Cursed

by Marie O'Regan

  “You want to go back home?” he asks. “Back to your grandmother’s? Back to the old sewing lady?” He’s read my file. He knows what I will say.

  “No. Even you are better than that.” Then I don’t say anything else. I just go away for a bit in my mind and leave him my body.

  The forest is dark but I know the way. I have been here before. There is a path soon, pebbly and worn, but my fingers and toes are like needles and pins. If I stay here, stray here too long, will I become one of them forever?

  * * *

  It’s morning now, and I’m back, looking for something sharp. Orderlies have cleaned up the mirror; I think Mr. L found the piece I hid under the mattress. It doesn’t matter – I can always find something. Paper clips stolen from the office, plastic silverware cracked just right, even a ragged fingernail can break the skin if you have the courage.

  Alby faces the wall and traces imaginary coastlines on the white cement. She is dark and elfin, her hair shorn brutally close to her scalp except for one long tress that hangs behind her left ear. “Why do you wind him up like that?”

  “Wind up who?” My voice is rough with disuse. Is it the next morning? Or have days passed? “And how?”

  “Mr. L. The things you say to him…” Shuddering, Alby looks more wet terrier than girl. “If you’d just walk the line, I’m sure he’d leave you alone.”

  Having no memory of speaking to Mr. L at all, I just shrug. “Walk the line. Walk the path. What’s the difference?”

  “Promise?”

  “Okay.”

  “Yeah, play the game, let them think you’re getting better.” Alby straightens up, picturing home, I figure. She’s got one to go back to. Wooden fence. Two-car garage. Mom and Dad and a bowl full of breakfast cereal. No Grandma making lemonade on a cold Sunday evening. No needles. No pins.

  It’s my turn to shudder. “I don’t want to get better. They might send me home.”

  Alby stares at me. She has no answer to that. I turn to the bed. Start picking at the mattress, wondering if there are still springs inside these old things. Alby faces the wall, her finger already winding a new path through the cracks. We all pass the time in our own way.

  * * *

  We get a new therapist the next day. We’re always getting new ones. They stay a few weeks, a few months, and then they’re gone.

  This one wants us to write in journals. She gives us these beautifully bound books – cloth covers with flowers and bunnies and unicorns and things – to put our ugly secrets in.

  “Mine has Rainbow Brite.” Alby is either excited or disgusted, I can’t tell which.

  Joelle says, “They should be snot-colored. They should be brown like…” She means shit. She never uses the word, though.

  “I want you to start thinking beautiful thoughts, Joelle,” the therapist says. She has all our names memorized already. I think: This one will only last two weeks. Long enough for us to ruin the covers. Long enough for Joelle to rub her brown stuff on the pages.

  I put my hand on my own journal. It has these pretty little flowers all over. I will write down my thoughts. But they won’t be beautiful.

  CUTTER

  scissors

  fillet knife

  a broken piece of glass

  I can’t press hard enough

  to do more than scratch the surface

  and blood isn’t red

  until it touches the air

  Okay, so it doesn’t rhyme and I can’t use it as a song, but it’s still true.

  “What did you write, Red?” Alby asks.

  Joelle has already left for the bathroom. I don’t look forward to the smell from her book.

  “Beautiful thoughts.” I cover the poem with my hand. It is beautiful, I decide. Dark and beautiful, like I am when I dream.

  “Little Red.” Mr. L stands in the doorway. “Excuse me, Ms. Augustine. I need to see that one.”

  He points at me. I go away.

  * * *

  Four-footed and thick-furred, I stalk through a shadowy forest. My prey is just ahead of me – I can hear his ragged breathing, smell his terror-sweat. Long pink tongue to one side, I leap forward, speeding now. I burst through a flowering thorn bush and catch sight of him: Mr L., naked and covered in gray hair. I can smell his fear. Then I am on him, and my sharp teeth rip into his flesh. Bones crack and I taste marrow, sweet counterpoint to his salty blood.

  * * *

  I wake in the infirmary, arms and legs purple with fresh bruises.

  “Jesus, Red,” Alby says. “He really worked you over this time, didn’t he?”

