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Heresy of Dragons

Page 2

by Erik Reid


  I glanced up at the sky again. I guessed that the massive billowing cloud overhead was technically a single entity, but it encroached on the sky like a blanket being pulled slowly over my eyes. The wind it carried was getting rampant, and Jasmine kept pulling her hair back and fighting to keep it out of her face long enough to finish finessing her photographs.

  The park creaked and grumbled around us, which was oddly comforting. Total silence can really get into your head when you go breaking into abandoned places. Silence is heavy and foreboding. I like a little sound with my trespassing.

  A sharp twang of metal drew my attention to the sign above Jasmine’s head. One of the rusting hinges snapped and the wooden wiener sign spun in circles on the one metal hook that still supported it. The hinge itself had a metal loop that was bent out of shape, threatening to release its hold on that sign and let it crash onto Jasmine’s head.

  “Jasmine!” I yelled.

  She held up her pointer finger in a “just a minute” gesture and kept working on her phone.

  The metal groaned and pulled away from its joint, tipping the hinge toward the ground and sending a crumble of building material down like snow.

  Fuck. I’m not getting any play tonight if my date gets decapitated by a giant hot dog.

  CHAPTER 2

  I darted forward and spread my arms out, opening my hands and preparing to grasp Jasmine by whatever body part I could. In my panicked hurry to save her from impending doom, I dropped my phone and let it crack against the hard ground as I propelled myself toward a girl who cared about her selfies more than she cared about her actual self.

  A twang of metal overhead announced the hinge’s breaking point. I raced against gravity now, but at least I had a head start. I had seen the inevitable and launched myself toward it a few seconds ahead.

  It still wasn’t enough.

  My hands clapped onto Jasmine’s shoulders and I forced her back a few feet as I rushed forward. I maneuvered her just past the sign’s downward path, but that was a minor victory. The sign slammed onto my arm and snagged my sweatshirt sleeve, tearing a gash across the fabric and scraping a long scratch down the outside of my arm that immediately started bleeding. It also stung like a motherfucker.

  Having braced the hot dog sign’s fall, it toppled onto the ground and rested flat against the pavement, perfectly intact. Up close, the lettering was clear: “Wee Willy Weiner.”

  I grit my teeth and breathed hard, each exhale carrying a deep guttural growl of pain from my throat. I closed my eyes and waited for the pain to subside, but it only worsened the harder I fixated on it.

  I still held onto Jasmine, too focused on my bleeding tricep to give much thought to what the rest of me was doing.

  “You’re hurting me,” she said.

  I released my fingers and she rubbed her arms with her hands. If someone doesn’t thank me for this in the next five seconds—

  “You’re bleeding!” she yelled.

  “Yes,” I said. “And you’re not. You’re welcome.”

  “I had no idea what was happening,” she said. “What can I do?”

  Go back in time and swipe left instead of right, I thought.

  “I just need a minute,” I said. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, breathing in the cool air carried on a stiffening wind. The night wasn’t over. I might yet get a reward for my heroism.

  As I stood there, working to convince my lizard brain that bleeding and pain were secondary to getting laid, Jasmine tapped me on the shoulder.

  “Here,” she said, holding my phone toward me. A small crack had formed diagonally across its glass face. “You dropped this.”

  “You didn’t read anything on there, did you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “Why, should I be worried? Were you texting with your girlfriend?”

  My jaw was still clenched and my breathing heavy as I glared at her.

  “I’m kidding,” she said. “Oh my god, you don’t have a girlfriend, do you?”

  “No,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t answer faster, I’m just a little dazed and bleeding right now. What about you? Have a girlfriend?”

  “Very funny,” she said.

  “I like to think so. Let’s see if there’s a fun house around here. I need a mirror to see how bad this is.”

  “Maybe—” Jasmine said, holding up her phone with the camera app still open.

  “No more photographs. You’ve taken enough for one night.”

