out through pursed lips, and with it thoughts of Tatum and all the things I did wrong. It was time to focus on protecting what I had left. Marienne had a prideful vampire twat agenda and something in my gut told me she wasn’t the only one with a lust for perfection. Azelie might merely have been the voodoo broker for her fountain of youth blood collecting venture. There was much to uncover, more of the occult to ascertain, to beat out of Cyrus and his new Secondus if necessary. Later.
Sleep was eminent, but come sunrise, Marienne, her bloody motives, vampires, werewolves, goblins, trolls, whatever the fuck was out there, were top priority. I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come. My eyelids felt thick against my eyes, swollen from hours of crying. Breaths came slower and shallower. My consciousness was fading into the land of Nod.
“Dylan.”
My lids flew open to the sound of my own name. Nothing was there. That didn’t mean shit as I’d come to learn. “Hello?” I responded idiotically.
Nothing answered back. My overworked head was playing tricks. Hopefully.
The light from the hallway left no darkened corners for nasty things to hide. It would likely remain that way until I died or became a real badass. Until the day I could twist the ends of my lovely bitchstache and kick ass like any villain worth her salt, the light in the hallway would stay on. Power or none, a bitch could still be scared of the dark.
Days on end of no sleep and bloodcurdling shit, left the senses raw and vulnerable to rapid interpretation. I shook it off and told myself to stop being a pussy. Allowing my eyes to close again, I quickly fell back into half-sleep.
“Dylan,” a more urgent tone came through.
I sat up this time. No mind fucks. I’d heard it with my ears, not in my head. My heart pounded and my toes went tingly. Tired, swollen eyes searched the room for signs of life, or death. Nothing.
“What do you want?” I asked, trying not to sound too spirit huntery. I pulled at the power I knew Lupe had shoved in my throat. Believing was all you needed. Believing you’re a badass made you a badass.
Nothing answered me. I waited a long time, minute after minute, but nothing came. Fearing closed eyes, I sat back against my headboard and turned on the boob tube. Soft light filled the room and flicked muted colors along the walls.
“Dylan,” the voice came again, over the air like a car stereo through an open window.
“What?” I asked, annoyed and terrified at the same time.
“Bitch, pay attention.”
All body function ceased. My muscles stopped and refused to come back to life. I didn’t move. I didn’t breathe. I knew that voice. I knew who was talking to me in the dark. From somewhere other than Earth.
I finally forced my body to respond, and swallowed my heart back down. My voice stuttered from my lips, almost not wanting to say the name, “Tatum?”
It’s funny how life works. If someone had told me a year ago, I’d be sleeping in my old bed with a gun shoved under my pillow, talking to the ghost of the best friend I’d murdered, I’d have punched them in the tits. Now, I waited for Jesus Christ
and Freddy Mercury to pop up and take me to dinner.
Welcome to the occult, ladies and gentlemen. One fucked-up bucket of ghostly voodoo blood after the other. Are you ready for this shit?
From the author:
Our girl Dylan has come a long way from where she began. Her journey has only just begun and we hope you’re along for the ride. Thank you for coming back for thirds. Get those grubby little hands ready, the 4th instalment is in the works.
Catch ya on the flip side.
~R
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Like Dylan Hart? Check out little Lynnie Russell. Her becoming is only the beginning.
Becoming –Excerpt
Lynnie Russell Trilogy
I woke up naked in the woods for the second time in two days. And like the morning before, I had blood on my hands. I looked around for a pile of bodies. There were none. The last thing I remembered was Garret chasing me through the woods. I couldn’t decide if that was better or worse. Was it better not to know who or what I maimed to have blood dried under my nails? If the alternative was having to know I’d killed my only brother, it was better not to know, even for just a little while. Living in denial is perfectly acceptable if it’s only to keep you sane.
I told myself I’d killed an animal. Just an animal. My heart couldn’t accept anything more.
I was sitting in the center of a ring of trees that I knew wasn’t too far from my trailer. I’d never liked that spot before. I’d always heard tales of evil fairies that lived in those trees. Sounds downright stupid now, but coming up in Havana you don’t get much exposure to anything but what your mama and your friends tell you. Damned old superstitions. That’s what you get when you have too many old women in one room for too long.