  “I guess.” I don’t remember. Seems likely, though. “Looks like you got him one, too.”

  “Oh, yeah?” I can hardly move, though I turn my head toward the sound of her voice.

  Alby grins her pixie smile. “Yeah. Got a big bandage on his neck, he does.”

  I lick my lips. Imagine I can taste blood. “Probably cut himself shaving.”

  Her smile fading, Alby says, “Whatever you say, Red.”

  I try to roll over, turn away from her, but something holds me down: leather straps at my ankles and wrists. One across my waist.

  “Five-point locked leather,” Alby says, with some reverence. “You were really going crazy when they brought you in. Foaming at the mouth, even.”

  I lay my head back down on the small hard pillow. Close my eyes. Maybe I can get back to my dream.

  * * *

  Mr. L visits me in the dark room with the leather straps. He has no bandage on his neck, but there are scratches there. I know why. I have his skin under my fingernails. In my teeth.

  “Little Rojo,” he says, almost lovingly, “you must learn control.”

  I try to laugh but all that comes out is a choking cough. He wanders slowly behind me, his fingers trailing through my red hair, my cap of blood.

  “You must learn to walk the path.” In front of me again, he glances up, at the television camera, the one that always watches. Puts his back to it.

  “And will you be my teacher?” I say before spitting at him.

  He looks down at me. Smiles. “If you let me.” Then he pats my cheek. Before he can touch me again, I go away.

  * * *

  The forest is cold that night and I stand on a forked road. One is the path of needles, one the path of pins. I don’t know which is which. Both are paths of pain.

  I take the left.

  I don’t know how far I travel – what is distance to me? I am a night’s walk from my den, a single leap from my next meal – but I am growing weary when the trap closes on my leg.

  Sharp teeth and iron, it burns as it cuts. A howl escapes my throat and I am thrown out of myself.

  I see Mr. L standing over the strapped body of a girl. I can’t see his hands. But I can feel them.

  He looks up as I howl again, his face caught between pleasure and pain. I tumble through the thick walls and out into the cool night sky, into the dark forest, into my fur body.

  I tear at my ankle with teeth made for the task. Painful seconds later, I leave my forepaw in the trap and limp back down the path.

  * * *

  It is days later. Weeks. Nighttime. Moon shining in my tiny window. They couldn’t keep me tied down forever. The law doesn’t allow it.

  I am crouched in the corner of my room, ruined tube of toothpaste in my hands. I have figured out how to tear it, unwind it, form it into a razor edge. I hold it over my arm, scars glowing white in the moonlight, blue vein pulsing, showing me where to cut.

  But I don’t. Don’t cut.

  Instead I let the pain rise within me. I know one quick slash can end it. Can bring relief. But I don’t move. I let the pain come and I embrace it, feel it wash over me, through me. I let it come – and then, I go away.

  * * *

  I am in the forest, but I am not four-footed. I am not thick-furred. I have no hope of tasting blood or smelling the sweet scent of terrified prey.

  I am me: scrawny and battered,
short tufts of ragged red hair sprouting from my too large head. Green eyes big. A gap between my top front teeth wide enough to escape through.

  I stand in the middle of the road. No forks tonight, it runs straight and true like the surgeon’s knife. Behind me, tall trees loom. I take two tentative steps and realize I am naked. Embarrassed, I glance around. I am alone.

  Before long I see a white clapboard cottage ahead of me. Smoke trails from a red brick chimney. Gray paving stones lead up to the front door. I recognize the house. It is more threatening than the dark forest with its tall trees. Grandma lives here.

  I turn to run, but behind me I hear a howling, long, low, and mournful. I know the sound – wolves. Hunting wolves. I must hurry inside.

  The door swings open silently. The first room is unlit as I step in. I pull the door closed behind me. Call into the darkness, “Grandma?”

  “Is that you, Red?” Her voice is lower than I remember.

  “Yes, Grandma.” My voice shakes. My hands shake.

  “Come into the bedroom. I can’t hear you from here.”

  “I don’t know the way, Grandma.”

  I hear her take a deep breath, thick with smoke, rattling with disease. “Follow my voice. You’ll remember how.”

