empower: fight like a girl (words empower Book 1)

by Amy Berg

  Any second now. Focus.

  I have the gun. This is why it’s here. Protection. I have two bullets, three, maybe more. Just aim, shoot, and keep shooting until you run out then throw it. Or hold it, have it in your hand when you jump over his body. In case he moves, you can hit him with it. Maybe I should just shoot through the door. I might miss, but maybe he’d just run away. But there are two of them if not more.

  A shadow appears beneath the door.

  Cold panic sets in. My mind floods with images—mom, dad, tucking me in, little brother as a baby reaching for his feet, older brother making mom cry then letting me hug him after, a blade slicing me, jabbing, stabbing, dying, dead, only a body. Please, please don’t let my little brother be the one who finds me.

  The knob turns.

  You know what to do.

  My mind clears. I am focused.

  The door opens. I raise my hands, point, find the trigger.

  He’s big, wearing camo.

  Shoot the gun. SHOOT THE GUN!

  The guy behind him rushes forward. Same face as mine.

  It’s my brother.

  The air in my throat sucks out of me. I’m instantly suffocating. I lower the gun, fumbling with it, trying to get the bullets out. I don’t know how. I can’t talk. I tell him with my eyes.

  It’s loaded, be careful.

  He puts his hands around it. I won’t let go. This isn’t real. I’m imaging this. I’m already dead. My brother is out of town. He’s not supposed to be here and then…

  The gun is out of my hands. Two quick movements and the cartridge is out, the slide disconnected. It’s just metal.

  It’s over now.

  He wraps his arms around me. My body convulses in sobs. His turn to hold me. I let him.

  My eyes squeeze closed and the last few seconds play out differently. I shoot, kill them both, injure one, kill the other. It plays a dozen different ways but always ends with blood, emptiness, guilt. I cause it. Devastation, mom, dad, grandpa, little brother…

  It didn’t happen. Everyone is okay. You’re okay.

  Relief swells and dies. Fury takes its place. Fury at the gun. Fury at where my imagination led me. Fury that I’m lucky. Fury that Marcela Ruiz wasn’t. Fury that three minutes ago I was ignorant. Fury that I won’t ever be again.

  About The Author

  Liz Edwards has spent her life telling stories, first as a choreographer in San Antonio and New York and then as a feature and documentary editor in Los Angeles (Free a Man to Fight: Women Soldiers of World War II, Eban and Charley, The Graffiti Artist, and numerous reality programs that shall not be named). She wrote eight episodes of Rules of Deception for Twentieth Television and feature thrillers for Lionsgate and High Treason. She loves to write about her worst fears naively thinking this means they won’t happen to her, her husband, or her daughter.

  “INT. WOLF—NIGHT”

  by Jane Espenson

  Like the more common MediumSized Morally Neutral Wolves, Big Bad Wolves make for poor accommodations. The inside of this particular Wolf was big for an inside, but very small compared with the outside. It was about the size of a spherical singleroom cottage, one with a kneedeep layer of stomach acid on the floor, but it was severely overpopulated, and there was every reason to think that more edible sentient beings might join the group at any moment. Already, Hood was assigned one-sixth of the bed and only onetenth of the blanket. She had to fold up her red cloak to use as a pillow at night. Food, at least, was plentiful, since they ate any vegetables and nonsentient animals that the wolf ate, after the wolf ate them, so that was all right, but the toilet facilities were best left unmentioned.

  Every now and then, someone, whichever of them had been there the longest, got digested. It was a revolting process in which the person/foodstuff began to lose facial definition, and it went downhill from there. The person’s glasses, if he wore glasses, might suddenly slide down his nose around lunchtime, and by dinner he was a warm pool of mucus that wouldn’t respond even when asked simple questions, and which ultimately seeped away into the digestive tract. The whole process looked, sounded, and smelled unpleasant, and all who lived in the Wolf knew that it was their destiny.

  All in all, Hood decided, it was high time to clear out.