  We walked deeper into the abandoned amusement park, past the food pavilion and toward a row of short wooden shacks that looked like games of skill and chance, or maybe souvenir stands. None offered fun house mirrors — the fun houses were always with the younger, less rollercoastery rides anyway — but there was a fortuneteller’s booth.

  A rotting piece of plywood covered over the door, with a metal lock holding it shut that was so rusted it was a brittle, peeling mass of bright orange flakes. I pulled the crumbling wood away without touching the lock. I didn’t need tetanus tonight.

  Jasmine seemed to sense that I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat, following behind me wordlessly as I stalked my way into the small, dark booth. I set my phone on a table in the room’s center, using the flashlight setting to turn it into a small lamp. There were no mirrors anywhere, just bowed planks of wood forming the surrounding walls and a thick purple curtain that hung across a small doorway to another space at the building’s rear.

  A crystal ball sat in a moth-eaten mound of fabric at the table’s center. The orb itself was a dull sphere of poor-quality glass, not the pure and polished quartz a “real” medium would use. This setup was a step below carnival quality, but that didn’t matter.

  I pulled out a chair from that table and brushed it off, inviting Jasmine to sit. When she did, I pulled another chair up beside her. I wasn’t interested in glass orbs; I was interested in skin.

  “Did I mention I can read palms?” I asked, sliding over on my seat so that my thigh pressed up against hers and offered her bare leg a small portion of my body heat.

  “No,” she said, holding a hand out. “I guess you’ll want to read mine then.”

  “I mean, only if you want to know your fortune. Not everyone can handle it.” She smiled to one side, playfully incredulous. “Okay, Jasmine, stop begging. I’ll do it, but you’ll have to tell me to stop if I go too far.”

  I locked my eyes on her hand and rubbed my thumbs into her palm. “Your heart line is very strong. I see a long life for you but… only thanks to a brave and strong young man named… K… K…”

  “Kyle?” she asked.

  “Shh,” I replied, glancing up at her dark eyes before staring back down at her palm. “I need to concentrate. I’ll get it.”

  “It’s Kyle,” she said. She rolled her eyes and smiled, playing along nicely.

  “Oh, you’re right,” I said. “And that’s me. What are the odds? A simple guy like me crossing fate lines with a spectacular girl like you?”

  “How flattering,” she said. “I sort of thought you didn’t really like me. Is that silly?”

  “Of course not,” I said.

  She scrunched up her face for a second, straining to make sense of my response, but I leaned forward and kissed her. I wasn’t going to lie to her; I didn’t like her. She was rude and fake and I would much rather be watching movies with Selena. But I was here, and I had needs.

  Jasmine’s lips were full and firm as mine pressed against them. My hand found the back of her head as my tongue parted her lips. My other hand touched her bare leg. She tensed for a second, but then relaxed as my hand inched slowly up her thigh.

  Her skin was covered in goosebumps and I knew my warmth was a sensation she craved. I’d dole it out slowly to keep her waiting.

  Outside, the wind rocked the abandoned amusements more loudly. In twenty years, this little scrap of land had endured enough storms that one more wouldn’t be the end of the world, but there was still some danger to this. If today was the day
a ride toppled over, it could splinter this little gypsy shack and flatten us both out.

  At least we’d die naked by then. There was dignity in that.

  “Come here,” I said, patting my thigh with one hand.

  Jasmine eyed my bleeding arm carefully before climbing onto my lap. She straddled me, spreading her legs apart and pulling the fabric of her short skirt taut. She leaned down to kiss me again and I ran my hands under her shirt, smoothing my palms along her flat stomach until I reached her breasts. She moaned when my thumbs traced her areolas. The longer I worked at them, the more intense her breathing became.

  “Your tits are so fucking nice,” I said, breaking our kiss. “Let me see ‘em.”

  She arched her back and pulled her shirt over her head, shaking her hair free as she did. My eyes were transfixed on her chest, her large round breasts begging for my attention. With a hand under each one, I lifted them and bent forward, kissing each nipple slowly.

