JaneE

JaneE

Just here to practice and learn

Prom

Prom is tomorrow and I have a giant red, cat-eye slotted eye staring back at me in the center of my forehead.

You know, it’s not like I asked to be prom queen or anything, but this? Now I’m not even going to be able to walk through the doors.

I like at it, hoping it’s just a figment of my imagination, but when I feel the slightly stinging pain, coupled by some tears—oh my god are those, is that blood?—I grip the edge of my bathroom vanity and simply scream.

A pounding comes on the other side of the door, and I grab the closest thing to me and hurl it in response. “Go away!”

“Hurry up Kristin!” My sister shouts back, kicking the door for good measure. “I need to piss!”

I roll my eyes. She’s at that age where using as many expletives as possible make her feel. It really just makes her sound like a tiny criminal.

“Don’t worry,” says the eye in the middle of my forehead, “she’ll grow out of it, just like you did.”

I stare at the thing, which is weird and hard to do because it’s both staring back and staring at itself.

“You can talk?” I hiss, leaning closer to the mirror, as if it can hear me better that way.

“Of course I can,” it says, full of assurance. “I’m the devil, it’d be ridiculous if I couldn’t talk.”

“Well what the hell is the devil doing in the middle of my forehead?” I ask, somewhat petulantly. I’m sounding a lot more like my sister than I want to, but what the hell, I’m not in the mood to play polite with the king of hell right now. “Don’t you have something better to do? I have prom tonight. Scram!”

If possible he seems to look at me like I’M the asshole. “Why do you think I’m here? Where else is the devil supposed to cause mayhem and destruction? Your prom is, well, like out prom.”

I pound my fists into the counter repeatedly and groan in annoyance. Seriously, this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me!

Black Gem

She catches the Black Gem flowering in the corner of the garden in the periphery of her vision. She turns and leads straight for it, curling her hands around the buds with consideration, eyes narrowing while her mouth tips up into a smile.

There’s a groove in the ground from where a tire once lay, smack tracks from its ridged edge are still left behind like footprints. Water gathered there during the rains, and now this flower climbs higher every day. She smiles, pleased to see it return, and leaves it be. The stalk, which comes to her knee height, sways in the breeze as she leaves, waving after her like a goodbye.

She picks a few poppies, orange and bleeding pollen into the inside of her elbow, where the blossoms are resting. She brings them inside, laying them on the wooden countertop laced with red and streaks of copper melted into the knots. They wait while she putters around the kitchen, looking for a vase with a wide enough lip to allow them to rest. She finds one and fills it with cool water from the bucket beside the sink, and places the flowers in their vase on the table. A few water droplets dip down, sliding around the curve of the glass before timidly touching the surface of the wood. A small drop settles on the old copper, which has long since turned teal from oxidation.

Her partner is in the back and she calls to her. “I saw a Black Gem out there.”

“A Black Gem? Already?”

She nods, though her partner can’t see it. “It’s huge, biggest I’ve seen yet.”

“That’s good,” her partner replies, coming up behind her and pressing the palm of her hand into the meat of her hip. There’s a gentle squeeze before she feels a kiss against her hair, and then her partner is out the door again, off to complete another task. “The rains must have done it good.”

It’s comforting, she thinks, to know that flowers can be reborn after a period of drought.

She has plenty to do, but it can wait for a moment. So for now, she sticks her face onto her palm and dazes dreamily out the window.

All the while, she can feel the flowers continuing to bloom fuller.

Rude

“Would it be weird if I took this home?”

He’s holding a dead raven in his hands, mostly skeletal remains that still have some flesh and feathers clutching to it.

And he wants to know if it’d be weird?

She blinks. “Yes, yes it would be, you absolute freak.”

He frowns down at the body, but not in any way she approves of. It’s less “I’ve learned my lesson” and more “surely not everyone would agree with that sentiment.”

Now it’s his turn to blink, right before he shrugs and places the carcass in his handkerchief, gently wrapping the bird as though it were something precious, and not, you know, a dead, disgusting bird corpse.

“You’re such a freak,” she says, rolling her eyes and turning around. She doesn’t wait for him, simply walks as fast as she can down the path home. “Dad is going to be so mad at you.”

“Only if he finds out,” he says behind her, and she can feel his stupid glare on the back of her head. “You better not tattle.”

“When have I ever. Besides, he’s going to find out anyway. You think he won’t notice a dead bird in your room?”

He doesn’t have an answer for her, so he just pouts beside her, having caught up by now, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. He reaches for her hand and she snatches it away just in time.

“Gross!” she shrieks, pulling her hand to her chest. “Don’t touch me after you touched that thing!”