  She kept hoping the Wolf would swallow someone in possession of a knife so that she could cut her way out, but to date that hadn’t happened, and she figured she’d waited long enough. Several people in the stomach had metal on them: belt buckles, mostly. And one of the sheep had taps on his shoes, but they had no tools to pry these items loose or to sharpen them, and in their current state these items had no effect on the disgusting but resilient inside surfaces of the Wolf.

  They did have two precious matches, and there had been some initial excitement over the idea of using them. “The smoke will make him sneeze us out,” the littlest piggy, a babbling moron, had exclaimed, demonstrating a laughable lack of understanding of how sinuses and/or stomachs worked. Others thought they could literally burn a hole in the Wolf’s side, but when they tried, the first match fizzled out against the wet stomach wall, and they were reluctant to try again and potentially waste the one remaining match. Besides, several sheep, whose luxuriant curls were rich and oily with lanolin, had raised monotonous issues about their flammability that had exhausted everyone else. Finally, the remaining match was wrapped in oilskin and tucked into Hood’s belt to be used when anyone could think of a sensible plan.

  The Boy Who Cried Wolf had tried an escape a few days back, making the daring move of plunging deeper into the Wolf’s digestive system. He had returned filthy and gasping, his eyes streaming, and trembling all over. He wove a harrowing tale of darkness, confining walls, and choking gases. He, however, was a famous alarmist, so it was possible that he was exaggerating.

  Hood considered the other direction: the mouth. From the throat, by peeking up from under the Wolf’s pink, globesized and frankly disturbing uvula, she could survey the area. The teeth, clearly, were the primary problem. Ten inches long, and as razorsharp on all their edges as if they’d been honed on a strop, they rimmed the mouth like white steel blades, some bristling at odd angles, designed to snag and catch. Hood leaned her back against the hot plane of the Wolf’s throat, out of the dank draft of wolf breath, and tried to think. She kept thinking she should have reacted better when faced with a Wolf in her grandmother’s bed.

  “Oh, Grandma, what big eyes you have!” She’d meant it only as a delaying tactic, of course. Hood’s grandmother was a tiny woman, ninety pounds at most, and to the best of Hood’s recollection, she was almost entirely not covered by a shaggy, musty pelt. The massive creature tucked under the sheets of her grandmother’s bed managed to look both absurd and terrifying, with the tiny white linen bedcap clinging to one rough ear, and the tail end of Granny’s pajamapants drawstring dangling damply from its powerful jaw. While the musclebound creature struggled to find a witty retort to the “big eye” observation, Hood was backing toward the door, readying her basket in front of her as a shield. When the Wolf had opened his mouth to reply, she could hear the shouts of the helpless creatures inside. “Hey!” “Is someone out there?” “Little help?” and beyond that, the frantic tiptiptipping sound of the sheep wearing tap shoes.

  She reached behind her, groping for the doorknob. But the Wolf, despite its size, was lightning fast. He covered the length of the cabin in one stride. Hood had been aware of heat, darkness, the brushandcatch of those fearsome teeth, and then being forced down the wet throat by a series of muscular contractions like a horrible stinking reverse birth. Finally, she landed on the stomach floor with a splash, her basket landing behind her with a smaller, cuter splash. She sat up and looked around, stunned, at the dulleyed residents, who immediately started cordoning off a small section of the bed for her, and grudgingly shifted their own belongings from one locker into another to make room.

  But as she gathered herself, and wrung out her cape, Hood took heart. Because her gr
andmother wasn’t there. Over the days that followed, she asked around. It was Bo Peep who was most willing to talk. An old lady had been here recently, she confided, arriving perhaps a week ago. On the fourth morning after her arrival, they’d awoken to discover she was missing. Some of them, primarily the cows, felt that she’d been a victim of Sudden Spontaneous Digestion and had seeped away unnoticed, but Hood knew better. Granny had escaped. And that meant there was a way out. “If she can do it, I can do it,” Hood vowed.

