by Scott Savino
I’m going to wait for him on the stairs by the front door, shotgun in my lap. I’ll keep my hold steady, my finger off the trigger until I’m ready to fire, just like he taught me.
You probably think I’m going to kill him.
I can’t say I won’t. It’ll depend on him, I guess, but I like to think the gun here is an incentive.
Incentive to fetch the basement key.
Incentive to unlock that long-forbidden door and march down into darkness filled with things so much worse than spiders and rats.
Incentive to lock himself in the manacles and chains bolted to the walls and ceiling.
Incentive to keep nice and quiet while I review his chest of toys, all cold and silver and sharp.
I won’t call the police, yet. Once the police get him he’ll be gone for good and I’ll be left with that little girl inside me, that little girl who always wants to know why. So I’ll allow him this one, single chance to tell me why.
Then I’ll decide what to do with him.
You see, I’m a fair person.
I am my father’s daughter, after all.
Aggressive Mimicry
HAILEY PIPER
MIGUEL TOLD HIMSELF IT WASN’T love anymore. Love was a dream he had buried months ago when he saw Omar and Jessica behind the mall, Omar’s hand up her shirt. There had been a rough patch, then, but they stayed friends. Miguel could live with being friends. He had lived with worse.
But then sometimes Omar would touch him.
Not that he blushed every time. There was friendly jostling, shoving, slapping on the back, and Miguel would’ve gone crazy if every little thing set him off. But there were other times. That bus ride from Detroit that Miguel had to tease him about later for appearances, when Omar fell asleep and his head shifted to Miguel’s shoulder. That day Omar leaned over Miguel’s lap to grab a twenty he spotted wedged under a bench. Or that one afternoon—
There were dozens of memories. Small, nothing anyone else would bother holding onto, but Miguel replayed them a hundred times. He had buried the dream of love, but at those times he might visit the grave and pray.
This time, Omar put his arm around Miguel’s neck, nothing serious, but then pulled him close to tell a secret. The stupid underbelly of Miguel’s thoughts couldn’t help wondering if it meant something deeper.
It never would. A hundred yards away, Jessica’s friends were fawning over the sight of Omar—his curly black locks, his two-day stubble; an action movie star in the flesh. They didn’t care he had no money, no job, no prospects now that high school was past. He would sneak one of them into the movies tonight, something new like Back to the Future or Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, and spend half the runtime locking tongues.
Not Miguel. There were days he felt so touch-starved that he could understand why people like him broke down, married a girl, let their parents sigh in relief, and embraced the misery of peace. No one suspected, far as he knew. He was always out with Omar, and Omar was straight as they come; all the girls orbited him. Surely Miguel would pick up his scraps. So people let him be. He and Omar remained friends.
“I couldn’t hear you,” Miguel said when the whispering ended.
“You want me to stick my tongue in your ear?” Omar pulled Miguel closer and made to bite at his earlobe.
“No, I want you to shout it, loud as you can, you butt.”
Omar pressed his forehead into Miguel’s hair and whispered again. “Roman’s brother told him there’s a woman who’s been swimming in the pond every night this past week. We’re going to see her.”
“Think she’s the weeping ghost?”
Omar recoiled with a scowl. “Don’t be a numbskull. You’re here thinking about little kid ghost stories while she’s out there swimming naked in the moonlight.”
“How’d she get up there?” Miguel raised an arm against Omar’s slap and laughed. “See? I am a numbskull.” And he was going. Not that he cared about a naked woman, but Omar was going so of course Miguel was going.
Even with Roman going, which meant David was going, and David was a punk.
They gathered at dusk on the sandy side of the pond. The shore was desolate, only crushed soda cans and paper cups to tell people sometimes visited. Rainfall had been worse than usual the past week, so what was most often an overblown puddle was now spread as wide as a lake, if nowhere as deep, and had attracted uncommon fauna to the shore. Various birds and water bugs danced around each other, each trying to catch its next meal. Miguel paused to watch a small brown bird hidden among the rocks lure bugs to its tongue by pretending it was a worm, then slurp them into its beak when they fell for it.
The young men piled the few dry sticks they could find and built a fire on the sand to ward off birds and bugs alike.
“Can we still see her with the firelight?” David asked. He was skinny and the youngest of six siblings. Gaunt shadows danced beneath his face. “Maybe she won’t come.”
“Israel said they had their headlights on just to mess with her and she didn’t care,” Roman said. He was all smiles. “But they were on the road, so maybe she didn’t think anything of it.”
Omar kicked at the fire. Embers flew toward the darkening sky. “But she’s hot, right?”
