by P. K. Tyler
I’m here alone now because I was supposed to meet Wanda Davis, my new friend from AA. She finds this venerable Southern institution fascinating, in part because she’s a journalist, in part because she’s black. I told her the club is integrated now. She said, “One brown face out of forty or fifty doesn’t qualify.”
I said, “Let’s make it two, then.”
I felt elated when I arrived. Lunch at the club with a girlfriend meant maybe my life was finally settling into … something. A new normal. Then Wanda texted that she couldn’t make it because the governor had called a press conference. I thought about leaving, but it seemed foolish. I was hungry and sick of living in fear of running into them.
Naturally, not a minute after I ordered, Angela Crandall, Liz Steadman, and Riko Thompson swooped in and settled at the table right next to me. Despite differences in coloration—Angela is brunette, Liz blonde and Riko third generation Japanese—they look like sisters. All of them about 5’6”, bodies sculpted by the same trainer and dressed by the same stylist in size-four clothes. Just like I used to be. Four spokes on the same wheel, Bill always said. The hub of the club.
Within minutes, the three women begin recollecting an embarrassing episode from my drinking days in stage whispers intended to carry to my table and beyond.
They pretend my expulsion from the inner circle stems from my behavior under the influence, but this is a shameless re-write of history. The truth is, they didn’t start snubbing me until after I quit drinking.
Although it hurt, I also felt secretly relieved. Funny thing is, I never admitted that to anyone, even Bill; finding the high priestesses of society a dead bore was more embarrassing than being rejected by them.
I unbutton my suit coat and allow myself the luxury of deep, unobstructed breaths. I’ve gained a few pounds since I quit drinking, but who’s counting? The extra oxygen coursing through my veins relaxes me a bit, in spite of the company.
The lobster salad arrives, and as I eat, I let my eyes wander to the next table and linger. Riko’s previously perfect nose looks oddly beakish today, like a plague mask; her lipstick skews slightly left of her mouth. As she speaks, I imagine the red outline moves independently of her lips.
I stop chewing and peer closer. Yes. Her double mouth flaps like a butterfly caught in a fly strip. I feel a familiar longing well up: the urge to wail or sing. If only that butterfly could be set free to soar over the linen-draped tables and out the French doors to the world beyond the manicured gardens, it might meet its soul mate in the form of a red wild flower growing in an abandoned lot, or a strip of grass between two roads…
“Really!”
I’m brought out of my reverie by Riko’s shocked exclamation. Years of training cause me to blush and look down in pseudo-embarrassment. After a moment, I realize I no longer care if they think I’m rude, so I look over again. Riko and Liz appear riveted by Angela’s account of someone’s financial ruin, or was it a sexual escapade? I’m having a hard time focusing on the words, because I’m inexplicably fascinated by Angela’s hair: thick, chestnut-brown and piled in glossy, elaborate loops. The architectural curves and shadows beckon like a lost city. Who knows what foreign customs and exotic creatures might be found within?
It’s odd how you can know people for decades but never really look at them. I wonder how many other things I’ve failed to notice out of politeness. And that’s when I see something blue flitting in and out of the curving pathways and canopies atop Angela’s head.
Sprites.
One of them catches me staring and casts a malevolent glare before darting into a dark recess between curls.
I blink a few times and take a bite of my salad. As I chew, I stare out the window at lovely, tanned young men leaping around sun-soaked tennis courts. I imagine hunting them like fawns, a pack of dogs at my side, and regret not ordering something heartier than salad. I signal the waiter and ask him to bring me a roast beef sandwich.
As intended, all of this has distracted me from the bizarre fancy that blue sprites live in Angela’s hairdo, so it comes as a genuine surprise when next I glance over to see four of them fornicating vigorously in a daisy chain atop her head. Angela, oblivious, offers her opinion on the fashion choices of a group of younger women lunching across the room.
Am I hallucinating? I haven’t been drinking, but I do have reason to question my mental health. I’ve been crying a lot lately. Brutal, gut-searing sobs that sometimes merge into tortured, wordless singing. I muffle all of this by taking long showers or playing arias at top volume. A good soprano can cover any amount of violent wailing.
The reasons for my extravagant grief remain obscure, though I’ve compiled a list of possibilities: belated regret over not having children, the hormonal shifts of menopause, the loss of the same friends now performing the elaborate Snubbing Ritual at the next table, or simply the accumulation of thousands of experiences and emotions stored but not processed.
