Americana Fairy Tale

by Lex Chase

  Taylor slapped his hands to his face. “It wasn’t just that easy, was it?”

  “Nope,” Phillipa said.

  “Dammit,” Taylor said. He grunted in frustration.

  “We just cracked his shell off,” Corentin said and scanned the landscape as dawn approached again. “Goddammit,” he muttered. “Take the wheel, Taylor.”

  Taylor seemed to know what he was asking before Corentin had to fully explain. The day changeover this time was like buckshot to the gut. Corentin’s whole body contracted as he hacked for air. Taylor slid across the seat and pressed himself close to Corentin’s side to accommodate a better grip on the wheel. The truck swerved in a severe curve to the left and right. Phillipa planted her hands between the two back windows to hold herself steady. Ringo held Honeysuckle and showed her how to drift with the movement and not get flung about.

  “We got company,” Phillipa said and pointed out to the open road.

  Corentin fought for air and struggled to take the wheel again. Taylor sensed his crippled state and did the best he could at keeping them on the road.

  In the distance, Idi stood in the middle of the road. He brushed off the last flecks of Charles that clung to him. He shook off his hand, and the crisp shell of white human skin clattered to the street like shattering pottery. Idi’s true flesh, the glimmering obsidian scales, flashed with iridescence in the truck’s headlights.

  An impossible pressure built inside Corentin’s chest as he clung tight to Taylor. In turn, Taylor yelled something to Ringo. A hard punch to the back of Corentin’s seat made him hack up the last bit of darkness. The relief of air flooded in. The pressure in Corentin’s chest faded as he relaxed, but he was exhausted from choking.

  Phillipa ran her fingers through Corentin’s hair. “You can thank me about the Heimlich later,” she said. “Now hold on.”

  Corentin coughed one last time. He gripped the wheel and steeled his resolve. “I think he didn’t get enough of the truck the first time,” he said in a raspy growl. Corentin pressed the gas again, and the truck sped closer. Taylor slipped back to the passenger side and secured his seat belt once again.

  In the distance, Idi raised a finger, and a thick humidity filtered into the truck.

  Phillipa slapped her hands to the headrests and snarled in a horrific tone between terrified girl and hungry demon. “Guys!” she squealed as her skin rippled.

  Taylor looked frantically between her and Corentin. “What’s happening?”

  Ringo and Honeysuckle zipped to the forward cabin. Ringo held out his palms, and a shimmering gold barrier sparked into being between the front and backseat.

  Honeysuckle gasped and pressed her fingers to her lips. “Child… your face….”

  Corentin kept his expression even as he watched Phillipa fight for her fragile humanity in the backseat. They met gazes, and Phillipa nodded as the bones in her face shifted. Corentin clicked the automatic locks off.

  “What’s happening!” Taylor screeched again as he pulled forward to the dash.

  “Her curse,” Corentin said.

  Idi’s terrible voice flowed through the cabin like cold tar. “I release you, Beast.”

  Corentin stepped on the gas, pressing the needle to ninety again as he prepared to pulverize Idi with the mighty power of being built Ford tough. Taylor watched Phillipa all the while. Ringo maintained the barrier that protected them from the fearsome creature that tore its way from her flesh.

  Phillipa’s smooth, unblemished skin, that of a sorority girl sweetheart, shredded and peeled away, as insignificant as crêpe paper. Underneath, her true form birthed into existence. Slicked with the blood of the girl who held it captive, the dark-furred beast emerged as Phillipa slipped away. Two backswept horns punctured forth from the crown of her head, and her hair slipped away like a discarded wig. The horns grew, elongating down the length of the beast’s hunched back. The creature howled in agony, pounding its clawed hands at Ringo’s barrier.

  Corentin floored the gas, but Idi never came any closer. Corentin frowned. Idi had expected Phillipa to finish them in Corentin’s own truck. He knew Idi hadn’t counted on Phillipa’s humanity holding on long enough for them to know she was a threat.

  What remained of Phillipa’s mind led her to slap her flattened hand to Ringo’s barrier. Taylor pressed his hand to hers on the other side. Their eyes met, and Taylor’s lip trembled. Phillipa puffed a foggy breath on the barrier.

  “I think you’re beautiful,” Taylor whispered.