  And suddenly, I do remember. Three steps forward, nine steps left. Reach out with your right hand. Push the thin door open.

  “I am here, Grandma.”

  Outside, there are disappointed yips as the wolves reach the front door and the end of my trail.

  “Come closer, Red. I can’t see you from here.”

  “Yes, Grandma.” I step into blackness and there she is, lying in the bed. She is bigger than I remember, or maybe I am smaller. The quilt puffs around her strangely, as if she has muscles in new places. A spot of drool dangles from her bottom lip.

  I look down at my empty hands. My nakedness. “I haven’t brought you anything, Grandma.”

  She smiles, showing bright pointed teeth. “You have brought yourself, Red. Come closer, I can’t touch you from here.”

  “Yes, Grandma.” I take one step forward and stop.

  The wolf pack snuffles around the outside of the house, searching for a way in.

  Grandma sits up. Her skin hangs loosely on her, like a housedress a size too large. Tufts of fur poke out of her ears, rim her eyes.

  “No, Grandma. You’ll hurt me.”

  She shakes her head, and her face waggles loosely from side to side. “I never hurt you, Red.” She scrubs at her eye with a hairy knuckle, then scoots forward, crouching on the bed, poised to spring. Her haunches are thick and powerful. “Sometimes the wolf wears my skin. It is he that hurts you.” Her nose is long now.

  “No, Grandma.” I stare into her dark green eyes. “No, Grandma. It’s you.”

  She leaps then, her Grandma skin sloughing off as she flies for my throat. I turn and run, run through the thin door, run nine steps right and three steps back, push open the front door, hear her teeth snap behind me, severing tendons, bringing me down. I collapse onto the paving stones.

  Howling and growling, a hundred wolves stream over and around me. Their padded feet are light on my body. They smell musty and wild. They take down Grandma in an instant, and I can hear her screams and the snapping of her brittle old bones.

  I think I will die next, bleeding out onto the gray stone. But leathery skin grows over my ankle wound, thick gray fur. My nose grows cold and long and I smell Grandma’s blood. Howling my rage and hunger, I leap to my four clawed feet. Soon, I am feasting on fresh meat with my brothers and sisters.

  * * *

  I wake, not surprised to be tied down again. Seven points this time, maybe more, I can’t even move my head.

  “Jesus, Red, you killed him this time.” It is Alby, drifting into view above me.

  “Go away, Alby. You aren’t even real.”

  She nods without speaking and fades away. I go to sleep. I don’t dream.

  * * *

  Next morning they let me sit up. I ask for my journal. They don’t want to give me a pen.

  “You could hurt yourself,” they say. “Cut yourself.”

  They don’t understand. “Then why don’t you write down what I say,” I tell them. They laugh and leave me alone. Once again tied down. But I know what I want to write. It’s all in my head.

  GRANDMOTHER

  What big ears you have,

  What big teeth,

  Big as scissors,

  To cut out my heart

  Pins and needles,

  Needles and pins,

  Where one life ends,

  Another begins.

  NEW WINE

  ANGELA SLATTER

  “If you leave that dish on the table instead of rinsing it and putting it in the dishwasher, I will make you miserable for a week.”

  Valerie’s voice floats back to him from the entry hall of the too-big house. She’s gone to collect the mail; there’s the click of her heels on the parquet floors, coming closer.

  “But it’s my birthday!” Alek, having just risen, bag over his shoulder, is two and a half steps away from the kitchen table (where they eat in preference to the formal dining room).

  “I don’t care,” she sings back.

  He turns around, grabs the cereal bowl, and does what he should have done in the first place. He makes noise while he does it so she’ll hear.

  “Yes, Valerie.” How the hell does she do that? Two years, almost, and he still hasn’t figured it out. Every damned time. Maybe it’s because she observes him at close quarters; Alek wonders sometimes if she pays extra attention to one child because she once failed to do so to another.

