Blood Rock s-2

by Anthony Francis

  I dumped the corset in the hamper and went to the kitchen. I laid down canned food for the cats, wondering where they were; probably somewhere in the apartment, tucked up into frozen little balls, more scared of Cinnamon than I was.

  I had no idea what to feed her in this state. Perhaps I should run to the store and get… what? Raw meat? Hell. I threw away the pet food can reflexively and glared into my separated bins. There weren’t enough recyclables to warrant the drive. Stupid City of Atlanta, all they picked up was trash. At least that was full; taking it out gave me some semblance of normalcy.

  I stomped down the stairs towards the trash can and stopped halfway down. “Hello, Mrs. Olsen,” I said, feeling rather than hearing her presence beside me.

  “Hello, Dakota,” Mrs. Olsen said. Her long hair only looked grey against the soft folds of her long purple sweater. She had cultivated a spinsterly appearance after her husband had been killed in Iraq, but she had a son not much older than Cinnamon on his first tour over there. She smiled, her cherubic face dimpling as she lifted a wastebasket filled with papers, aluminum cans, and an old phone book. I strongly suspected she’d left it by her own back door and waited to take it out so she’d have an excuse to talk to me. “You know you can call me Donna.”

  I watched her dump enough recyclables to finish off my own separated loads and shook my head. “All right, Donna,” I said, marching down the stairs. “I’ve just always felt odd calling you anything other than Mrs. Olsen. I guess it was the way I was raised..”

  “Now, Dakota,” Donna preened, as I dumped off my own trash. “You’ve been here too many years for last names-and to think you’ll be gone soon. I will miss you.”

  “I did want to talk to you about that. Did you get my message-”

  “I’ve got the nicest young couple ready to move into your flat,” she said, leaning forward and letting her voice drop to a whisper. “Lesbians, if you can believe that.”

  “Imagine that,” I said, smiling.

  “I’m really glad to help them,” she said, gesturing with the garbage basket. “They even offered to paint my flat rather than pay a security deposit.”

  “But I’m willing to bet you’ll just let them skip it,” I said. Donna had done the same for me, a few years ago, when I’d been hard up and needed to find a place after splitting with Saffron. “Did you get my message? Can they push their move date back-”

  A piercing screech erupted from the top of the stairs, followed by a loud crash. Donna’s head jerked up suddenly at the horrible yowling alarm that wailed out of my flat and the weird, freakish chirping that followed. “Oh my God, I think something’s killing your cats… ”

  And before I could stop her, she dropped the wastebasket and bolted up the stairs.

  “No, wait,” I said, following her. I reached for her sweater, but my fingers closed on the air as Donna really put on speed, bursting the door open and turning on the light. She froze in there, then jerked back so I almost ran over her.

  Cinnamon remained in her bowed-out cage, but awake, alert, snarling, as two of my cats yowled back at her. Little black-and-white Xanadu stood not three feet away, spotted back arched so high it looked like someone was pulling up on her belly with an invisible coat hanger; big old raccoonish Rafael was crouched down by the kitchen door, curled up as tight as he could get, with food bowls and recycling hampers tumbled every which way around him. Cinnamon snarled again, then saw me and, eyes wide, struck the cage with her paw in a sudden plea, emitting the freakish chirp we’d heard below-like a monster bird crying for its mother.

  I relaxed a little. The cats had just padded in to get their food, then everyone freaked. No one had hurt anyone; it was just another period of adjustment. Something else to get used to.

  But not, apparently, just for us.

  “Oh my God,” Donna cried. “You have a tiger-”

  “She’s not a tiger-” I said, but Donna kept babbling.

  “-brought it into my house,” Donna said. “A pet tiger! ”

  At the word pet Cinnamon’s head jerked up and she growled, making Donna press back against me. I raised my hand. “Down, Cinnamon,” I said sharply. “You’re not helping.”

  “Cinnamon… ” Donna said, turning to me, eyes wide in horror.

  “She is a tiger, but she’s not a pet,” I said. “This is my daughter, and she’s a-”

  “A were- tiger,” Donna said, shrinking back against the wall. “I’ve heard of such things, but… werewolves are bad enough, but were- tigers… ”

  “There’s nothing to fear,” I said, turning off the overhead. “You’ve met Cinnamon.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, I have, ” Donna said, fear becoming anger. “And you had her standing not three feet from me showing her off like she was a normal human being.”