  Phillipa’s logic hung on by a shred. She turned and then shoved the back door open with her thick arms.

  “What are you doing?” Taylor yelled to her.

  “Saving us,” Corentin said flatly and then set the truck into a spinning drift.

  The force threw Phillipa from the truck and into the darkness. The truck skidded three times into a perfect donut and coasted to a stop.

  Phillipa was gone.

  Taylor’s lip trembled, and Corentin snatched his hand.

  “Taylor, Taylor, look at me,” Corentin said and pulled him close. “Things are going to get a lot harder from here. You’re going to see things and have to make choices that will seem unthinkable. But in time you will make peace with them.” He petted Taylor’s hair, and Taylor trembled against him. Corentin kissed the top of his head. “We just have to get to the point that we can survive to eventually make peace with our decisions. Okay? Right now, we’re making decisions. Can you make decisions?”

  Taylor pulled back and brushed away a tear. He gave a shaky nod. “I can do that,” he said in a croak.

  Corentin squeezed his hand. “Just don’t think about what happens after. Just make one choice and go to the next. Don’t stop making choices until there’s no more choices to make.” Corentin cast his attention to Ringo and Honeysuckle. “That goes for you guys too.”

  The pixies nodded as they hovered together.

  Ringo saluted. “We are at your service.”

  Corentin hooked a thumb to the gaping hole where the truck’s back door had once been. “Block that up somehow.” He revved the engine and then turned the truck to head north. “We’re on a witch hunt.”

  Honeysuckle waved her fingers at the back door, and the hole flooded with shimmering blue bubbles. “Does this meet your standards?”

  Corentin arched a brow. “They’re not going to pop, are they?”

  Honeysuckle tossed her messy silver hair. “Oh, lemon drop. They’re stronger than concrete and soft as a pillow.”

  “Excellent,” Corentin said, and they drove off again.

  Taylor remained quiet as Corentin noticed him struggling to collect his thoughts. “Phillipa’s skin is still in the backseat…,” he said quietly and wiped at his eyes with a sweep of a finger.

  Corentin reached out for Taylor’s hand again. He didn’t understand when Taylor flailed back against the passenger side and screamed, “Corentin!”

  For Corentin, the world ceased to be.

  TAYLOR SHRIEKED as Phillipa latched onto the driver’s side and tore the door from the hinges. Corentin was there, and then he was gone.

  Just gone.

  The truck swerved a sharp left, pulling up on two wheels as Phillipa launched herself into the cab.

  Taylor had nowhere to run. His life was ending. It was this moment.

  The truck hit a guardrail and launched into a flip. Taylor’s world spun, end over end, topsy-turvy. He screamed for Ringo and Honeysuckle, but the force of the roll sucked them out of the cabin.

  All the while, Phillipa flailed for Taylor. She clawed wildly at him, and he tried to kick her away. Her claws ripped at his jeans and tore at his flesh. Taylor wailed. Helpless. Alone. Afraid.

  The truck landed on its roof. It slid down the interstate, spun in revolutions, and finally settled against a green-and-white interstate sign that read Cawker City. Phillipa had gone still, and Taylor’s head throbbed. Every part of him ached.

  He blinked the fogginess from his mind and turned
to Phillipa. He clasped his hands over his mouth to hold in the rising sickness. She panted in heaving gasps over the steering column, which crushed into her beastly chest. Taylor’s vision ran red with blood mingling with his tears. With the sound of a click and then a hiss, Taylor froze.

  The smell of gas rose around him.

  “No. No. No!” Taylor roared and tore himself from the seat belt. He screeched in panic and fury as he threw himself against Phillipa to better kick out the passenger window. One kick and the glass only thumped its displeasure. Taylor screamed and kicked again. The window flowered with hairline cracks. He kicked again, and shards scattered over the street.

  Taylor slithered out on his stomach, and his shirt and skin tore on the jagged wreckage. He staggered to his feet but refused to give up on Phillipa. She may have lost herself to the Beast and her curse, but in the end, she was still someone Taylor could call a friend. Taylor’s foot dragged under him as he limped along.

  “Phillipa?” he called out, his voice a croaking gurgle. “Phillipa?”

