Streetlights hung unlit overhead. Whether off from power outage or by budget cuts, Fairchild didn’t know or care. He could see without them. Rinsley, however, blinked against the darkness.
“The demonstration area’s a couple blocks southwest of here,” he told Rinsley. “We’ll walk.”
“Walk? In this heat?”
“Walk,” Fairchild repeated. He started down the street. Rinsley trotted to catch up.
A cat dashed out from under a parked car, causing Rinsley to jump. “I don’t think walking through this neighborhood at night is such a good idea.’
Fairchild just laughed. “Why?” he asked. “Don’t you want to see first-hand what a mess you politicians have made of this city? Don’t you care about the poor and downtrodden?”
Rinsley tugged at his shirt collar. “Ah, it’s just those news reports about the slasher and all…”
Fairchild laughed again. “A man of your breeding and intelligence afraid of a ghetto punk in a hoodie?”
Fairchild stopped and turned towards him. “You’re as bad as Horatio. Hamlet wasn’t afraid of any ghost. Why, what should be the fear?/I do not set my life in a pin’s fee;/And for my soul, what can it do to that,/Being a thing immortal as itself?”
He started walking again. “If walking in the dark frightens you, Rinsley, perhaps you’d better rethink your joining us.”
***
A few hundred feet later, a nervous Rinsley cleared his throat. “There’s a car following us with its headlights off.”
Fairchild didn’t even have to turn around to know that a huge black SUV, a Vettius-Dama luxury Italian import with dark tinted windows, idled slowly behind them.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s just part of the demonstration.” He continued walking at the same measured pace in the heat.
Sweat streamed down Rinsley’s face. He’d already loosened his necktie and unbuttoned his collar. “How much farther?”
Fairchild stopped. “Right across the street actually.”
“A graveyard?”
“Several adjoining graveyards, actually.” Fairchild said as he quickstepped across Alabama Avenue towards the wrought-iron gate of the Hebrew Congregation Cemetery. The gate was chained and padlocked. Fairchild snapped the heavy Yale lock with an easy twist of his wrist. He pushed the squeaking gates open.
Rinsley balked at entering. “And the demonstration’s in there?”
“I hope so,” Fairchild said. He sniffed the air. “I know so.”
He took Rinsley by the upper arm. “This way,” he said.
Rinsley tried pulling free, but Fairchild’s iron grip held him fast. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The grounds undulated in little rolling dips and rises. Worn granite headstones clustered together but most of the tree-lined ground was open mown lawn. The SUV followed at a distance along the narrow paved access path.
“Just what I told you,” Fairchild said. “Giving Senator Gransbury a taste of what the Rookery really is.”
“I thought you said you weren’t going to harm me,” Rinsley said, starting to panic.
“And I won’t,” Fairchild said, his voice flat, giving nothing away.
He stopped and sniffed the air again. “Gransbury isn’t the first politician who’s had the idea of crossing over with the first frost of old age. Calhoun, Webster, Bryant. The giants of the ages. They all considered it. Even that crass Texas toad Lyndon Baines Johnson thought about it. But every single one of them declined after seeing what spending eternity in the Rookery would be like.”
He pulled Fairchild in a new direction, towards a freshly dug grave.
“But we hardly live in an age of Websters and Calhouns or even LBJs anymore, do we? We live in an age of Gransburys. Our little demonstration won’t bother her in the slightest. She’ll accept.”
Rinsley was soaked in sweat now and it had nothing to do with the heat or the humidity. “W-what are you doing?”
“My job,” Fairchild said. “Taking care of the problems my masters won’t sully their hands with. I told you we keep things discreet. Each member assigned their own hunting ground. No killing, no draining too much blood. Nothing to attract attention.”
He stopped short of the crumbling edge of the open grave.
“Every once in a while, somebody disobeys those rules and has to be dealt with. Or they simply go feral. Immortality can drive one quite mad, you know.”
He spun Rinsley around so he was facing Fairchild. Gone were the DiCaprio smile and the perfect Brando hair. Terror twisted the aide’s face into an ugly rictus.