“Hot as fire. Gorgeous face, body to kill for, and in the moonlight you could see it all.”
Omar whistled, clearly impressed.
Miguel imagined they had seen naked women in magazines before and couldn’t guess what made the prospect of this one so tantalizing. Maybe because she was a mystery. More likely because what she was doing was none of their business.
“What will you say to her, Romeo,” he asked.
Roman opened his mouth, but Omar raised his hand to stop him. “He didn’t ask Roman, he asked Romeo. What will I say? I’ll say, ‘Miss, can you do us a favor? Our friend Miguel’s more a virgin than Mary herself, so if you’d help him with that we’d appreciate it. He doesn’t want to give birth this Christmas.’”
Roman laughed because he thought it was funny. Miguel laughed because he was supposed to, and wondered if there might come a day when men could have children with other men. It seemed too much to hope. Maybe in the movies.
David didn’t laugh. He stood up. “Don’t blaspheme.”
Omar got in his face. “Did you hear me blaspheme? I didn’t take the Lord’s name in vain or nothing.” He grinned. “For Christ’s sake.”
That set him off and David tackled Omar. They scuffled in the sand as Roman kept laughing. Miguel only watched. Omar could win easy, but he would let David pin him for the sake of peace. If there was a woman who swam here, she would pluck Omar out of the group for sure and Miguel wouldn’t blame her. He would replay his memories.
Roman clapped his shoulder. “You’re looking pretty intense, friend. You want to join in, back up your girlfriend?”
Omar was already down by then, half his face in the sand. He gave in, and David relented. They stood, grinned, and dusted themselves off.
“Sun’s about set, moon’s bright.” Omar’s finger traced the sky from the sand to the crescent moon as if making a measurement. “Think I’ll take a leak before the main event.”
Roman said he’d go, too, so together they climbed up the sand toward the road.
Miguel stared at the moon’s expressionless mouth. The dream was not dead. He remembered the night when he wrote a love letter about Omar’s hand reaching up Jessica’s shirt and how it might as well have been Miguel’s chest he groped, but not for lust; it was to rip his heart out. Later he burned the letter and buried the ashes behind his house. No one could have a chance to read it.
Buried, but not dead.
Watching Omar fight in the firelight, listening to him joke, Miguel still wanted Omar’s love. He wanted to feel Omar’s desire the way Jessica did. The way tonight’s woman might if she was even real.
David’s gruff voice pulled Miguel from the moon. “Didn’t go with them?”
“Didn’t have to go.”
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“I know. But you’re passing up a chance to see Omar with his jeans open. Roman didn’t pass it up.”
Miguel froze.
Did he—? No. David didn’t know his feelings. He couldn’t have.
“You passed it up, too. What the hell’s wrong with us?” Miguel laughed.
David glared across the fire. “One of these days, somebody with a camera’s going to see you seeing him, and then he’ll see you seeing him. Then it’s over for you.”
“If you say so,” Miguel muttered, but realized a moment too late that nothing he said could convince David to leave it alone. He’d only minutes ago scuffled with Omar but was ready to throw down again. That was all he wanted. If Miguel had been riled enough he would’ve stood and gotten in David’s face. To say it with words alone wouldn’t do.
But Omar and Roman came to the rescue.
“Wake up, lads,” Omar said. “There she is.”
They jogged down the sandy slope and helped David and Miguel kick the fire out. The smoking wood remained aglow, but under the brilliance of the moon, that was nothing.
And it really was brilliant, Miguel thought. He’d never seen a crescent moon light the surface of the water as bright as a full moon this way.
It lit the woman in the water. No one had seen her enter, but there she swam in the pond, her arms cresting the surface with each stroke. From this far, Miguel couldn’t see her all that well. He wasn’t sure how Roman’s brother had determined her beauty.
Omar jabbed an elbow into Miguel’s side. “Not scared, right? Doesn’t look like a ghost.”
Miguel imagined not, but under the harsh moonlight, she might’ve been anything.
“I know what to say.” Omar winked, then cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, sweetheart! Not bad swimming out there! You want, I can teach you the breaststroke!”
David and Roman laughed.
She stopped swimming. Her arms settled into a float, and then she stood. Miguel couldn’t remember the depth of the pond, the drought crater had always lain uneven, but he didn’t think anyone could stand that tall at its center.
But the thought flaked apart, a clump of wet sand tossed into the water. The still-brightening moon said there was only beauty here, beauty everlasting. Even at this distance her luminescence was inescapable. If the moonlight was milk across the shape of her then it had come from some heavenly cow milked by God himself. Every inch promised to boil the blood, every magnificent finger ensured a lightning bolt of splendor.