  “She is a normal human being,” I said, realizing as I said it how ridiculous it sounded with Animal Planet near bursting out of a cage before us. “With a condition. She gets furry-”

  “This may be all very funny to you,” Donna said, straightening up, adjusting her sweater, but still plastered against the wall as far from Cinnamon as she could manage. “But it’s not funny to me! Not funny at all! Lycanthropy is a disease. It’s contagious! I want you out of here-”

  “But we’re not ready. In fact, we need to extend our lease,” I said, rubbing my brow. I knew where this was going. “I told you in voicemail, our closing date was pushed back.”

  “I don’t care what happened to you,” Donna said. “You bring this thing here into my home, this thing that could infect me, and expect me to shelter you? I want you out!”

  I exhaled sharply. “ Fine,” I said. “We’ll be out Monday, like we agreed.”

  “No,” Donna said, drawing herself up. “I want you out now, now, now!”

  “Donna,” I said. “We have a lease-”

  “I don’t care!” she said, voice growing more shrill. “I won’t have this diseased thing in a home that I own for one more instant! You get her out of here or I call the police!”

  “Donna-”

  “Get out! Get out! Get out! ” she screamed. “I’ll not have a monster under my roof!”

  A Frosty Family Dinner

  “Mom,” Cinnamon said softly in the passenger seat. “Why did you fold?”

  The last few days had been a blur. Finding a hotel. Smuggling Cinnamon inside. Turning the tiger back into the schoolgirl; losing the schoolgirl within the school walls, if only for the day. And dealing with the awful, awful mess left by the werehouse fire.

  And then it was a sunny Saturday and we were back in the blue bomb, shooting up I-85 towards Stratton, South Carolina. I got a tingle when we passed through the Perimeter-the more tattoos I had, the more aware I was of the giant magic circle buried beneath Atlanta’s encircling highways-but no dragons swooped out of the sky to scoop us up, dang it, and soon, we were driving beneath happy puffy clouds dotting a bright blue sky over a rolling forested Interstate.

  Unfortunately, these happy clouds did not extend to the interior of the car.

  “I means,” Cinnamon said, “it was our place. She had no right -”

  “No, no she didn’t,” I said, “but you were changed, and snarling, and I was afraid she’d call the cops and they’d haul you off, cage and all, to the Atlanta City Jail. Or the Zoo.”

  “Mom!” Cinnamon said, half outraged, half giggling. Then her giggle faded. “The Academy sucks. They’re putting me in the stupid class.”

  “What?” I asked. “Why would they do that? They know you’re behind. They should have held you back a grade, not stuffed you in a remedial class.”

  “Not remedial,” she said, and I was impressed that she didn’t ask what that meant. “Tutoring, for math. Three days a week, after school.”

  “Okay,” I said, pulling off at the Commerce exit. “Okay. That’s not so bad.”

  “Why are we stopping?” Cinnamon said. “Isn’t Stratton eighty-four more miles?”

  “Hey, she can subtra
ct. Sure you need tutoring?” I said, and she swatted at me. “But Commerce is our stop. It’s as far south as Dad will go, and as far north as I will go-”

  “Your demilitarized zone,” Cinnamon said, with a sudden smile.

  “Yeah,” I said, grinning. “Our DMZ. I like that.”

  In moments we were pulling into Denny’s parking lot, a bright houselike building outside the Tanger Outlet center. Once this was a dark, boxy Shoney’s, Dad’s favorite stop for food on family road trips; now, years later, we still met here out of inertia. I parked, slammed the door, and put my hand on Cinnamon’s shoulder, steeling myself for the inevitable.

  Dad stood peering at an AJC newspaper dispenser, trying to “see what they’re up to down here these days.” He was a big, beefy, kindly man, ex-linebacker, balding, with a light fringe of blond-grey hair trimmed close, graying a little only around his ears. His brown sweater and white shirt were old-school but high-quality, the colors rich, the whites pure and luminous.

  He saw me, straightened, and threw on a smile which quickly faded.

