by Cara Wylde
“We have a new student in our class,” Professor Lovecraft started. “Mila, thank you for joining us.”
I nodded. He was a tall, lanky guy, with a long, oval face, deep set eyes, and short brown hair. He wore a rather old suit, a pair of shoes that he hadn’t polished in a while, and a gold pocket watch. The watch must have been the most expensive object he owned. I had no idea what he was. A vampire? He had no fangs. His suit jacket didn’t have the long slits on the back that indicated he had wings, so he certainly wasn’t an angel, a harpy, or some sphinx. Sphinxes looked much more noble than him, anyway. If I didn’t know better, I would have been tempted to say he was human.
“Today, we shall dive into an all-time favorite of mine. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Has anyone here read it?”
I put up my hand. “I have, a few years ago. It’s about a young, handsome man who is dashing on the outside, but rotten on the inside.”
“Very good, Mila. I want you all to read it or re-read it this weekend, and we will go deeper into Dorian’s world next Friday. For now, let’s talk a bit about Oscar Wilde and the socio-economic background of his works.”
Professor Lovecraft went on like that for half an hour, then the discussion digressed, and we ended up talking about the gothic novel. I liked that about his class. It didn’t have the rigidity of all the others, and the teacher didn’t mind letting the students have a relaxed, natural conversation that he guided gently from time to time.
“Professor, you’ve written some gothic novels.” A dark-haired mermaid from the MDC said.
Mr. Lovecraft blushed a little. “Yes, I have. But I wouldn’t call them novels. More like… novellas. Or short novels.”
“Tell us about them?”
“This is interesting,” I whispered to Corri. The pixie jumped slightly, taken by surprise. She was bored out of her mind! Not a fan of literature, apparently.
“Let’s see… it’s hard to explain.” After a short pause, he gathered his thoughts and started speaking in a changed voice. He’d been carefree and cheerful a moment before, but as he talked about his books and went deeper into the themes and story lines, a shadow fell over his face, and a note of gravity sneaked into his voice. “I’ve always had this interest… this obsession, even, with beings that are beyond good and evil. You may call them gods, I guess, and I do… That’s what I call them, with the caveat that they have nothing to do with God or Satan, and they are not false gods, either. The Great Old Ones. I didn’t invent them, by the way. They’re not a figment of my imagination. I discovered them when I was studying the ancient myths of the natives, then I went deeper, researched old religions all over the globe, and discovered some tribes in Africa had similar stories. They spoke of cosmic beings that had come to Earth a long time ago, ravaged what was to be ravaged, then hid deep underground to sleep until their time might come again. Sleeping and dreaming, waiting for a new age when they would ravage the Earth once more.”
Chills ran up my spine. I stood up straighter, my eyes and ears completely focused on Professor Lovecraft. Great Old Ones. Sleeping and dreaming.
“They have powers, these tribes say. The people who worship them are granted great physical strength, endless wisdom, and even immortality. So, I took these myths and stories, added a sprinkle of imagination and mystery, and I turned them into short novels. Mostly for myself, though. I mean, I did manage to get published by a small press, but I don’t sell many copies. And that’s okay.” His voice lowered even more. “It just makes me feel better to put it all on paper. The Great Old ones, the terror they bring, the isolated groups that still believe in them and bring sacrifices to them…” He waved his hand dismissively. “Not all of it is true. You know what? I was inspired by obscure myths that aren’t probably true. It’s just a hobby of mine.”
My hand went up faster than lightning. “Where can we find your books? Do they have them at the library?”
“N-no.” He was shocked that I asked. “I can lend them to you, if you’re really interested in checking them out.”
“Yes, please!”
“Well, I don’t have them now. Maybe next Friday? If you’re still here…”
I smiled. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He looked around the classroom. “Students tend to come and go. Not many stick with this class.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I love reading! The only reason I didn’t take your class earlier is because I was so busy with the others.”
“That seems to be the case these days,” he mumbled as he returned to his papers, trying to figure out where we’d left the Dorian Gray discussion. “Back in my day, the classes at Grim Reaper Academy were easier. Less rigorous. And the teachers understood the need for creative extracurriculars.”
Same old, same old. The old generation pitying the new. Sometimes, the supernatural world was no different than my world.
Next Friday, the Literature class was full. Mr. Lovecraft had to find more chairs. Paz and GC had decided to take Literature with me, so we’d spend more time together. That was fine. But Sariel was here too, sitting right behind me, his silver eyes boring a hole in the back of my neck, and Francis, of all people, was sitting next to Pazuzu. Sammy, Sheba, Kitty, Pandora, Klaus, a bunch of MDC and NDC students, and half of the VDC.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked GC.
“Oh, you haven’t heard? Where you go, everyone follows now.”
“What the fuck?! Why?”
“Because you’re Mila fucking Morningstar, and they want to be your friends. Or your acquaintances, at the very least. And if that doesn’t work for you either, then they want to be in the same classes as you.”
Corri flapped her translucent wings and sat on my right shoulder to whisper in my ear. “You’re popular now, Mistress.” She giggled, her voice like a crystal wind chime, which only drew even more attention to us. To me.
