by M. L. Ryan
In any event, the disease ruse was not going to work for much longer. If I couldn’t learn self-control soon, I was going to have to come up with a better explanation for my isolation. It would be so much easier if I could just tell the truth, but one of the cardinal tenets of the Coursodon was to limit the number of humans who knew there was a parallel universe. They felt, probably for good reason, that humans weren’t ready to deal with a supernatural race when we still had problems dealing with our own differences.
“I tried a new tactic today,” I began, lifting myself up to a semi-upright position. “I thought of something really gross when I started to feel the power surge, and I think it helped dilute the destructive intensity.”
Alex paused his manipulations of my sore muscles and looked skeptically at his mentor. “And that worked?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Unusual as it seems, she better centers herself in response to a negative image than a pleasant one. I should have anticipated that her training needs would be… exceptional.”
“What’s that supposed to mean,” I muttered, suspicion oozing from every pore. Somehow, I didn’t think Sebastian meant that as a compliment.
“Only that you are unique, my dear, and we should not assume that what works for us would work for you. You are a paradox entwined in a conundrum.”
I let out a sigh and flopped back against the cushions. “Which is just a nice way of saying I’m a freak. Great. Nothing makes a girl feel better than being told she’s a hot mess.”
Grinning, Alex glanced back at me and said, “Hot you are, but a mess? No way.” He leaned forward and kissed my forehead. “Life with you is definitely never dull, but that’s a good thing.”
“I don’t know. Right now, I could use a little less excitement.”
Even as the words left my lips, I was pretty sure that my chances of a mundane existence were just wishful thinking.
~2~
The use of disturbing imagery to abate my calamitous tendencies was working; I had successfully managed not to destroy anything for almost three days, even under the harshest of Sebastian’s training exercises. This morning was my “final exam” of sorts. I didn’t have to run a marathon, or hold gallon jugs of water at shoulder height for excruciating amounts of time. The ultimate test that would ensure that I had finally mastered my magic didn’t involve physical exertion or exhaustion at all. I just had to have a conversation with my mother.
You wouldn’t think that would be so difficult, but my mother had an uncanny ability to push all my buttons and reduce me to a tightly coiled, tension-filled harpy. Much as I hated to admit it, I knew successful completion of this task meant I had conquered my demons. Or Sebastian’s, that is.
Everything was carefully planned. We had come up with a variety of topics sure to bait my mother into one of her infamous tirades. I insisted the conversation occur outside, using my cell phone and as far away from my other possessions as possible. Sebastian and Alex followed me to the appointed spot, an unshaded stretch of the Sonoran Desert about a half-mile from home. I have always been drawn to the rugged mountains and lush desert, probably because I grew up in Tucson. The 330 sunny days a year doesn’t hurt either. I took a deep, cleansing breath and steeled myself for what was to come.
Placing a supportive hand on my shoulder, Alex handed me the phone and said solemnly, “You can do this, Hailey.” Then he moved back and stood with Sebastian at a safe distance behind me while I punched in the number. I had a brief moment where I contemplated abandoning this madness. I surely wasn’t ready. But on the second ring, she answered, and my chance to reconsider was gone.
“Hi Mom,” I managed to squeak out.
“Hailey! What’s the matter?”
“Why does something have to be wrong? Can’t I just call to chat?”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “Well, I suppose,” she said slowly. “It’s just I can’t remember you ever doing that before.”
That was certainly true. She usually called me every few weeks so I never felt particularly motivated to initiate additional contact. “Always a first time for everything,” I sighed. In an effort to delay the inevitable, I strayed from my script and instead asked, “How’s Dad?” Sebastian frowned at my poor attempt to prolong the niceties and twirled his hands to clearly signal that I needed to get on with it.
My mother blew out a sigh. “Oh, he’s fine. Sequestered in the garage as usual, fixing something, no doubt. Sometimes I think he prefers his table saw to me from the hours he spends tinkering with who knows what.”
I suppose she wanted me to reassure her that she was mistaken, but for years my sisters and I speculated that the only reason they remained married was the large amount of time my father spent away from her. Even after they retired to Branson, Missouri a few years back, my father had insisted on a house with a detached garage, presumably to ensure less contact with my mom. I had no interest in assuaging her fears, but before I could change the subject, she moved on to one of her favorite topics — herself.
“I’ve been having trouble with my jaw, and when I went to the dentist he said I had to go to a maxo-falacial surgeon to get it checked out. The treatment is going to be very expensive and painful and your father is not happy about it.”
“I can imagine,” I replied, trying with limited success to suppress a giggle. “I had no idea you two were into that kind of kinky stuff,” I sputtered before I started to laugh full out.
“What are you talking about? The fact that I can’t open my mouth fully is not something to make fun of.”
She was clearly annoyed at what must have seemed like my total disregard for her suffering. But she obviously had no idea that she mispronounced the medical specialty that dealt with diseases of the head, mouth and jaw or that her malapropism conjured a rather disturbing visual involving her engaging in sexual antics I would bet my life savings she has never even considered, must less participated in.
