Flytrap

by Stephanie Ahn

  “Are you—”

  “I’m sure!”

  But I’m not. I’m missing—one month? Two? I can’t—

  Bautista’s voice is calm, collected. “It’s okay, Harrietta. I believe you.”

  I whirl to face her. “No, you don’t understand—”

  Termites are burrowing out of her eyes.

  I swing without thinking and catch her in the face, launching the termites from her cheek across the room. They bounce off the floor and come crawling right back to me, translucent, pus-yellow-brown things with pincers, hungry, relentless. I can’t fight this, I can’t fight this, I can’t—I cover my face with my arms and a flickering telekinetic shield, stumbling back to the wall. Trapped, idiot, trapped myself, they’re going to get to me—I feel the scrape of ants dropping from the wall behind me, thrashing in the space between my collar and the nape of my neck, and I slam the back of my head against the wall screaming so loud I almost don’t hear—his feet—

  I never hear them land, I only hear the sticky noise of them leaving the floor in a rapid tattoo. I raise my arms again but I can’t remember how to shield myself, maybe because I can’t shield myself, because I’m already in his world and I’m already seeing flashes of bottle green and bright, bright red compound cells between my shaking arms—

  There is a place, a place I can’t outrun, that he always brings me back to. I always end up back in that suffocating air thick with oil and humidity, the heat a dimming blanket that shrinks my world into the space of a coffin, my calves jerking under his weight as I try to think of someplace else, anywhere else. The infuriating thing is that I even have the room to hope for a distraction. I scream to drown out the pain, but it only lasts as long as my breath does, and then I scream inside, I hate you, fuck you, I’m going to kill you, but even the rage is only ever good for a second at a time. I’m always slipping, even as I climb I’m always slipping, slipping back down to, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, stop, don’t touch me, don’t touch that, that’s mine, stop, please stop. Even giving up is out of my power, because I try to go limp but my body keeps betraying me, shaking and kicking and bringing fresh bouts of pain and noise and flowing bile, keeping it fun for him. All I want is to knock out and go to sleep, forever if I have to, but then my breath returns and I forget what I wanted and I scream to drown out the pain again.

  As ants drop down my collar, the impact against the wall jars my frame, and I see through my arms his face—the alabaster scales that are his cheeks, the way he walks, arms swinging low, that drunken sway that disappears the second I don’t pay attention. His pale skin always has a greenish sheen to it, like it’s just aching to burst into iridescent chitin. The sparse, unnaturally thick black hairs on his head bristle, and his scapulae twitch under his dirty white shirt like the movements of a grasshopper or a cricket. His hands come together as though in prayer—for behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins did my mother conceive me—and they rub together with a rasping that sets my hair on end. When he smiles, his teeth are small but many, almost human.

  Look at him, don’t look at him, it’s all the same, it feels the same, it is the same. I’ve tried everything. Scream, don’t scream, kick, don’t kick, cry, don’t cry. There is absolutely no point in not crying even if I could control it, because what even is dignity, a thing that you can’t touch or eat or screw, in the face of your forearm being split down the middle and noisily sucked hollow?

  I run sometimes, only because he lets me, only because he tells me to, because he’s bored and I’m desperate to try anything. Within eyeshot he moves like a careful stilt walker, like he has to bend his legs at just the right angles or they’ll break. But that’s a lie, a dirty damn lie—I know because when I start running I can hear his feet behind me, the sticky noise of them leaving the floor in a rapid tattoo faster than any monster I’ve ever heard. The way an insect skitters, the physicality of a walk with the speed of a gallop. If I’m lucky, I can fill my lungs to bursting before he reaches me, so that the second he clamps down I can scream to drown out the pain—but that only lasts as long as my breath does, and then I’m slipping back into, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, my calves jerking under his weight as I try to think of something else, anything else—

  Humans eat messy without tools, because we’ve forgotten how to pick clean a ribcage using only our teeth. But predators like him, they’re efficient, methodical, not because they have a checklist but because they’ve done it so many times before. And for him each time he catches me is practice made perfect, but me, I never get any better at enduring, surviving. Each time is like the first, like I’m a baby learning pain all over again. Each time I forget all the truths I thought I’d learned last time, and eventually the only real thing I learn is not to learn anything at all, and then I forget that too.