Fairchild snatched Rinsley’s pistol with his free hand and tossed it.
“Vampires dislike killing their own. That’s why they call me in. I’m a Stakeholder. I clean up their messes for them. I’m cleaning one up tonight.”
With no warning at all, Fairchild shoved Rinsley full on the chest, pushing him down the six-foot hole.
Rinsley bounced off the far side and slid to the bottom. He laid there, the wind knocked out of him.
“The police only think they’re hunting a slasher. He’s no slasher; he’s a feral vampire. A very clever feral. I’ve spent the last two nights trying to run him to ground. I’d almost had him when they pulled me off to deal with you and Gransbury.”
He bent down and looked down at Rinsley. The aide shakily rose to his feet. The six-foot pit was much too deep, the sides much too steep for him to claw or crawl his way out. At least not any time soon.
“I’ve learned a couple things about the feral, though.”
Rinsley started to scream for help.
Fairchild ignored him the same way everyone else in this neighborhood would.
“He likes his meals to make a lot of noise. And he likes the smell of bacon. It smells just like burning human flesh.”
Fairchild stood back up.
“The Rookery would have killed you anyway, Rinsley. At least this way, you’ll be serving some sort of purpose, one final service for mankind.”
Fairchild left Rinsley down the hole and hid himself in the spot he’d chosen earlier that day.
He didn’t wait long.
The feral crawled slowly from behind a large granite mausoleum, drawn unerringly by Rinsley’s screams and the second-hand smoke of burnt bacon. Tattered strips of clothing hung from the feral. It snuffled and growled unintelligibly. Dried blood caked its slavering muzzle and clawed fingers.
It hungered and it could hear and smell new prey.
It began to lope towards the open grave.
Rinsley had managed to pull himself halfway out of the hole.
The idiot.
Rinsley would have been safe down there. At least he might have been. The feral was too smart to jump down a hole after him.
Fairchild’s careful ambush was ruined.
Fairchild sprang from his hiding place, but too late. The feral leaped across the final twenty-foot distance and smashed into Rinsley, its claws and teeth tearing into his flesh. The momentum carried both of them down into the open grave.
Like an idiot, Fairchild jumped down in after them, knowing that Rinsley was either already dead or better off dead.
The two beings, feral and stakeholder, rolled and snarled and fought each other in the narrow confines of the pit. Fairchild stabbed repeatedly with titanium alloy stakes in both hands, missing the feral’s vitals as it twisted and turned. Claws raked Fairchild’s sides, fangs and razored canines tore his flesh.
Then at last the heat and the humidity took its toll.
The supercharged oxygenation that gave vampires their unearthly strength and speed was also their biggest weakness. The legends of vampires spontaneously bursting into flame were true, but it wasn’t sunlight that triggered it. It was heat; the heat expended using their superhuman strength too long in a sustained effort.
And the saturated, sweltering air gave no chance at all to evaporate it off.
The feral’s body began to smoke. It reeled back
in fiery pain, howling. Fairchild kicked free, and scrambled out of the hole.
The feral burst into fire. Blue-green flames, fifty-feet high, licked up from the pit. It took only seconds for a fire that hot to burn itself out. The flame died away and left a charcoal man-shaped husk. Two husks, rather. That of the feral and what was left of Rinsley.
Reeking of crematorium soot, Fairchild staggered over to a fire hydrant, his own oxygenated body beginning to smoke. He wrenched open the hydrant by hand and bathed himself in the cooling jet of water just in time to avoid the feral’s fate. The unbearable heat drained away. The mud and the blood and the smoke covering him sluiced away along with it.
But not the memory of what he’d done here tonight. No amount of water would ever truly wash Rinsley’s blood from his hands.
The black SUV pulled silently over to him. Fairchild stepped towards it, his clothes tattered and ripped, a dozen deep claw marks and bites marking his rapidly healing skin.
The mirror-tinted rear passenger window slowly rolled down, its electric motor softly whining. Senator Gransbury sat in the back with two High Councilmen from the Rookery. He could smell the Change already on her.