He frowns at her. “Mom said we need to hold hands when it’s like this,” he says, meaning the fog that covers their feet. It comes and goes, and this particular morning it’s only getting thicker.

“You don’t have to do everything mom says you know.”

“Do too.”

“Nuh uh.”

“Do too!”

She shoves him and he trips over the stone path, falling onto his knees. She freezes, not meaning to hurt him but also not certain if he’ll hit her back if she tries to help him up, when she sees the bag on his back begin to move.

“Rude!”

Well that voice hadn’t come from either of them.

“What. Was,” she gulps, pointing at her brother’s back, “that?”

An explosion of movement comes from the bag, and in a burst of movement the handkerchief bag comes undone and the skeletal remains of the bird fly out. It lands on her brother’s shoulder and turns to her. It doesn’t have any eyes, but she can feel its judgmental stare as if it did.

“Rude!” it repeats, and she can only drop her jaw open. “Rude!”

Her brother gasps in delight, clapping his hands without sound and looking like he just got an extra present on Christmas. “It talks!”

“Talks? It’s alive!” she yells back, pointing at the thing.

It squawks and snaps its beak, and she whips her hand away from it, though it’s still not close enough to bite.

“Great,” she says, “now we have two freaks in the family.”

“Three,” he says confidently, reaching into his pocket and feeding the skeleton raven something, possibly a raisin. The bird makes a curious noise, takes the food, then spits it out pleasantly. “You’re forgetting to count yourself.”

She groans aloud, clenching her fists at her side and begging something to take her stupid freak brother somewhere far away. Neither her brother nor the bird give her any attention.

She reaches out and grabs her brother’s hand, then begins the faithful march back to the house.

“Now try hiding that from dad.”

Laundry

“I’m sorry,” he says, holding the photo by the corner, as if it’s a bloodied rag. “Can you repeat that?”

“Oh you heard me,” his mom says, rolling her eyes and continuing to fold the laundry, like a fucking psycho. “Your father had a family, awhile ago.” She waves her hand, like she’s talking about the weather being too hot, too cold, and not that his father had a secret family he’d never spoken to him about.

“Awhile ago? Like how long?” He looks at the picture again and points. “That’s my fucking Walkman. She has a fucking Walkman—mom, who the fuck are these people?!”

She levels him with her best No-Foul-Language look, but if there was ever a time to indulge, he’s thinking it’s now.

“I cannot believe dad has a second family. Mom. MOM. Mom this is so not normal,” he lies on the bed staring at the popcorn ceiling. He’s officially pissed, because he’s been telling them to clean it off for years, but dad always said they could never afford it. Afford a second family though? That’s apparently within the budget.

“Yes well, he doesn’t exactly like talking about it. You know how your father is.”

He looks at his mother like she has twelve heads, and none of them have brains.

“Are you like, fine with this? I mean—mom, oh my god.”

“Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

“MOM. I think we’re beyond that.”

She’s about to protest, but he shoots up from the bed and shoves the photo in front of her face. “Mother. I have a half sister, and I didn’t even know about it. Literally this is the most insane thing that has ever happened to me and you are brushing. Me. Off. What am I supposed to do with this information?”

She shrugs. “Nothing. It’s not like life is going to change.” She presses his folded shirts into his hands and begins folding the underwear. Maybe that was the first sign of psychosis, he thinks. Folding underwear, who does that? Maybe it’s a coping mechanism.

She’s turned away from him, effectively shutting down the conversation, so he finally takes the hint and turns to leave.

Hand on the doorknob, he turns one last time to glare over his shoulder at his mother. “You know, some therapist is going to make SO much money off of me someday.”

“That’s fine,” plopping a pair of underwear on the pile with enough force to topple it. “Just don’t post it on social media. No reason we need to air our dirty laundry.”

He blinks.

He wonders if he has a chance in hell at being normal.

Control

“Over the Wintry” by Natsume Sōseki

Over the wintry

Forest, winds howl in rage

With no leaves to blow

When she returns to consciousness, she only wishes it were over.

“—just dropped like a rock. Oh my god what is wrong? Is something wrong with her? Call an ambulance. Someone call an ambulance right now and tell them the—“

She groans loudly and rolls over, but she can’t bring herself to open her eyes yet. Wouldn’t it be nice to just sleep forever, she thinks to herself. Wouldn’t it be comforting to just lay on the floor, let her body just turn cold and wintry?

The stress she’d been under lately had finally compounded into another episode. She often got lucky and simply passed out in her home, but today she wasn’t so lucky. She’d passed out at work no less, and now her coworkers were huddling over her, gossiping and calling for an ambulance she couldn’t afford. She clenched her fingers and felt the old shag carpet rug beneath her. The small fibers pressed into her palms, moss on the floor of an old forest.