Still stifling my amusement, I tried to explain. Sort of.
“Mom, it’s not ‘maxo-falacial’. It’s ‘maxillofacial’.”
“Well, you knew what I meant,” she huffed. “My stars, Hailey, you find the oddest things funny. Incidentally, I ran into Mrs. Robertson at the Country Mart on Highway 248 after I saw the…the jaw specialist. You remember her, don’t you dear? She’s the one from our church who retired here in Branson about the same time as your father and I. You know, the one who always wears clothes that are much too young for her. Really, who does she think she’s kidding? Anyway, she told me that her son, Walter, just finished his divinity training and just moved back to Tucson!”
I couldn’t recall Mrs. Robertson, but I remembered Walter. In high school, he had acquired the unfortunate moniker, Sea of Tranquility – C-Tranq for short – a reference to his horrible complexion that made his face look like the lunar surface. One could overlook the acne if that was his only flaw, but Walter was also an insufferable know-it-all who was caught any number of times peeping into the girl’s locker room. His father’s job as the assistant principal was the only reason he wasn’t expelled.
This was better than I could have hoped. She had, within a minute and entirely on her own, ventured into one of those topics that was sure to raise my blood pressure — the lack of a good, God-fearing man in my life. And knowing my mother, he didn’t even have to be the former if he was the latter. In any case, it provided a nice segue into one of my pre-scripted, sure-to-insight-an-argument talking points — my relationship with Alex.
“Actually,” I responded as casually as I could, “I’m not interested in dating anyone...new.”
“Dating? Oh no, dear, you misunderstand. I wasn’t thinking of Walter for dating, although he is single and quite a catch, particularly now that his skin condition has cleared up. I thought he could be your guide to spiritual enlightenment.”
I started to feel my left eye twitch. This conversation definitely seemed to be going sideways fast; she was usually so focused on gettin
g me remarried. “Why would I need enlightenment?” I asked hesitantly.
Lowering her voice — I guess so God couldn’t hear — she continued. “I know that you have strayed from the path of righteousness, but Walter can set you on the proper course. I don’t want you and any potential grandchildren of mine destined for eternal damnation.”
“Uh, Mom, we’ve been over this before. Just because I don’t believe the same things as you doesn’t mean I’m going to hell.”
I looked over at Alex, who looked completely baffled by my responses. And even though I was privy to the entire conversation, I was probably just as confused as he seemed. My mother had some pretty extreme religious views, but eternal damnation for my progeny because of my lack of religious fervor? This was off-the-charts-weird even for her. Where does she get this stuff? I wondered.
“Honey, you know I love you no matter what, and I didn’t say anything when you ruined your marriage and chance for fulfillment. But this moral turpitude must be purged or you and yours will be cast down in perpetual ignominy!”
I was starting to get a little annoyed, but not nearly as much as I would have thought given the tenor of the dialogue. Huh. Maybe everything I had been through lately had made me more mature, better able to handle my mother’s eccentricities. Wow, maybe I’m…a grown-up? Just as I was getting ready to give myself a mental pat on the back, I took a second to think about what she had said.
“Wait a minute. He was cheating on me before and while we were married. What exactly do you mean by ‘ruined my marriage’?”
“Well, let’s be honest, honey. Men don’t stray unless they’re not getting everything they need at home. And I’m not just talking about s-e-x. I know you must feel like a failure…”
I should have known that my new-found maturity was merely a temporary phenomenon. After all, one doesn’t erase years of dysfunctional fucked-upness in one phone call. And I also should have realized that we never needed to think up sure-to-incite-confrontation topics when my mother was so adept at completely pissing me off all on her own. If I was being more rational, I could have appreciated her unparalleled knack to always say the worst possible thing in any given situation. It really was a talent. A perverse one, but a talent nonetheless.
Within seconds, I went from smugly cool and collected to close to boiling over. “Failure?” I seethed through clenched teeth. “Failure?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Alex and Sebastian take a step back to increase the distance between us. I rolled my eyes at their lack of confidence and turned slightly so they could see my face when I silently mouthed “Wimps” in their general direction.
My mother, oblivious to my consternation, continued on. “I know you think you did the best you could, but have you ever considered that you drove him away with your feminist ways? A man wants to feel like a king; to have a compliant, devoted wife. You have had trouble with obedience since you were a child. I knew when you got sent home from Camp Amazing Grace when you were 10 years-old that your rebelliousness would lead to heartache.”
It’s mind-boggling how two people can have such diametrically opposed perceptions of the same events. I was sent home because I wondered why of all the trees in the Garden of Eden, God forbade Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. When I asked my counselor, “Why would God want them to be stupid?” she didn’t have an explanation that made sense to me, so I kept asking for clarification. I wasn’t trying to be defiant, I just wanted an answer I could understand.
“Mom, I’m not a dog that needs training. I didn’t drive anyone away. Just because I live my life differently than you doesn’t mean it’s wrong. And I can’t believe that after all this time, you still haven’t gotten over me getting booted from bible camp.”