I sighed and buried my head in my notebook. I’d re-read The Picture of Dorian Gray and taken some good notes I wanted to share with Professor Lovecraft and the three MDC girls plus one RDC guy who’d attended the class the week before, but now I just wanted to make myself small, so they would all leave me alone. And here goes the only class where I thought I could be myself… I closed my notebook and rested my hands on top of it. I wasn’t going to read my notes or participate in the discussion. I just wanted to get out of there.
The minutes went by slowly. Most of the students hadn’t read The Picture of Dorian Gray once in their almost immortal lives, which only made Professor Lovecraft’s job harder. When the bell finally rang, I gathered my things and headed for the door, hoping to put some distance between me and the crowd of people following me before they swept me away and attempted to make small talk.
“Hey, wait up!” Pazuzu ran after me and sneaked his hand into mine, matching my quick pace. “Are you okay? You were so silent.”
“Yeah.” GC took my other hand. “You didn’t shut up about Dorian Gray all week, and now you didn’t say a word.”
I sighed. “I don’t like this.”
“What? That you’re popular?” GC laughed. “Welcome to my world, goddess! See? I told you it’s not easy. Girls drooling all over you… I mean, boys in your case.”
“And girls, too,” Pazuzu chuckled. “Did you see how Sheba and Kitty were looking at her?”
GC laughed louder. “Oh, man! Like they wanted to eat her or something. In a good way.”
“You know,” Paz turned to me. “If you’re curious, we wouldn’t mind.”
“Curious about what?”
“Shagging a chick or two.”
I pulled my hand free. That was it. Pazuzu had just lost his boyfriend privileges for the rest of the day.
“Come on, don’t be like this,” he whined. “I was just kidding.”
“No, you weren’t.”
GC saw this as an opportunity to hog me. “He wasn’t. He was totally not kidding.”
Bu
t I wasn’t stupid. I pulled my hand free from him, too.
“What did I do?”
“You’re both acting like children! This is serious. I don’t want this! I want everything to go back to normal.”
I was so busy arguing with my boyfriends that I didn’t see Sariel catch up with us.
“So, you want everyone to call you slut and dumpster girl, make fun of you, and make you eat cockroaches?”
I stopped and faced him, shoving my finger into his broad chest.
“You did that. Oh, so you’re talking to me now? You’re following me, too?” I narrowed my eyes at him, but he didn’t back down. He looked at me sternly, his lips slightly pursed. What did he want, anyway? It wasn’t like we had anything to say to each other. “What’s your deal, Sariel? Why were you in Literature today?”
“Because The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my favorite books.”
“Ugh!” I huffed, stomped my foot, then turned on my heels and walked away.
“Do you want me to hurt him, Mistress?” Corri asked.
“What? No!” After a moment’s thought, I couldn’t help myself. “How?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. However you want. I could make him trip and break something. A wing, maybe.”
I laughed at the image of mighty Sariel tripping over his own feet. “Archangels can break their wings?”
“Of course. Wings are like any other limb. Except they have feathers.”
“It’s fine, Corri. He’s not worth our time.”
Before I could break free from the throng of students that poured out of the Literature class and seemed to walk faster than me, Pandora and Kitty caught up, called after me, and when I ignored them, blocked my way. Had Pandora been in Literature? I couldn’t remember.
“Pandora wants to ask you something,” Kitty beamed at me.
I crossed my arms over my chest. Two weeks ago, if these two had stopped me in the hallway, I would have peed my panties. GC and Pazuzu were at my side, but I noticed I didn’t feel like I needed them to protect me anymore. Strange things were happening, and they were happening to me. To my own thoughts, feelings, and behavior.
“Is that so?”
Pandora bit her lower lip, looking at me with her big, green eyes. She and Kitty looked so similar that they could have been sisters. Except one of them was a demoness and the daughter of Satan and Lilith, and the other one was a succubus.
She handed me a flyer. “I wanted to invite you to my Halloween party. It would be so great to have you there.”
“Are you serious right now?” I stared at the flyer as if it was going to bite me. “You want me at your Halloween party. Pandora, we’re not friends. You hate me. So, why?”
“I don’t hate you,” she said quickly. “I mean, yeah… I was a bit upset over Paz,” she shot him a sad look, but recovered in a second. “It’s all in the past, and I don’t care anymore. We weren’t meant to be. I can see that he loves you, and you…” She didn’t finish the sentence the way I’d have expected her to finish it. In fact, she didn’t finish it at all. I felt relieved. Because I wasn’t ready to declare my love for either Paz or GC. I still had a couple of things to figure out before I was ready to go there. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we’re cool. I’m cool. I want us to be… err… not strangers.”
She knows how to choose her words.
“So, please come to my party?” She pushed the flyer in my hand, and I took it this time. “It’s going to be on the beach, just by the old caves. I don’t know if you know the place. Paz and GC will show you.”
I think I know the place. I shuddered thinking of that dreadful night. I didn’t only know the beach, but I also knew the caves well. And what lay sleeping inside them. Now I knew for sure that I wasn’t going to attend her Halloween party. Paz and GC would have to manage without me, and hopefully, not cheat on me just because I was no fun and I wanted to stay in my room. My own thoughts took me by surprise. Did I really believe Pazuzu and GC would cheat on me at some point? And that was why I wasn’t ready to decide whether I was in love with them or not. In lust. In lust, I was for sure. And a girl could be in lust with two men she didn’t quite trust.