  Jasmine’s hips started to roll, but there was nothing for them to grind against. One knee rested on each side of me, but the angle our wooden chair allowed was all wrong.

  I reached under her skirt with one hand. “No panties,” I said. “You’ve been ready for this.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” she asked.

  “Nothing wrong. Everything right.” I slipped a finger inside her to test her slickness.

  “Mmm, yes,” she said. Her hands reached for my waist, fumbling with the buttons on the fly of my jeans.

  I throbbed inside my pants, eager to shed this tight denim shell and bury my shaft in something even tighter. Then I jolted forward at the sound of an alarm, something like a loud car horn from impossibly close by.

  “Time’s up,” Jasmine said. She pushed my hand away from her skirt and climbed off me, then reached for her phone. With the press of a button the alarm ended.

  “Are you kidding me?” I asked.

  “I told you, fifteen minutes. We can pick up where we left off later, after a nice dinner in a warm restaurant.”

  “Why limit ourselves?” I asked. “We should finish this now as an appetizer, then you’ve earned your dinner.”

  “Earned?” she asked. “I came into this creepy AF scrapheap of a theme park with a man I’ve never met before and almost died underneath a hot dog sign. I’m done. I earned dinner and dessert.

  “This,” she continued, gesturing up and down her body with both hands, “is worth it.”

  The wind outside was howling now, and a soft patter of rain started against the roof over our heads.

  “And I need your hoodie,” she added. “I’m too cold to get wet.”

  She reached for her shirt on the floor and froze as something crashed behind the thick purple curtain that hid the doorway to the back room of this cheap amusement hut.

  “Hello?” I asked. “Little Mikey? Go toward the light, young man.”

  “Oh, hell no,” Jasmine said. “I’ve seen horror movies. I am not sticking around for this shit.”

  “Then don’t,” I said. “This date is over. Thank you, next.”

  “Don’t you thank-you-next me!”

  “Who’s there?” a voice called from behind the curtain. The words were quick, their gender undecipherable. It wasn’t the timid squeak of a young boy’s ghost though. This voice was deeper, more mature.

  Jasmine pulled her shirt on the rest of the way and ran to the exit in a huff, looking both ways in the darkening evening to peer through the rain. Then she ran off in short steps, the clacking of her heels quickly lost amidst the oncoming storm.

  I stood up, grabbed my lit-up phone, and approached the curtain ahead. It sounded like one person back there, shuffling things around. I brushed the fabric aside and pointed my flashlight forward.

  A short old woman hunched over a large box. She looked up at me and shielded her eyes, her bowl cut of nearly-white hair swishing from her quick movement.

  “Point that thing elsewhere,” she said.

  I lowered the flashlight. “Better?”

  “I meant that thing.” She snort-laughed and pointed at my jeans — or, more precisely, the stiff outline that ran down one leg thanks to Jasmine’s cruel tease.

  I rolled my eyes and pulled the curtain all the way open.

  “Are you gonna help me with this or not?” the woman asked. “I’ve already knocked over one box, you want me to drop another?” She put her hands on her hips, rumpling the sleeveless green frock that covered her front. She wore black pants and a black shirt underneath it, making her look almost priest-like.

  I ducked my head under the low doorframe and lifted the box she had at her feet. A jar of liquid caught the faint light of my flashlight. It looked like chicken feet floating in oil. The floor was littered with other weird things that must have tumbled out of the first box she was working at. Geodes; candles; a bundle of old leaves tied up in cheese cloth; a tiny doll with no head. I set the box on the floor by the little table in the hut’s main room and sat down again in my wooden chair.

  “I’m not helping you loot this place,” I said. “That crosses a line from innocent trespass to breaking and entering with intent to burglarize. It ups my chances of arrest by like a thousand percent. Besides, that stuff is all worthless junk.”

  “It’s my worthless junk, thank you,” the woman said. “I’ll take it if I like. The park is closed, no sense in leaving it here.”

  “It’s been closed for twenty years,” I said.