Fairchild wiped the water that dripped down his forehead with the back of his hands. “Did you enjoy the show, Senator?” he asked, ignoring the angry hisses of the High Councilmen. “Did you like what you saw? Was it worth it? Rinsley, I mean.” His voice croaked raw from smoke and the burning heat.
Gransbury looked down that long narrow patrician nose at him. “Yes,” she said. “To all your questions.” She seemed no more appalled at watching what had happened to her aide than watching a traffic light change.
“And do you think you’ll be happy with us? An eternity spent living with what you’ve seen here tonight?”
She arched an eyebrow. “I believe I shall,” she said, simply.
Fairchild shook his head. Turning, he began to walk away.
“They tell me you’re still human,” she called after him.
He stopped.
“Mostly,” he said, not turning around.
“You don’t seem pleased with me joining your little world,” she said. “I have, you know.” Her voice carried the amusement of a cat batting a half-dead mouse between its paws. The remains of her previous mouse, Rinsley, lay abandoned, already forgotten.
The splashing hiss of the fire hydrant carried in the night air. The water pooled on the lawn. A small rivulet ran into the open grave where the ashes of Rinsley and the feral lay. The water began to mix with the ashes and the mud and what seemed to be left of Fairchild’s human soul.
“Have you?” Fairchild asked. “Have you now? I’d say we’ve joined yours.”
He started walking again.
As fast and as far away as possible.
Introduction to “Geriatric Magic”
Stephanie Writt is a Faery Princess. “Geriatric Magic” contains the most original piece of Magick I’ve ever read. I would love to have mochas with Stephanie while harassing strangers in parks when we are both senior citizens.
An award-winning speechwriter, competitive performer and actor, Stephanie studied and interned as an assistant teacher at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in New York City. While she lived in New York, Stephanie also worked professionally in two Off-Broadway plays. Stephanie has been writing fiction professionally since 2011.
Stephanie Writt’s inspiration for this story was born from the potential of an empty chair. “I love the idea of a person alone at a café table. What stranger could sit down at their table and change that person’s life, their world, forever? And why and how? (chuckles) Makes me want a mint hot chocolate and a blueberry scone every time I think about it.”
Geriatric Magic
Stephanie Writt
To drink coffee from a straw meant the first step in a downward spiral of social self-degradation. To treat a well-brewed, quality beverage in such a way, well, blasphemy. Insulting. As the consumer, embarrassment to the very core. Of course, if my damn hands would stop shaking long enough to take a sip without giving myself, my table, and the entire outdoor café a dark roast shower, then I would not have to lower myself in such a way.
Praise be that spring had returned to my city. The winter compounded my already growing list of aches and hurts. Sunlight, golden liquid relief, shone down between our city towers, past window and ledge, past worker and homemaker, between tree branch and budding leaf, down to set my white tablecloth to glow and my body pains to ease.
Table size square pools of white light edged the sidewalk, fenced in with a knee high border of wrought iron and tasteful potted plants to protect the café patrons from the riff-raff that wondered aimlessly through the park. Anyone entering the café located in Central Park, New York City in our grand country of the United States, must first pass through the gatekeeper. A pleasant hostess to redirect those who did not belong back into the world. Standards, everyone should have them. Standards kept the world from falling into chaos.
So, when the pretty hostess (Jacqueline, even the names are of higher quality here) led me to my usual table, edged closest to the park side on the outside pavilion, to see my table rose had lost petals, thin velvet wafers the color of fresh blood, well…to say disappointment would be an understatement. A wilted flower allowed to remain on one of their tables? A lowering of standards. Quite devastating.
Of course, they did allow me to drink my coffee through a straw, so I did not immediately seek out a new venue. Near ten years of patronage in my retirement years alone. If anything, I felt a desire to assist. However, once I had decided to lend my said assistance, the morning rustle bustle had poor Jacqueline hopping, and, by my usual request, I had been left alone once coffee (violated by straw) had been delivered.