  “H-hey, Kotie,” Dad said, face to face for the first time in three years. His eyes flickered over me, almost wincing at my deathhawk and tattoos; then they flickered to Cinnamon, wary. He swallowed, started forward, extending his hand. “I-it’s great to see you again.”

  “Hey, Dad,” I said quietly, trying to hide my disappointment. I already knew what was about to happen; we wouldn’t even get to shake hands first. “It’s good to see you too-”

  And then it happened: the grey-haired, drawn-faced, beige-jacketed man who had been trailing Dad stepped between us, forcing his face into a smile.

  “Dakota Frost,” he said, taking one hand off his floppy Bible and extending it towards us. “I’m Doctor Price Isaacson. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “Pleased to meet you too, Doctor Isaacson,” I said, taking his hand and letting him pump mine. Vacant-eyed, pushy, and on a mission: just how Dad liked his pastors. “And what congregation do you preach for, Doctor?”

  “Stratton Independent Baptist,” he said, eyes brightening. “I’m glad to see you show interest in the preaching of the Word, but who do we have here?”

  Isaacson half-squatted, looking at Cinnamon and extending his hand with a bright foolish smile like he was talking to a five-year-old. She did not extend her hand, but twitched and pressed back against me, letting out a sharp exhale of breath before she finally spoke.

  “My name is Cinnamon Frost,” she said, staring down at his hand.

  Doctor Isaacson stood and leaned back with something like approval. “Don’t trust strangers,” he said. “But Richard didn’t tell me you had a child.”

  “Cinnamon is adopted,” I said. “Just recently, in fact.”

  “Well, well, that’s great,” Dad said, stepping forward nervously. “I didn’t know you’d, you’d be bringing her with you. Hey, ah, let’s eat.”

  I really don’t remember what food I liked at Shoney’s as a child, and I don’t remember what I ate at Denny’s that day either. As always, there was so much else to talk about. As a child, Mom, Dad and I had always really opened up at Shoney’s, and now, after all this time, I was desperate to tell Dad how glad I was to see him, to ask about what was going on in Stratton, to find out about his consulting work, to hear about Mom’s side of the family-or to tell Dad about Cinnamon. But it seemed like we never really got into that. Instead, almost immediately “So, Kotie,” Dad said. “When are you going to stop tattooing and get a real job?”

  “I make fifty thousand dollars a year tattooing, Dad,” I said, “and my hours are my own.”

  “Kotie, tattooing is the Devil’s work,” Dad began. “The Bible says-”

  “You eat non-Kosher meat, Dad,” I said. “You shave your beard. You wear mixed-weave fabrics. All prohibited by the part of the O.T. you’re quoting-Leviticus 19. Go down that path, you’ll have to close your bank accounts and quit coaching Stratton Police softball on Sundays.”

  “He said you were a Bible Bowl champion,” Isaacson said. “But even if we aren’t going that far, there are a lot of reasons to give up tattooing. A lot of people regret them later.”

  “I don’t do jinxes,” I said. “No personal names, obscene images or religious symbols.”

  Isaacson raised an eyebrow, glancing at my hands: a row of religious icons was on each knuckle: a Christian cross, a Star of David, an Islamic crescent, even a yin-yang.

  “I take responsibility for inking myself,” I said, flashing the larger yin-yang on my palm, “but I won’t put a permanent slogan on a living person who may later have a change of heart.”

  “That’s wise-even if you change your mind, you can’t easily take ink back,” Isaacson said. “Did you know it can take up to a dozen laser treatments to remove a tattoo?”

  “Or you can use magical ink, and peel them off with one wave of mana,” I said.

  Isaacson’s eyes tightened a little bit at the word ‘magical,’ but he forged ahead. “But most people leave them in, and if you do, the ink can cause cancers-”

  “ Not often, and not with modern ink,” I said, folding my arms. “And as you may have guessed from the Prius, I’m a tree-hugger. Everything I use is hypo-allergenic, and I subscribe to two different dermatology journals. As soon as a pigment proves bad-”

  “But how,” Isaacson said, “can you really know it isn’t bad?”