  “That’s a matter of perspective,” she said. “And if it’s been closed that long for you, what on this godless green Earth are you doing here?”

  “Urban exploration,” I said.

  “How’s that going for you?”

  “Poorly.”

  “Hmph.” She shook her head and reached into the box at her feet, trailing off into a mumble. “I don’t pick them. If I did it sure wouldn’t be you.”

  “I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care,” I said. “You’re welcome to wait out this storm with me, or you can take your garbage boxes and leave, but we don’t have to talk.”

  She took a deck of cards from the box and sat down across from me. She cleared the table by sweeping her arm across it, knocking aside the moldering old cloth and the chintzy glass orb in one swipe. It cracked on the floor and rolled toward the corner.

  “Always wanted to do that,” she said, cocking a smile. “Just for show, that stupid thing. These, however, these are the real deal.” She began shuffling her cards onto the table, making small piles of them face down at random and then scooping them up to start over again. I watched out of the corner of my eye, splitting my attention between the kooky old woman and the exit. No sign of Jasmine, and the rain was only getting worse.

  I smiled. At least I had a hood.

  “Eyes forward,” the old woman said. “A card reading takes two. I need you to focus.”

  I caught glimpses of the cards’ undersides as she shuffled them. There was no coherent theme to them. One showed a rocky planet with two moons; the next showed a bubble of water with a whole city inside; a third was just a wall of fire. The cards with people on them were no more logical — a horde of goblins drinking tea; a woman with fox ears and a tail holding a man’s decapitated head; a young nun with a rose blooming from her open mouth.

  “I’ve seen tarot cards before,” I said, tilting my head to keep glancing at the images flashing by. “Where’s the fool, the empress, the king of cups? I’ve never seen cards like these.”

  “That’s because they’re not tarot cards,” she said. “Now stop peeking and sit.”

  “I am sitting.”

  “Sit right, wiseass,” she said. “Turn to face me, keep your legs together, your feet on the floor, and your elbows off the table. I’m here to tell you your fortune.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at what had suddenly become torrential rains, now barely visible thanks to the dense cloud cover that blocked the last of the evening’s sunlight. A small puddle formed at th
e room’s entryway, snaking its way toward us as it grew.

  “Fine,” I said, turning to face the old lady. “I’m—”

  “Kyle Landers,” she said, still shuffling her cards.

  “Nice trick,” I said, “but I’m not impressed. You heard me with Jasmine when you were hiding out in the back room.”

  “Is that the floozy that went running with her top half off?”

  “She’s the one,” I said. “She thinks she’s an empress.”

  “She’s the damn fool.”

  “Maybe I do like you after all,” I said.

  “That won’t last long. Cut the deck.”

  I cut shallow, pinching about ten of the cards off the top and laying them next to the larger stack. The cards were soft, like their rough edges had been worn smooth after decades of constant use. They were also energizing. A tingle ran up my arm until I put the cards back down, and I ripped my hand away quickly out of shock.

  This only sent a fresh wave of pain across the gash in my arm. The bubbling of fresh blood tickled my skin, a sign that my jerky movement tore the wound back open.

  The old woman gathered up the cards and made small piles of them, some with cards overlapping in a row and others laid perpendicularly on top of each other. When she revealed their faces one by one, she made knowing grunts and mmm-mmm-mmm sounds.

  “Bloodhound,” she muttered. The card she revealed held something like a rabid coyote with glowing blue eyes and long white incisors. “And another one,” she said, turning over a card with the same style of creature, though the artwork was different.

  “You poor thing,” she continued, turning over a card with five of those animals all sharing a meal in the shape of a disemboweled woman. “There’s a whole pack of them.”

  “Gang,” I corrected. “Everyone knows it’s a bloodhound gang.”

  She ignored me and turned over the rest in silence: A wizard in a round purple cap. A tuft of black flame on a glacial blue background. A rotund woman in red skin sitting on a stone seat.

  I yawned and rubbed my eyes. None of this meant jack shit.

 

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