  Taylor took one step forward, and the car erupted into a fireball. Thrown back from the blast, Taylor slid along the damp road. The gravel bit into his skin. He sucked in a pained sigh and then pushed to his hands and knees. He screamed to the burning wreckage. “Phillipa?” he screeched. “Phillipa!”

  The car rumbled with the roll of flame and smelled of burning rubber.

  Taylor pulled his scraped knees to his chest and sobbed.

  Ringo and Honeysuckle were gone.

  Corentin’s journal was gone.

  Corentin was gone.

  The wails came in a torrent, and Taylor thought he’d never breathe again.

  Suddenly, something scooped under his arms and pulled him to his feet. Taylor shrieked and flailed as something tried to reason with him. Blinded by the tears and blood in his eyes, Taylor thrashed at his attacker. When his hands were seized, he tried pulling away.

  Slowly he recognized the urgent call. “Taylor. Taylor!”

  Taylor blinked through the haze in his eyes and recognized the scraped-up shape of Corentin. Taylor screamed in delight and clung to him. “Oh my Storyteller, you’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive!” Taylor wailed and held Corentin to him. “How are you alive? I don’t care. You’re alive,” he babbled repeatedly, and nothing mattered anymore. Corentin was there. Corentin was with him.

  Corentin reached out and smoothed the blood and grime from Taylor’s face. Taylor watched him as he gulped for air. “We have to keep going,” Corentin said. “This is just the beginning.”

  Taylor nodded and gestured with a trembling hand toward the truck. “Ph-Phillipa….”

  Corentin cupped Taylor’s cheeks between his dirty palms, and Taylor’s eyes widened. “We have to do this. For Phillipa,” Corentin said. “We have to keep going. Can you do that?”

  Taylor nodded. “The truck….”

  “We have to go by foot,” Corentin said and wiped the blood from his face, only to succeed in smearing it worse. Corentin stepped away from Taylor. He seemed to consider the empty road that lay ahead of them. He started to take a step forward, and Taylor latched on to his wrist. Corentin halted, and they locked gazes.

  “I love you,” Taylor said in a firm tone.

  Corentin smiled through the grime on his face. “Then let’s go get our Happily Ever After.”

  They stepped past the Cawker City interstate sign…

  And vanished into the brilliant warmth of day.

  CHAPTER 31:

  SPINNING A YARN

  The World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Cawker City, Kansas

  June 14

  CORENTIN’S WRIST slipped through Taylor’s blood-crusted fingers. Taylor flailed to grab on to him, only to be met with a very bewildered girl clad in a royal blue-and-white marching band uniform colliding into him. Taylor staggered back, and the world came into focus.

  The girl had the sense to pull the clarinet from her lips before Taylor could shove it into her teeth. She said nothing and slipped around him. Taylor blinked again, and more high school marching band members came into focus. A flock of them, slipping around him with their instruments to their mouths and giving him a perplexed look at his shabby appearance. Their music blared a happy old-time rag.

  Taylor shook his head. Everything was still fuzzy from the truck overturning. Was he dreaming? It had to be a dream. The marching band left him, carrying on their song. Taylor turned, watching them go.

  Instead of disappearing into nothing, they carried on down the street. The very street Taylor stood on. Families filled the sidewalks and waved American flags. Children sucked on ice cream cones. Elderly veterans in their ill-fitting uniforms pinned with layers of medals stood in silent salute.

  Taylor turned in a slow circle. The smell of sour milk filled the air. He coughed and stumbled on his bleeding legs. A parade? he thought as he wiped the caked blood from his eyes. A clown gave him a withering glare as he folded balloon animals for the children.

  “Corentin?” Taylor yelled over the sounds of celebration. “Ringo?”

  He had known Corentin was alive, but now he wasn’t sure. As for Ringo, Taylor knew somewhere deep within, he wasn’t coming back. He trembled with the adrenaline and fear surging through him.

  Corentin’s words stuck with him. Taylor had to keep going. He had to make decisions. He had to keep making choices until he had no more choices to make. He hugged himself, and the fear was winning out instead of the determination. He had decisions to make, but he didn’t know what they were or what they entailed.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the voice inside himself.

  Stop being afraid.