I started to get the tell-tale tingling sensation in my fingers that always preceded one of my power surges. I let my mother prattle on without really listening — a skill at which I was already quite adept — then closed my eyes and began to concentrate on a particularly gross parasitic worm called Dracunculus medinensis.
One becomes infected through water contaminated with microscopic flea-like creatures that harbor the Dracunculus larvae. The original hosts don’t survive the acid in our stomachs, but to the larvae, it’s like a day at the beach. They eventually make their way to the intestine, where they mature into lovely worms, and have hot, filamentous orgies. The pregnant females, now teeming with unborn worm larvae and completely bored with the males, travel somewhere more fun, which for them happens to be the legs and feet. After about a year or so, the girls begin to realize that perpetual fecundity and the lower extremities are not nearly as glamorous as they originally thought. So, they rupture the skin and poke their heads out to scope out someplace more exciting. The painful burning this causes can be temporarily quelled by dunking the affected limb in water, which allows them to finally give birth to thousands of bouncing baby worms. Of course, if this occurs in the source of people’s drinking water, the water-fleas ingest the little angels and the cycle repeats. Meanwhile, the gals delight at avoiding child-rearing responsibilities is quashed when they realize they are now caught sticking out of some poor bastard’s foot. Worse yet, the only way out is to be unceremoniously wound around a stick and slowly extracted, a tedious process that can go on for hours or even months, all while still alive and kicking.
My contemplation of the revolting aspects of having worms grow out of one’s flesh seemed to do the trick; the tingling was gone and I was now only moderately miffed. I went back to listening to my mother’s ramblings just as she began to circle the conversation back to Walter and my need for prayerful purity. I interrupted and told her I had a hair appointment. That was a lie, but I figured in her world, I was already going to hell, so a little extra sin probably wouldn’t make much difference. She accepted the fabrication, and before hanging up, got in a final jab by reminding me that when I was at the salon, I really should get my long, curly hair cut short because it was way too unruly and unattractive in its current style.
I ended the call and stared at the now blank screen on my phone. In one short chat, my mom had, for all intents and purposes, called me a headstrong, poorly-coiffed slut. And her comments were completely extemporaneous as I initiated the communication. I could only imagine what might have transpired if she had time to rehearse her insults. And she wonders why I rarely call.
As I pocketed the phone, Alex grabbed me off my feet. “You did it!” he exclaimed while hugging me with the unbridled enthusiasm of a man who knew this meant we could finally get the hell out of the house. He never outwardly expressed his dismay at being holed-up with me and Sebastian for weeks. But every once in a while, he would get a far-away, dreamy look on his face — the same one that human men get when they are stuck helping their significant other pick out shoes at the mall — and I knew he was thinking that there were a gazillion places he would rather be. I, too, was thrilled that we would be able to go out and about, but even more relieved that the two-a-days at the Sebastian de Sade School of Magical Moderation were ending.
“I could feel the magic building,” Alex continued when he finally put me down. “I was a little worried for a few seconds, but you pulled it out like a champ.”
“What grotesque, revolting vision did you conjure this time,” Sebastian queried while giving me a congratulatory pat on the back. “Festering, oozing pustules or maggot-laden roadkill?”
“Nope. Nymphomaniacal, parasitic nematodes.”
He shuddered. “Of all the dreadful and repellent scourges your world has to offer, I must say having a 20-inch worm burrow through one’s stomach or intestines and migrate out through the lower extremities is particularly vile. Your mother must have been unusually prickly today for you to have resorted to that visualization.”
“Actually, it’s the larvae that do the gut munching. You don’t get the giant worms until later,” I added for clarification.
Sebastian paused for a moment and took a deep breath
before grumbling, “Well, be that as it may, however it was accomplished I am pleased that you have subdued your potentially injurious tendencies.”
I glanced at him, and to my surprise, Sebastian actually looked a little green. Wow, I had finally found something that I could use against him. His squeamishness concerning bodily infestation with filamentous creatures was his Achilles heel, which was kind of ironic, considering that’s just about where those pesky Guinea worms would surface.
~3~
Once we made it home, the first thing I did was call Rachel. I had really missed her, and the last couple of times I had spoken to her she sounded kind of down. When I asked about it, she brushed off my concerns and said that she was just tired from all her new responsibilities as the supervisor of the dairy that supplied chinchilla-milk for an artisan cheese company. We had worked there together, and Rachel had been promoted when I quit. I understood completely; chinchilla husbandry was more taxing than it appeared to a layman. Plus, she was trying to implement the first automated chinchilla milking machine, which, if it worked, would revolutionize the small, furry-creature dairy industry.
We decided to celebrate my “recovery” with dinner. The steak house we chose had been in operation for over 50 years, and dished up some of the best mesquite-broiled fare around. The food wasn’t anything fancy — they still served iceberg lettuce-only salads and that thick, white, Wonderbread-like Texas toast — but it was reasonably priced and everything was always delicious.