“Don’t call an ambulance,” she said, and it came out as a low moan. All eyes turned to her and someone began to lift her before she protested. “I just need a minute,” but her words are ignored as her coworkers begin to fuss over her, their frets passing over her like westerly winds.

In the distance, the sound of an ambulance already howls.

“Let them in!”

Before she can protest again, she’s lifted onto a stretcher with her consent. She’s already coming to, and she hates the questions that she’s being asked. What day is it? What’s her name? When is her birthday? The inane questions, all while she’s now up and alert yet being forced into the ambulance is enough to send her into a rage.

One of the EMTs jabs a needle into her arm, suffusing her with something in an IV bag. It’s all unnecessary, she protests, but no one listens to her. She wonders if it’s not too late to escape, if there’s something she can knock these two over the heads with.

One of the EMTs tries to make conversation with her, jokingly asks her, “You come here often?“ He smiles and she glares at him, in no mood for humor. She’s already thinking about the insurance bill about to come her way for something so small. “I guess that’s a no.”

It’s a long time before they get her to the hospital and she’s admitted. It’s hours of her sitting in an uncomfortable bed with the needle jabbed in her arm, incorrectly placed so it pinches painfully. Her heart rate is too low, they tell her, and keep her for several more. When finally the registered nurse comes back in and tells her that her heart rate is low, but as there’s been no other causes for alarm, they can finally discharge her. She leaves.

She clenches her fists at her side when she’s in the parking lot, realizing she now has to call a cab to get her home. Another expense, for what? The cab driver pulls up, and she sighs when he turns on the meter. “Where to?”

She has him drop her off a mile from her place. Not because it costs less, but because she does have some control over her life, still. She can walk home, she thinks while she slams the car door shut. As he drives away and she stares after the rear end lights, she closes her eyes and screams, realizing she’s going to have to go into work tomorrow, to face everyone she’d embarrassed herself in front of. Tomorrow, she knows, is going to blow.

Caught

Once you are caught, that’s the end, they say.

Now he knows it to be true.

His tail catches against the cage again, pulling against the fur in a startling and painful way. The woman is in the small room with him, and she seems to hear his cry and makes one of her own. It’s a lilting sound, something he can’t quite understand the meaning of, but he understands the intent. She means to comfort him with her noise, but he is suspicious of her.

Her hands fumble with the latch and before she can try to grab him, he jumps from the vertical cage onto the floor, scooting past her while she replaces his food and replenishes his water.

He has only a few minutes out here, in the room filled with toys that have a strange taste and texture. None of the animals in this room are alive, as far as he can tell. They simply lie there until the woman finishes with his cage and comes to manipulate them. Their insides are filled with dander, some kind of material that chokes him if he tries to swallow it. Their fur tastes wrong too.

The woman jiggles a mouse on a stick, but he ignores her, instead sitting by the window. His careful eyes watch the animals, the humans, as they move beyond him. He aches to be outside again—the smell and the air he’s gotten used to, but it clings to his fur and he can feel it stagnate—and feel the fresh air on his whispers.

He sees a bird in a tree out there, his sharp vision recognizing before he even turns his head. His eyes are wide and his pupils slit; he calls to the pray, even though he knows it won’t be heard. The bird simply goes about hits business, it’s jerky head movements searching for new material to make a nest. He’s sure it would have a field day with the strange creatures in this room.

He sees the wind blowing through the grass, hears muffled noises come from the humans and leashed pets before him.

There’s only one way to get out of here, he knows.

The woman scoops him up from behind and deposits him back into the cage, his sliver of repressed freedom come to an end already.

She wiggles her fingers in his cage, and then she is off before he can bat them away.

And now he waits—waits for the next career, or for someone on the outside to put him on one of those leashes.

He fate is sealed, and there’s nothing he can do to change it.

Something To Do

You shakily bring the cigarette to your lips and light it. It ignites and the tip glows a bright, warning orange. You’re sweating, so you wipe your forehead with the back of your hand. You inhale and the comfort of the smell, the Smokey, acrid taste is all you know for a blessed three seconds.

The Author is looking for you, everyone is saying, and now your mouth goes dry and you take another inhale. It can’t possibly be true—you’re not especially interesting, why the hell would The Author want anything to do with you? What story aside from this one could you possible belong to?

You look up at the night sky, which is covered over by light pollution and a thick layer of cloud cover. You wonder what’s beyond that cloud cover, if it was anything different from what you all know it is. Can that be changed, the sky? The earth? The taste of the cigarette on your tongue?