  And I know that this is Hell. This is the real horror of Hell. The not-stopping. The nowhere to go. No next life, no next chance, not even next oblivion. This is Hell, he showed me, shows me, and he invites me, and every time he shows me I’m convinced I’m already there.

  The moment I hurt is the same moment in which I was hurting and will be hurt. If he can reach me, he already has and already is. Time folds in on itself like paper so that each time I am here, with him, is the last time I was here, with him, and the next time I will be here, with him. This place, this place I can’t outrun, that he always brings me back to no matter how many drinks I fuck or how many people I swallow or how many train rides I scrape together the money for. I always end up back in this suffocating air thick with oils and humidity, the heat shrinking my world into the space of a coffin, my calves jerking under his weight as I try to imagine I’m somewhere, anywhere else.

  His teeth are small but many, almost human, but just enough carnivore that they pierce before they tear. And his eyes, they’re blood orange and compound, so that when he gets close enough I see my own face shining in them a million times. He must see me looking—he must think it’s funny to be my mirror as he turns my slippery, steaming parts inside out. Then I stop feeling like a person, like a soul and a brain sealed in flesh, but that doesn’t mean the pain stops. The pain just spills beyond the boundary of where I end and the world begins. He spills over, becoming my whole reality, breathing his words directly into my lungs.

  "You know, I used to take this for granted. All the souls I wanted to eat, to torment, right there in front of me, more on the way the moment I snapped my fingers. But now it's just you. At first I was frustrated, furious even, but now I'm starting to appreciate—the monogamy. Having to delve deeper, unearth the most intricate details to keep from becoming bored, be creative instead of simply prolific. I'm starting to see this as an art again.”

  As ants squirm on the nape of my neck and the impact against the wall jars my frame, fingers grip me by the chin, digging into the soft tissue under my jaw.

  “You've inspired me, luv. "

  The hands are soft. Wrinkled.

  “Harry.”

  Bautista. She looks at me. Her lip is split open.

  Oh no. Oh no no no no. I did that.

  “Harry. Don’t react. Save it. We are leaving this room.”

  She keeps a grip on my arm as she hauls me upright.

  “We’re leaving, Harry. We’re leaving. Hold that in your mind. We’re leaving.”

  We’re leaving. We’re leaving. She pulls me forward. My legs move but don’t move, they stutter, but they move.

  “We’re leaving.”

  Stepping over the threshold of the room hits me like a static shock, but Bautista tightens her grip on my arm. I’m dazed; I know I should know what building we’re in, but I don’t know.

  “We’re leaving.”

  We take the stairs, not the elevators. My legs never stop moving, the steps never stop coming.

  We’re leaving.

  We exit through the back door of the hospital. As the strangely chestnut-like smell of
cigarettes fills my nostrils, it’s like the fog is blown away, and I look up at the vast, white expanse of the sky and start crying.

  And then I see Bautista’s face again, and I cry even harder.

  “I’m sorry, I’m s-sorry, I’m so, so, so—”

  “Don’t worry about this,” she says brusquely, wiping a bit of blood off on her finger and inspecting it, then checking to see if there’s any spattered on the silver stitching of her lapel. “I’ve had much worse, and I have healing magic. What did you see in there?”

  “How—how do you know I saw—”

  “I heard it, but I couldn’t see it. I heard a buzzing, like a hive.”

  “He—he was there. Or—I saw you as him. I—I’m so sorry—”

  “Apology noted, genuinely.”

  I crumple and sit on the curb, hugging myself, shivering. Bautista sits next to me.

  “That room, it was designed to break through your conscious mind’s defenses. He must have a stronger hold on you when you’re in his territory.”