  But, oh, those teeth. The Wolf had an irresponsible tendency to gulp without chewing on the way in, but Hood had a feeling that the way out would be different. She crawled higher in the mouth, the tongue sinking under her feet like a carpet made out of slugs, as she angled for a closer look. She heard a faint whiny bleating. She looked around and spotted a very small lamb waving a hoof. Its fleece was white as snow, and a diamond tennis bracelet glinted at her from its slender wrist. The lamb blinked hopefully from where it was caught, unhurt, between two molars, a forgotten morsel. The lamb explained, a little haughtily, that it was stuck, as it continued to offer her its tiny entitled hoof. Hood pulled it out and tucked it under her arm, where it immediately fell into a petulant sleep; then she turned her back on the frightening red cavern. The mouth, that stinking red room rimmed with death, was a way out. It may even have been her grandmother’s way out. But Hood was no fool. Those teeth terrified her. This wasn’t her way out.

  Back in the stomach, she reunited the sleeping and flatulent lamb with its ungrateful family. Then she waited for nightfall, when it would be time to head for the other way out. She hoped to be forcing her head out into clear night air before anyone even noticed she was missing. And yet, despite her hope, she checked her belt, to make sure the small oilskin packet was still there. “You never know,” she thought, which was an excellent mantra for someone who lived in a stomach.

  The difference in the amount of light available inside a wolf during daylight and at night is negligible, but noticeable, and it wasn’t long before all the inhabitants of the Wolf were sound asleep, except for the duck, the other duck, and the goose who had formed a doowop trio that practiced until all hours—and Hood. She slipped out of bed, grabbed her cloak, and headed down deeper into the Wolf.

  The Boy had been right, of course, and the passage was slick and foul and choked with gas. But Hood pressed on, determined. She wondered as she went, as she had wondered many times before, where Granny might have gone after escaping. Hood was sure she hadn’t been in the cabin, and if she’d been nearby, she surely would have flagged down Hood and warned her away. Most likely, she’d gone for help, but it could take her weeks to return with assistance, and even then, there was no reason to assume that any wouldbe rescuer wouldn’t just join the rest of them inside the Wolf interior space. Hood was confident she was doing the right thing. If only she could breathe.

  That was, in fact, becoming a daunting challenge. Her vision was cloudy, and thinking was becoming difficult. Hood thought about turning back, but she’d moved quickly, hurrying to get far enough that turning back would be impossible. She didn’t want to give herself an easy way out.

  Finally, her knees buckled and she sank to the slimy floor. She fumbled, clumsy and halfblind, for the oilskin packet under her belt.

  It had been a fine life, she thought. She’d dined with bears. She’d pulled thorns from the paws of echidnas. She’d wrestled giant snails for money. She, at least until now, had lived.

  She pulled her red cloak tight around her, making sure to cover her head and hands. The cloak was old and worn; Granny had woven it for her years ago out of thick plastic sheeting and long strips of steel wool sprayed with a red rustproofing solution. It was meant to protect her from whale attacks, not this, but it would have to do.

  She pulled the cloak tighter and struck the match.

  Later on, Hood faced other challenges in her life. When she was thirty, she would slay a dragon and rescue a prince from a tower. When she was fifty, she and her daughter would surf the great salt sea on a board made of a paralyzed badger. When she was eighty, she would handraise a baby Big Bad Wolf, and show it another way to live. Exploding a wolf to death from the inside wasn’t even something she was particularly proud of; maybe there was a better solution. But in the moment, it was what she chose.

  She would always remember that the methane explosion was muffled, more WOOMPH than BANG. And it was with a surprisingly gentle and graceful motion that the now-headless Wolf’s skin folded down in panels and opened like the blooming of a flower, revealing the trapped beings and their furnishings inside, startled and blinking at the light and halfdeafened by the explosion. A single purewhite lamb was the first to stagger free, already complaining.

  Hood was the most severely injured, her hands burned and her lungs aching. The cloak had protected her to the best of its ability, though, and she was safe.

  She was burned, but she was strong. She had found her own path, but it was inspired by someone who had gone before. She had made a hard choice, but she was willing to live with the consequences.

  Soon, her grandmother arrived with help at the site of the explosion. Hood held her grandmother’s hand and listened to the professional chatter of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men as they tended to the injured. Hood lay on her back and looked up at the sky and smiled. Tomorrow would be a better day.