Miguel only saw her with his eyes, but the others stood transfixed, their blood a deluge of raging hormones and desires in every place that made them weak. A pulse rocketed through the air, high-pitched like an alarm. Each beat tugged the young men toward the water.
David was first to break. He didn’t speak, only panted as he tore his shoes off and darted through sand and water. Blood seeped from his ears. His jeans fell away, and he was still fighting with his shirt as his middle sank below the surface. Roman had a little more trouble tearing off his shoes, but then he took off on David’s heels.
Omar was right behind him.
Somehow, as he splashed knee-deep into the pond, the spell of the moonlit woman waned enough for him to pause and glance back to shore. “Miguel?”
Miguel hadn’t moved an inch. He was the only one still fully-clothed. “I don’t think I can.” He looked from Omar to the moonlit lady, the seductress of the pond. Her arms hung at her sides, her expressionless face carved from exquisite marble. “I can’t.”
“You can.” Omar beamed. “You can do this. We can all do this. She’s right there and she wants us. Don’t you feel it?”
“I feel—” Miguel looked back to Omar. He couldn’t fault the three of them—their blood pounding, the light pulling, the air ringing, everything inside telling them to go for it—when everything inside him said the same. “I feel love.”
Omar nodded. “I think I love her, too.”
“For you. I … love you.” Miguel’s throat narrowed. “I only wanted you.”
Omar went on beaming through his rugged stubble, his eager eyes reflecting the radiant moon. “Christ, Miguel, I know that.”
Miguel’s heart hammered his rib cage. “Since when?”
“Since you saw me with Jessica. I’ve had my heart broken before. I knew the look on your face.”
If Omar knew the look and the feeling, he had to know that pitiful, microscopic spark of hope that lived in every aching heart, the one that thought just maybe the person of affection would love him back against all odds. The dream, raised from its grave by a crescent moon.
“And?” Miguel asked.
“And? What do you think we came out here for? I’m trying to help you.”
“I don’t want her help. I want you.”
Omar’s body shuddered like a heartbeat, every blood vessel aching to go. He tore his gaze from Miguel and charged deeper into the water. It was a miracle he’d resisted this long. The air’s pulse hit a heart attack panic so insistent that blood ran from Omar’s eyes.
“Don’t,” Miguel whispered as his knees trembled.
David and Roman had almost reached the moonlit woman, but Omar was catching up. The only time Miguel saw him nude and it was while he ran to someone else. Miguel took off his shoes. They had come out here together, hadn’t they? As it had always been; Omar was going, so Miguel was going, too. He didn’t know what any of them would do when they got there, but he was going.
He made it ankle-deep into the water before he looked again to the moonlit woman. She raised her arms wide to each side, welcoming her suitors to visit her, to come drink the milky light that ran down her breasts. “Drink deep, drink it all in,” her body seemed to say.
Miguel managed to stop as the boiling heat of his blood eased across his body. Now that he was closer, the effect she had on the others ran sideways on him, sliding away from her. Now he saw her as being less coated in luxurious moonlight and more shrouded within it; a mask gifted to her by the crescent arc in the sky. And just like that Miguel knew the beauty that drove Omar’s lust was an illusion.
Miguel slipped back a step in shock. “Omar, wait!”
Omar had nearly reached her. He and the others were only bobbing heads and arms, but the water climbed no higher than her thighs, where between them her nethers still shone white, even as the illusion faded.
“Come back! It’s not real!”
Omar beckoned Miguel with an enthusiastic wave. Then he and Roman and David somehow arrived at the woman’s waist together, their heads beneath her hips. She sank upon them, arms closing in, the curtain of hungry moonlight across her face impenetrable to Omar, but to Miguel it was only a lunar veil. Through that veil, even at this distance, he made out luminous teeth.
“It’s not real!” Miguel shouted again. He stumbled and fell into the gentle, lapping waves thrown his way by the charging young men. “I’m real. I’m here and I’m real!”
The light burned brighter, blinding Miguel, its ringing pulse deafening, about to snap, and then the crescent moon dimmed. Every wave stilled. The pond grew too dark to make out its center. If the woman and her suitors were still out there Miguel couldn’t see them and he didn’t hear a thing.
His thoughts became abstract, less sentences and more impulses. He dove into the blackened waters and shouted for Omar, choking out gulping mouthfuls of the pond at each stroke, but there was no answer. No moonlit woman came for him.