  I barely heard her speak, yet the words unravel me.

  “That was my hospital bed! It’s not his territory! I am not his territory!”

  “Harry, breathe.”

  I know she’s right, I know this isn’t helping—but my emotions are like a fever, a cough, a biological malfunction I can’t stop. “He—he doesn’t even have to do anything, all he does is show up and I just can’t—” I’m barely forming words through my sobs. “I just—I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I’m so sorry I can’t do this, I can’t win, I can’t stop him, he’s already here and I just want to go home and I want to sleep and I want everything to shut up and I want my mommy—I want Johanna, she would know what to do, she would just know what to do—”

  “Mi hija.”

  I try, I try to put a lid on it, but all I can manage is shaking, incoherent whimpering.

  “As someone who knew your mentor well—she didn’t know everything. She was very, very good at improvising. And she chose you because you could handle the chaos. Because together, you thrived on it. But that’s not you anymore. You’re stronger. What was your first case? Alone?”

  I struggle to remember, swallowing audibly, blinking tears out of my eyes. “This… this wannabe journalist high schooler—she had a weird name, I can’t forget it—Imogen. S-some local frat boys were messing with her older sister. She dug into them, found out they were experimenting with blood magic. They needed a virgin sacrifice—virgin blood, not a virgin—and Imogen fit the bill. The boys dragged us both down into a cellar, started the summoning. As it was happening, I cut open Imogen’s arm and used her blood for a spell—no more virgin blood. Ruined the whole thing. The demon was still coming, but without a sacrifice the contract was broken. It was angry. I grabbed Imogen in the chaos, got her out, and locked the cellar door on the demon and the boys. I think they were devoured, or damned, or something. But I saved her, I saved Imogen.”

  “If you can save a teenage girl from a demon, why not yourself? It’s just another case, mi hija. Follow the tracks. Improvise. Save yourself. Just do what you do, and pull a clever trick.”

  When she puts it like that, it actually sounds possible. “You make it sound so much easier than it is,” I sniff.

  “And once you’ve done it, it’ll feel easier too.”

  I wipe my face on my sleeve. My heart is still racing, but I can control my breathing, slow it. I try a tentative smile. “I think I know why Joy loved you,” I say, facing Bautista with a reddened face.

  “And I love her too. But she is not here anymore, and you are. Johanna is no longer with us, and here I am.”

  She holds me, and I hold her. She’s small, and surprisingly tough-feeling.

  “Bautista,” I mumble into her shoulder. “When I touched the bed in that room, I—I saw things, things that didn’t happen to me. At least, I don’t remember them happening… but it felt so real, I just knew it wasn’t made-up. So what if—what if—”

  “If you say those aren’t your memories, I believe you.”

  “But, but I’m missing—a month, a whole month, the last month he was—with me—”

  She pulls away from me to look me in the eye. “Harry. When you touched that bed. Did those feel like your experiences? Don’t pause, and don’t tell me what could be. Only tell me what is.”

  The words spill out. “Those things never happened to me. Ever.”

  She nods approvingly. “Then it was someone else’s memories you were feeling. Empathy by touch, echoes of experience—whatever weakened your resistance to Beelzebub in there, it also opened you to the room’s history. They did something in there, with someone else, something to advance their plans.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.” I sit with my head in my hands, willing my still-racing heart to slow. Bautista’s right; there were demonic sigils all over that room. “But what if I’m in denial? How do I know I’m not just imagining it the way I want it to be?”

  “There is a point at which survival hinges on certainty rather than truth.”

  I balk. I’ve known older witches to say some pretty disconcerting things, but it still surprises me, every time. “That sounds horrifying.”

  “Survival is horrifying. As for your missing memories, to be honest, they could just be a symptom of trauma. Not to mention the drug use and rampant alcoholism. Your mind may just be protecting itself. If you want, we can try to access those memories.”

  I give it a good think, now that I’m calmer. “…No. I don’t think I need to. I think in this case, I’ll trust that my own brain is protecting me from things I don’t need to remember.”