  “Fucking jerk,” Cinnamon said, sneezing. Then she seemed to notice us all staring at her and set her chin, sullen. “Mom’s the biggestfuck! -the biggest square of them all, and you acts like she’s doin’ somethin’ wrong making people look beautiful! I means, fuck-”

  “Cinnamon!” I said. “We talked about your language, and the insults.”

  “Reaping what you’ve sown,” Dad said. “You set a bad example. I’ve told you-”

  “Richard,” Isaacson said, staring at Cinnamon intently, “that’s not helping.”

  “You tells it. Fuck, I just met her,” Cinnamon said, “and I always talked like this!”

  “She didn’t,” Dad said sharply, “and she’s my daughter. ”

  “Dad,” I warned, pointing a finger at him.

  “ She’s my Mom! ” Cinnamon said, face twisting in anger. “Fuck, leave her alone-”

  “Cinnamon!” I said, pointing at her-then stopped; my hands were crossed in front of myself pointing at each of them. I put my hands on the table and sighed.

  “All right, both of you, settle down,” I said. “Cinnamon, you watch your language. My Dad is from the old school, but he’s a good man.”

  “Well,” Dad spluttered, “well, thank you Kotie-”

  “And Dad, grow up,” I said. “I have no excuse for my mouth. You gave me every advantage. Cinnamon, on the other hand, has every excuse; she was on the streets two months ago. She had no advantages, and we’re all going to have to cut her a little slack.”

  “Well said,” Doctor Isaacson said, still staring at Cinnamon intently, leaning his head on his closed fist like he was miming ‘The Thinker.’ “You know, Jesus once said-”

  “Please, Doctor, don’t start,” I said wearily. “Now, everyone, please be nice to each other. I am going to the bathroom, and I don’t want anyone to be dead when I get back.”

  But before I’d gotten halfway to the door, Isaacson had hopped up from the table and intercepted me, his weathered, wiry hand falling on my own with firmness. “Miss Frost,” he said, “I hate to butt in on your raising of your daughter, but there’s something you need to know … ”

  “Look, you,” I said, then softened. “Doc, thanks for taking Cinnamon’s side, but I really didn’t need the first meeting I’ve had with my Dad in three years spoilt by a sermon.”

  “I should never have let Richard talk me into this. I’m sorry,” Isaacson said, and looking in his eyes, I saw he was sincere. “But I need to talk to you about your daughter’s problem.”

  He had that soft, sad pitying look, and I got my dander back up, ready
to hear him give a whole lecture about how I needed to get her into a Christian school.

  “You may have noticed Cinnamon going through a lot of changes now that she’s in her teens,” Isaacson began. “I’ve seen this before. It can be so hard on kids with her problem.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with being a werekin-”

  “That’s not the ‘problem’ I mean,” he said gently. “And I admit this is a snap judgment, so you should definitely get a second opinion, but… please, please, take this seriously. I have dealt with this problem before, and I’d never suggest that someone had it as a joke.”

  “What is it?” I said. “Just what do you think is Cinnamon’s problem?”

  “I’m so sorry, Miss Frost,” Isaacson said. “I think your daughter has Tourette’s.”

  Vacationing in Coventry

  Late that night, we pulled into the parking lot of Manuel’s Tavern, the cavernous restaurant where we met with our Edgeworld friends every week. I was a bit nervous after Saffron blew her top, but I was more worried about Cinnamon.

  I had tried to take her clothes shopping, hoping a tour of the outlet malls would wash away the taste of our disastrous meeting with Dad and make her forget about Doctor Isaacson’s little bombshell. But my little thrift store queen had turned sullen. Clearly, with werekin hearing, she’d overheard everything he’d said, but wasn’t ready to broach the subject.

  So she sat and stewed. A lot.

  In the end we just went back and rescued stuff from my apartment. She kept stewing. By ten we were pooped, so I decided we should drop in on the weekly get-together of our friends-even if one was gone forever, and one was being a royal vampire-queen bitch.

  So it was ten-fifteen, rumbling over the speed bumps, when Cinnamon finally nerved up the courage to ask, “What’s it means to ‘have turrets?’ I thought turrets went on castles.”

  I stared straight ahead, eyeing a couple leaving the Tavern and, hopefully, heading towards a parking space. “Normally you don’t ask until you already know,” I said. “Couldn’t find it on Google?”