  About The Author

  Jane Espenson is known for her work as a writer for Dinosaurs, Ellen, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, The O.C., Gilmore Girls, Tru Calling, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, and Game of Thrones among other shows. She is co-creator of the award-winning online comedy Husbands along with her producing partner Brad Bell (@GoCheeksGo). She also writes comic books, short stories, and edits collections of essays. She currently writes for ABC's Once Upon A Time.

  Follow her on Twitter: @JaneEspenson

  Watch "Husbands" online.

  “XAYMACA”

  by Shalisha Francis & Nadine Knight

  "You spit inna the sky, it fall inna yuh eye.”

  How many times had Sisu heard that phrase as a girl? Reaping what you’d sown: a favorite adage told in a family of farmers. She’d hear it from her dad in chastising tones if she procrastinated on studying for her A-levels. From her Auntie Shirley if she yanked her cousin’s head while locking his hair. And if she set off down the mountain late—missing the chance to hawk their family’s produce to the tourists who overwhelmed the Port Royal marina—her Mama would practically shout the words at her.

  "You spit inna the sky, it fall inna yuh eye.”

  But Sisu would just roll her eyes and laugh. At them, at the island sayings, at herself. Sisu used to laugh a lot. Things aren’t so funny anymore.

  Because someone did spit in the sky. Well, some fool country did anyhow. Sent up rovers into space searching for E.T. or God or some other stupidness. The Investors, or so they named themselves, followed one of the rovers back to Earth. Set up shop. She’d been in Kingston when she’d first heard the news. Had taken two bus transfers and walked a half mile in the sticky heat to reach the heart of town. Still, she’d been happy to go. Happy for the small taste of freedom the trip afforded her—a day free of shucking sugar cane, climbing coconut trees, or haggling with foreigners. She’d been carrying her bag of purchases—sweeties for her cousin, good American shampoo, a beef patty—and was set to make the long journey home when she saw the crowd outside the pawnshop. They were clustered around the second-hand flat screens in the display window.

  It wasn’t the crowd itself that caught her attention—it wasn’t rare to see Jamaicans gathered around a TV to cheer their favorite team in a cricket match or crow with pride over Usain Bolt’s latest world record—here, it was their faces. A mix of natives and foreigners, each expression more distressed than the last. Curious, she’d crowded in behind them, followed their gazes to the scratchy fifty-two inch screens. Watched as Investor ships appeared in the skies over all the ma
jor cities in the world—well, the “first world,” anyway. As the stunned crowd huddled together, Sisu remembers feeling cold for the first time, the kind of bone-deep chill life in the Caribbean had always spared her. She remembers noticing the foreigners no longer clutched their money holders under their shirts. As if they knew money would no longer give them power or comfort, that the world had been instantly and irrevocably changed.

  The Investors announced they were there to help the world “reach its full potential” and “run more efficiently.” But though they spoke in the local languages of every land they occupied, no one knew, no one yet understood, what they meant by that. What they did know was the Investors were impervious to most of the world’s weaponry. They’d figured that out soon enough. From what Sisu had gleaned from the occasional television feeds and radio broadcasts that still made it through, North Korea tried sending a nuke, but only ended up obliterating its own people; only slowed the Investors down for half a day. Sisu also knows that, contrary to the matinees she’d seen at the local dollar theater, alien invasion has not united the world: Russia and the States were threatening each other, China had threatened Japan and South Korea, and much of the EU was in chaos as they tried to agree on a response. She and her countrymen had watched and fretted, expecting to soon see the giant metal ships over their skies. But days passed, then weeks, and still the only Investors they saw were on TV.

  At first glance, their unsettling appearance—the pale, almost translucent, skin; the iridescence of their humanoid form—seemed a product of poor television reception. But Sisu soon learned, through eyewitness accounts she’d found on the now defunct Internet, that her first impression had been accurate. To her, they looked like how she’d always imagined obeah men would. As a girl, she’d been terrified obeah men were hiding in the shadows or under her bed, waiting to put a curse on her or steal her away. Now, at nineteen, it’s the pale face of the Investors that keeps her awake in the night, that keeps her in a constant state of worry. Her Auntie Shirley swears their island’s been spared. That she and her old biddies at the Kingston Baptist church managed to pray the Investors away. Why else had they not come?