You bring the cigarette to your mouth again but your hand is shaking so hard it falls through your fingers. You stare down at it and shut your eyes harshly. “Fuck,” you breathe out, and a light chuckle comes from behind you.

And older man is standing there, in a stained jacket and old worn jeans. He’s smiling, and its genuine, which only serves to piss you off a little more. You aren’t in the mood to satisfy this guy’s schaudenfreude tonight.

“Fuck off,” you tell him between closed lips that hold another cigarette as you try to light it. You didn’t say it particularly loudly, but he hears it all the same.

“Rough night? Sorry, didn’t mean to laugh at you.”

You roll your eyes, then stare pointedly away. “Whatever.”

“What do those things do for you? I’ve always wondered.”

Your hands are in your pockets and you’re facing pointedly away from him. Of all the things—you are not in the mood for small talk tonight.

“I don’t know, man,” you say, shrugging your shoulders and turning further away.

The geezer doesn’t take a hint. “I heard its like getting a caffeine hit, is that right?”

“I don’t drink coffee,” you say, “that shit stains your teeth.”

He laughs. You roll your eyes again, but the sound of his laugh doesn’t feel as grading right now. Without thinking, you take the packet from your pocket, along with the lighter, and pass it over to him.

He wordlessly takes it, pulling out a cigarette. He frowns while he places it between his teeth, concentrating while he lights it. It takes a few flicks of the lighter, but he gets it eventually. He inhales, and predictably, begins coughing profusely. You try not to smile, but its a right of passage after all, to hack up a lung in exchange for the small kick tobacco provides. For the generosity it gives for people who never know what to do with their hands.

“Wow,” he says, eyes watering. He looks at the small thing in his hand and nods. “That’s terrible.”

“Yep.”

“That doesn’t explain why you do it.”

He’s still looking for an answer, and to be honest, maybe you’ve been searching for one the whole time. Maybe its for moments like this, when anxiety takes over and its easier to consciously inhale and exhale than it is to think; maybe its for the moments where someone comes up and tries to make conversation with you on the side of the street.

“I do it because I have nothing else to do,” you answer, and its the truth. It’s an amalgamation of many truths.

He nods, then drops the cigarette, crushing it on the ground beneath a heeled boot.

“I know exactly where to put you.”

You freeze.

It can’t be.

He gives you one last smile, and before you can drop your cigarette, before you can scream or reach out and grab him, he snaps his fingers.

“Here’s something else to do,” he says, and you drop.

When you wake up, you’re somewhere entirely new.

Vagabonds

You might think the Tavern on the Water was the place where the vagabonds went, and you’d be right, in a way.

The vagabonds, the delinquents, the gamblers, this was the spot they all were drawn to. But the Tavern on the Water wasn’t the place for them to be themselves, no, it was the place they went to be other than themselves, for them to be the people they wanted to be. When they were tired of the traveling, the vandalizing, the losing, they came here, to escape it all.

“You hear the latest?” one of the vagrants said to another. They kept to the back and minded to themselves, enjoying a moment before they had to rejoin the world and beg for scraps again.

“What?”

“They’re hiring.”

“Hiring? What, again?”

His companion nodded, taking a deep sip from his canteen. “Apparently the last one just left.”

In fact, the Tavern on the Water was a peaceful place that had no issue—except that it had terrible luck keeping on staff.

There was nothing wrong with the tavern, as stated, so no one was ever quite sure why this was the case. The hours and pay were fair, the work wasn’t too strenuous, as all of the regulars stayed on their best behavior, not liking to piss where they eat, as the phrase goes. In fact, if anyone was causing any issues the customers themselves would be the first to square the problem away before the staff even needed to get involved.

It was suggested that the tavern was cursed, but no one could quite believe it. It’s not as though the staff every turned up dead, or never to be found again. No, they all went on to be discovered later on as just having moved on with their lives in some way. Of course, all of them notably said they’d never intended on leaving the position; they’d simply gotten the desire one day to never return, and never had.

It was a spectacular mystery, but not one anyone particularly cared to solve.

Why? Well, that was obvious.

The staff who went missing were always assholes.

The first one who’d left had always overcharged; the another had insisted anyone who didn’t pass their inspection take their orders outside; this most recent one had the tendency to insult the customers, loudly, when they felt their tip was inadequate.

Altogether, no one particularly minded when these people didn’t show up for their next shift.

After all, the vagabonds, the delinquents and the gamblers weren’t just those monikers—they were people, and not always respected as such. They enjoyed this place like a second home—a first home, for others—and when these judgmental, nasty people left, it stayed that way.

Because the Tavern on the Water was the place where they went—they made the place their own, and they liked it that way.

And the ones who didn’t like it, well, they could just get lost.