  Alek likes his tutor, he really does. Although that’s a weirdly small word for what she does: keeping him on top of his studies, managing the occasional day staff at the house (cleaners, gardener, repairmen), feeding them both, generally ensuring he stays out of trouble. And that was how his father, Reid, pitched the job to her: Tutor my boy. But the surrogate mom stuff? That kind of took them both by surprise, Alek thinks, but maybe they’re good for each other. Everyone in Mercy’s Brook knows what happened with Valerie’s daughter, but that’s the reason Valerie came into Alek’s life and some days he finds it hard to feel bad about it.

  Valerie in her sunflower summer dress appears in the kitchen doorway as Alek is closing the dishwasher; he waves his hands ta-dah!

  “Lordy, don’t you deserve a parade?” She smiles to take out the sting, and it’s the brightest thing. Alek remembers his father Reid saying that most of the guys in their high school class had a crush on her, Reid included – almost all unrequited. From what Alek’s seen of the stares from middle-aged men when he helps her do the groceries that hasn’t changed much, and a lot of his own college friends aren’t immune to her either, no matter that she’s old enough to be their mom.

  “Late lecture tonight?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  He likes that she thinks he’s smart. Knows he’s smart. He even likes that she understands how lazy he can be. Plus Valerie’s got that sixth sense for when he’s slacking off. She just crosses her arms and stares at him with those hazel eyes until he pulls his head out of his ass and does the work. She’s smart too, so smart it kind of scares him a little. Okay, a lot, but he likes having her around. Her sense of humor is so dry sometimes it almost chokes him. She knows him and seems to like him anyway. Sometimes he thinks he’s lazy for attention or it’s just to make sure his dad keeps her around longer. Truth is, Alek more or less stays on the straight and narrow when she’s there because he doesn’t want to disappoint her, not totally, and Alek’s dad – who travels a lot, birthdays and Christmases missed more often than not – is fine with that. Ultimately the costs of a live-in tutor are nothing compared to boot camp, rehab, and lawyers’ fees.

  As he passes by he kisses her on the cheek, which he sometimes does, and gruffly says, “Bye.”

  The walls of the hallway leading to the front door are hung with a variety
of antique mirrors. Alek’s spent much of his life hating the things because looking in them was the most alone he ever felt. There were days he wasn’t sure he was even there. In the past there had been days when he thought he could see through himself, through the reflection. But since Valerie’d come to stay, he’s felt solid. He can live with the mirrors. Alek doesn’t want to go back to looking through himself again. Valerie sees him; she gives him weight.

  “Chocolate cake?” she calls after him.

  “Extra frosting?” He grins but doesn’t turn around. It’s his birthday, but with his father away – Reid’s always away with his IT business – and a big party planned for the weekend, it’ll be just them tonight.

  “Of course.”

  * * *

  Valerie supposes that having had a daughter, once, makes it easier to care about the boy, which sometimes strikes her as strange because when Lily disappeared Valerie stopped caring about anyone for a long time. Especially when she realized all those well-meaning, fuck-all-doing cops who patted her shoulder and told her they’d do their best, just went back to eat their way through a truck-load of donuts – Sheriff Tully going through more than all the others. Her ex-husband was just as useless, losing himself in booze rather than baked goods.

  Briefly she flips through the bundle of mail. There’s a bunch of bills. A rectangle of pink addressed to Alek, and redolent of perfume that no doubt has some starlet’s name attached to it and turns into a cat’s piss stench after five minutes on the skin. The plain white envelope is the only one addressed to her, and in a very distinctive hand that makes her sigh. She feels the weight of the house: two floors above this one, all those empty bedrooms, unused bathrooms, a dust-filled attic; ground floor is the kitchen, library, dining rooms, three studies, and Reid’s seldom-used home office; and below, in the basement, an extensive garage big enough for six vehicles, and a high-tech wine cellar, its old wine in old bottles protected by a keypad and code. Valerie’s got no interest in booze.

  Valerie drops the mail on the pine tabletop and sets about making a fresh pot of coffee. She eyes all the ingredients for the birthday cake, laid out beside the knife block – nothing more she needs to get – then opens the dishwasher that Alek failed to properly close. After restacking the contents, she shuts the door once more with the worn patience of a crucified saint, and returns to the task of coffee.