The wilted flower looked at me. Like me. Once beautiful in its prime, now a withered remnant, a stain on the world to be swept away once the chance arose. Melancholy and morose a picture, yes, but I call a stone a stone. An old man an old man. And a wilted flower…well, sad.
My finger shook violently as I reached out to touch the last few petals that clung to a stem that drooped in a tired curve. All expectation lent to the final petals scattering on the table by my destructive shake. I hoped I would not knock the thin clear vase over, spilling water on the pristine white tablecloth. But I wanted to feel the soft pure velvet of a petal, the last vestige of its youth and life. The fallen petals lay too close to the base of the vase to grasp without surely knocking the vase over.
A steadiless reach, and I touched the petals. Which moved. I thought by my touch, which tingled with a pull sensation I had never felt before. But the petals moved up toward the sun, not down. The tingle grew as I willed the petals to continue up, their reach to the sun, a blooming in the morning light. And it did. Bloomed fresh and bright as if it was its first, a new bud. New petals grew and peeled back to reveal a blood red heart that kissed the air with a gentle fragrance. The scent of garden strolls, four-star dining, and sensual interludes.
I pulled my hand back and away. Shocked and amazed at what I saw. Had done? Maybe. But three wilted petals, brown edged and curling, lay below the towering beauty of the new rose. A testament to the change. What had happened.
What had happened?
“Magic, Harold.” A hawk-faced woman with hard clear blue eyes lowered herself into the chair across from me, her tone sharp and full of power. The tan sleeve of her thin beige overcoat pulled back over a long thin arm as she hailed Jacqueline with a single wave of her fingers. Her back to the woman, Jacqueline still turned immediately at the summons, politely excused herself from the table she had been attending to, and wove her way to my table.
“Hot chocolate, extra hot. As in I-could-sue-you-but-I-won’t hot.” The hawk woman winked at Jacqueline, though her face remained severe. Jacqueline still giggled. “Whip cream. Shot of raspberry.” She dismissed Jacqueline with a nod and her attention shifted to me. Jacqueline scurried to fetch the childish drink.
I just stared at the strangest, most rude woman of my acquaintance.
“You should try one sometime. A little sweet in your life would not do you harm.” She said and absently picked up one of the wilted petals off the table. She rubbed it between her two fingers, then looked up at me. Her eyes pinned me to my chair. I shook, not just the Parkinson’s. Then shook it off.
“My Lady,” I started, since Miss seemed more than inappropriate to address her with. She shifted in her seat, eyes still on mine, and crossed her legs. Long, elegant legs. Her jacket parted at the knee to reveal her skirt edge, red. Blood red like the petal she rubbed between her fingers. My eyes darted back to hers and found she had raised a single eyebrow at me. “My lady, though you are a lovely addition to my morning, some people would think it rude to join another party’s table without an invitation.”
“Well, then thank goodness that isn’t you, hmmm?” her voice, low for a woman’s still held a distinct feminine quality. And the low purr of a cat. A cat of power. With a voice box made by Peterbilt.
“So, do you like my present?” she asked.
“I am not sure what you mean, Ms…?” I let the question hang.
But she ignored my pry for her name. Blatantly ignored. Quite unladylike.
“You now possess the magic to restore life to the flower. Single flowers to start. And small plants. A little bit of practice and whole bouquets will freshen at your touch.” Jacqueline arrived at that moment with the Lady’s hot chocolate. Whip cream, white and frothy, swirled into a mountain peak up over the lip of the tall white mug. “Thank you, Jacqueline.”
Jacqueline sauntered away with a little happy skip, as the hawk woman lifted the mug to her lips. She tipped the mug and moaned in her throat as she swallowed. She set the mug down and licked thin pink lips with a smack. Whip cream lined her upper lip and dotted her nose with a dab of white froth. So unladylike.
Then she smiled, and the bright sunlight became like a shadow in the face of it. Her face glowed with happiness. I had to blink my eyes against it. Then the light receded, and I could look at her straight on once again. She sat like a normal woman. A normal woman who radiated power, bore true the adage “alight with pleasure,” and spoke of magic. With very nice legs.
Fiction River: Hex in the City Page 8