  “Good.” Bautista hugs me again. I try to pour all the gratitude I have for her into that hug, give her all the warmth I have left to give.

  She speaks quietly into my ear. “Mi hija, I have to go.”

  I pull away. “…What?”

  Her face is no less comforting than before, but there’s a mournful set to her lips, and the wrinkles under her eyes have deepened. “Beelzebub knows who I am, and that I am helping you. I can feel it. He attacked me, in that room, through you—he will try again. I cannot be in this city when he does.”

  She isn’t even moving but I clutch at her, desperately. “No, no no no no, you can’t leave me, I just found you—”

  “Harry.” She puts her hands firmly on my shoulders, quieting me. “I couldn’t help you any more than this anyway. All I could possibly offer is company and moral support while you fight this on your own. It would be good to have me beside you. Comforting, even. But you don’t need me. And I need to go.”

  I take a deep breath. I let go of her arms. “Y-yeah. You’re right.” I stand up, and she stands with me. “Where are you going?”

  “Nowhere I’ve been before, nowhere I can be connected to by my past and tracked down. I couldn’t tell you exactly where right now, because I don’t know either. And as long as you don’t know, you can’t let it slip.”

  I nod. “I understand. Just… please, be safe. Please?”

  She does up her silver buttons, adjusting her blue-gray lapels. “I will. I have survived much worse. A rolling stone and a grifter, remember?” She winks, slyly. I burst into a laugh. “Remember, Harry. Johanna would have believed in you. Joy would have believed in you.”

  She touches her hand to my forehead, three fingers, just barely grazing it. And… I look to my side, up the street, and then down. Bautista is gone. There’s only a guy in a leather jacket squinting at me as he smokes, a kid in a massive goose down coat being fussed over by their mother, and an old woman in a blue-gray jacket and white shoes, walking away from me in the biting cold.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Fancy Ramen

  I stare out into the street, not really seeing the people or cars going by. The coffee I bought is alright, probably, but all coffee tastes the same to me. I think about pouring it into my thermos to keep it warm, bu
t can’t summon up the energy. So I just sit with both hands wrapped around the cup, trying to pretend it’s actually making me warmer even as my nose turns numb in the cold.

  There’s a conversation happening behind me. More of a one-sided conversation, I guess. Someone is saying, “Harry? Harry, is that you?”

  A tap on my shoulder—I jitter like a computer glitch. I turn and find myself staring into big, velvet brown eyes surrounded by freckles.

  “It is you! What are you doing here?”

  I blink. “What are you doing here?”

  Kate smiles, a little incredulously. She points at the sign above me that says Whole Donut Holes. “Harry, I’m the one who told you about this place. Our first date, remember?”

  “…oh. Oh! Oh, fuck—I’m sorry, I totally didn’t think I’d see you here, I’m not stalking you I swear—”

  “Hey, it’s okay, I never said you were stalking me. I’m actually glad to see you. I just spent all day arguing with people, and I was going to go home for dinner.”

  She looks amazing. She has on this fur-lined coat with a belt around the middle that makes her look all lux, shiny knee-high boots and a pencil skirt, and these fuzzy, furry white earmuffs. The tip of her rose is tomato-red.

  “Dressed for the cold, huh?”

  She shivers with her arms around herself, her breath showing up in white puffs. “Don’t make fun of me, everyone else already has.”

  “I won’t, I won’t. So, what are you going to eat?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve been ordering food for the last week. It’s bad for my wallet and I have stuff to cook, I’m just so tired all the time…”

  “I could make you something. I like to cook, it keeps my mind off things.”

  “Cooking? For me? Oh, you really are after my heart.”

  I get up, and Kate and I start walking side by side. I hold out my arm without thinking, and she takes it, huddling against my side for warmth. She feels good. I feel good, walking down the sidewalk with a beautiful woman on my arm—even if she is wrapped in fur like the abominable snowman.