  Taylor nodded to himself. He opened his eyes, letting all the sounds of celebration turn into a wave of dull droning in his ears. He retreated from the street and slipped among the crowd of parade goers on the sidewalk. He had to find Corentin. That was his decision. Following that decision, he chose to head to the sounds of a carnival nearby.

  His legs throbbed with pain. The road rash on his arms and back had become sticky and itchy. He couldn’t think about that now. He concentrated and started running.

  The smell of sour milk grew stronger, and Taylor’s nose wrinkled. He turned a corner, and a Tilt-A-Whirl set up in the street spun in merry greeting. Children dragged their less-than-eager parents to the minirollercoaster. Other parents tried to make their crying children smile as they sat upon horses in a small paddock.

  Taylor kept to the outskirts of the street carnival, looking into the thick of the crowd. Towering in the center of the carnival, a gazebo sat on a small hill, lined by plastic flags. The breeze blustered in Taylor’s direction, and he caught a pungent stench of sour milk and sweet funnel cakes. He coughed, and his eyes watered. Whatever it was, it was something he needed to see.

  Taylor cut into the crowd and made his way to the gazebo. Parents would give him a curious glance because of his injured state, but they merely shuffled their children away. No one stopped him, and no one asked if he needed help.

  The mundanes could see him now. And they ignored him.

  Taylor covered his mouth with his filthy shirt as he reached the base of the gazebo. And there it sat. Taylor frowned at the sheer lack of amusement.

  The World’s Largest Ball of Twine towered before him in all of its yellow-gray fibrous glory, reeking of rot.

  Idi had planned to kill him, Corentin, and Ringo here.

  Here.

  Taylor made a new decision.

  Get angry.

  A hand clapped to Taylor’s shoulder, and Taylor brightened. Corentin had finally found him in this mess.

  He spun around and saw Atticus’s demented face instead.

  Taylor slowly backed away. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, holding up a hand to hold Atticus back.

  Atticus pressed forward after Taylor. “Do what? Live my dream? Be free?” He held out his empty hands. “I brought you something.” In a swirl of snowflakes from
his palms, birdcages holding Ringo and Honeysuckle appeared in his hands.

  Ringo blinked in a drugged state, clearly drowsy. Honeysuckle shivered in her cage.

  “What have you done to them?” Taylor snarled.

  Atticus shoved the cages into Taylor’s arms. Taylor fought to juggle both of them in his grasp. “There,” Atticus said in a snooty tone. “You have two pixies now. More than enough to take me on.”

  “Take you on?” Taylor said, disbelieving. He looked down at the two pixies in his arms. One of Ringo’s butterfly wings had been torn, and the other was tattered. One of Honeysuckle’s dragonfly wing pairs had been shredded and hung on by faint wisps. “Guys?” Taylor said in a panic. “Guys, are you okay?”

  “Come on, Taylor,” Atticus snapped. “You’re wasting time. Like you always do. Time to see if you really have it in you to make something of yourself.”

  Taylor cradled the cages close to his chest. He wouldn’t dare leave Ringo and Honeysuckle behind. “Are you happy?” Taylor growled at Atticus from somewhere deep and wounded inside of him.

  “Happy?” Atticus seemed not to understand the question.

  “Yeah, At-At, happy,” Taylor asked. “You’ve willingly destroyed anything that got in your way. Our family, us—fuck—a whole city of innocent mundanes. You destroyed not only everything you love, but everything that loved you.”

  Instead of remorse, Atticus broke into gales of laughter. “Love? What do you know of love, Taylor?” He clapped his hands. “The love of a huntsman? Some good that did you. Your love for me? Oh, you are brilliant at lying with a straight face.”

  Taylor shook his head. Things were going to get ugly and fast. He had to be ready. He took a step back.

  And Atticus was suddenly so close to him, he could smell his fresh winter scent drowning out the stench of the Twine Ball. Atticus held up Taylor’s own smartphone between them. Taylor’s gaze darted from the phone to Atticus in confusion.

  Atticus clicked the play button on one of the saved videos.

  Taylor’s jaw dropped as he watched the video of himself that Billy had recorded. The one of him watching the snow in Syracuse. It was the night he wanted nothing more than to call his parents and say he was sorry, say he wanted to come home, say he missed Atticus. The one where he was at such a low, he would have done anything to be happy again.