The decade of my forties, in particular, I’ve found reduced to an impressionistic smear of pastel images, marred by foreboding gray blotches: sexual indiscretions, jealousies, and hangovers like avenging angels stinking of the void. But none of that matters now. I’m sober as a nun and there are sprites fucking on Angela Crandall’s head. I feel liberated in a way that years of drinking never achieved, as if I’m rising up off the chair a bit. As if there are two of me.
I giggle, cover it with a cough out of habit, then catch myself as I remember, again, that I’m done with being polite. My giggle/cough ends up as a very impolite and guttural gurgle, which sets me giggling again.
“This is just beyond!” Angela glares at me.
“Do you think she’s drinking again?” Riko says.
“And where’s Bill?” Liz trills.
I stare, fascinated. What I had taken for a mink stole around Liz’s shoulders is more like a weasel, mangy fur rank with pustules. It opens its eyes and bares double rows of sharp yellow teeth. I point at it, wide-eyed, expecting Liz to scream in horror when she sees the thing wrapped around her, but her resentful glance only flicks down to her shoulder and then back up at me.
“Grow up, Madeline.”
Insecurity flickers in her eyes, and I shake my head. “I’m not mocking you, Liz.”
The beautiful mask of her powdered face goes rigid. “As if you could.”
The weasel-thing hisses and grows larger, and a sharp, multi-tentacled tongue darts toward my face. Reflexively, I raise my hand and bellow, “Basta, pastanaca!”
The three women stare at me as if I’ve just pissed on their shoes. I’m not even sure what I just said, but the thing around Liz’s neck retracts its tongue and shrinks back from elephant-sized to slightly larger than a mangy squirrel.
Objectively, I know I should worry that I’m hallucinating, but in truth I’m more concerned that I’m not. Riko’s beaklike nose and double mouth make her appear to be wearing a living mask. The creature around Liz’s neck stinks like rotting flesh, and the sprites in Angela’s hair are multiplying. The ones that aren’t fucking fight viciously, or take tiny bites out of the skin of her neck and chest, leaving tiny red bumps like ….
“Oh my God!” I say out loud. “Your eczema!”
I turn to Riko, “Your sinus infections,” and to Liz, “Your twisted spine!”
Other club members snicker or look away in embarrassment. Some get up to leave, fearing to get caught up in what they probably assume is a battle of the social titans.
“For God’s sake, Madeline!” Angela hisses, and clamps both hands over the inflamed skin of her décolletage. “You’re just determined to humiliate us, aren’t you? I suppose you think we deserve it.”
“Maybe,” I say slowly, “but that isn’t my intention.” As I gaze at the three women, any lingering resentment pales. How much of Angela’s destructiveness and promiscuity are spurred on by the sprites? How much of Liz’s anger comes from the … pastanaca? How much of Riko’s gleeful malice comes from that bird-faced thing? Tengu
. The name rises unbidden in my mind. And what about me? What’s floating over my head that I can’t see?
I feel like locking myself in the bathroom, wailing and screaming again.
“I think you should leave now,” Angela says, and takes another sip of her cosmopolitan. Her façade is ice cold, but I know better. I’m off script, and she’s as scared as I’ve ever seen her.
I nod. I’d like nothing better than to walk out of this stifling room and into the world of unweeded gardens, and people whose wardrobes aren’t curated by stylists, and restaurants where nobody knows a thing about me. And I will. But these women were my friends once. Whatever they are, I am, too—or was.
And now? Banshee. The last name rises into my mind as I begin to wail my aria of pain and grief. I send patrons and staff running as every glass and window in the room shatters. I sing the death of Riko’s pastanaca and Liz’s tengu. Angela’s sprites disintegrate last. The strangest thing—not one of the three women get up and leave. They sit, staring blankly, until my wailing subsides.
Ritual finished, I rise, tear off my stifling suit coat and fling it away. Liz and Angela blink at each other as if waking from a dream. Riko gazes up at me. “M…Madeline? What did you do?”
I smile and turn to leave. Floating, unburdened, I hardly feel the pebbles of glass, glittering like dew on the rose-patterned rug beneath my feet.
About the Author
Melanie Lamaga is the author of short story collection The Evolution of Reptilian Handbags and Other Stories. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Bartleby, The Pearl, The Tusculum Review, Zahir, and Fiction International. She edits and publishes supernatural, weird and slipstream fiction by diverse authors at See the Elephant Magazine, and Metaphysical Circus Press (www.metaphysicalcircus.com). Lamaga divides her time between Idyllwild, California and Baja California, Mexico, where she and her husband also own and manage an outdoor adventure business on a remote island in the Pacific.
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