“I’ll think about it,” I told Pandora.
Finally, they let me through, and I walked to my next class. Geography. As Paz and GC went to Anthropology, Klaus caught up with me.
“How do you feel, princess Morningstar?”
“Shut up.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Pandora made sure to ask me a bunch of more times in the following weeks if I was going to her Halloween party. I said “yes” every time, knowing full well it was a lie. The night of Halloween came, and I was holed up in my room with Corri and Lovecraft’s first volume of short novels. GC and Paz had dressed up, and they were now trying to convince me to change my mind.
“Come on,” begged GC. “It’ll be so much fun! I bet that if you ask Corri to find you a costume, she’ll snap her fingers and you’ll be… err… Cinderella! Or Snow White! Or whoever the hell you want to be!”
I chuckled. “Snow White and her two dwarves.” In fact, GC was dressed like his favorite Roman god, Dionysus, with a crown of grapes and vines, and a thyrsus in his hand, and Pazuzu was dressed like a pirate. The demon wasn’t a great fan of Halloween, so he’d gone for a rather bland costume.
“We’ll be bored out of our minds without you,” Paz said.
“I’m sure you’ll find something to entertain yourselves with after a beer or two.” I turned the page. It was incredible, but since Paz and GC had practically moved in with me, I’d developed this special skill of being able to read and do my own things while they talked my head off.
“You sure you don’t want to come?” GC was at the door. The truth was he couldn’t wait to show off his costume. “Pandora will be so disappointed.”
“Yeah, it’ll break her heart.”
“Last call,” Paz said.
“Go! Go, go, go! Let me read. And when you come back, bring me some beer and some… I don’t know… cupcakes. Or whatever they have there.”
They finally fucked off, and I was alone with Corri. She yawned and made herself comfortable on my pillow. Honestly, I’d grown very fond of her. I enjoyed her company, and even though she refused to say – or even think – that we were friends, I considered her my friend. I had three now. Patricia, Klaus, and Corri. A succubus hybrid, a mage, and an all-powerful pixie. Not too shabby.
I’d been reading for an hour when someone knocked on the door. It couldn’t be GC or Paz, because they never knocked. We’d been together for half a year now, and they still couldn’t grasp the notion of privacy or personal space. I got out of the bed and went to open the door. I would’ve asked Corri, but since she’d entered my life, I kept catching myself being lazier than usual, asking her to do the simplest things for me. I couldn’t have that. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t right. I could open a stupid door, thank you very much.
Pandora.
Her beautiful red hair was hidden under a wig. Two pigtails, one pink and one blue. She wore exaggerated makeup – red lips, mascara intentionally smudged under her eyes, and a single small, black heart high on her right cheekbone. She was dressed scantily, in a pair or red and blue shorts and black fishnets. She can certainly pull off a mean Harley Quinn.
“You didn’t come,” she frowned. “You said you’d come, and you didn’t.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I changed my mind.”
She looked at me for a long moment, as if she was trying to decide the best course of action to get what she wanted. As far as I was concerned, that would never happen, so there were only two viable options: she either dropped the act she’d been struggling to pull off lately, scream, curse, and return to being the bitch I knew, or turn on her heels and walk away. I certainly didn’t expect what she did next.
Pandora let out a deep sigh, looked me in the eyes, and with the sincerest tone
she could muster…
“Please, Mila, you have to come. Please.”
… she started begging.
“Why is this so important to you?”
“Because if you’re not at the party, no one wants to come. A bunch of people came one hour ago, looked around, saw you were not there, and then started leaving one by one.” Were my eyes playing tricks on me, or was she blushing? It must have been the light. “So, will you please come? Kitty and I have put so much into it, and it just sucks.”
I was speechless. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again. I gave up. If I said “no” now, that would make me the bitch. Not that I cared, but this situation intrigued me. It was all new, and I didn’t know how to react. It was strange and rather sad that I knew how to react when I was bullied, and stepped on, and mocked. I knew how to run and hide, how to stand my ground, how to take revenge. I knew how to stay out of people’s way, how to make myself invisible and inconsequential, but this… I didn’t know how to deal with this. Popularity… People wanting to be around me, willing to do anything so I’d at least learn their names, actually caring if I was at a party or not. The world had turned on its head, and if I was prepared for pretty much anything, I sure as hell wasn’t prepared for this.
“Pandora, I don’t know what to say.”
“Just say yes,” she smiled.
I scrunched up my nose. The funny thing was… A few weeks ago, I would have been convinced this was some sort of elaborate prank, and I wouldn’t have hesitated. Run as fast as you can from anyone who is willing to put so much time and effort into making your life hell. That was my motto. It had helped me survive. My gut told me it was not the case now. Pandora didn’t want to hurt me. Or, if she wanted to, she’d buried that desire deep down, because the new status quo meant she had to change her methods if she still wanted to get what she wanted. What did she want, exactly?
