Silken Scales

by Alex Hayes

  “How ‘bout your phone?” Mr. Pawnshop suggests, eyeing the iPhone in my hand.

  I’m about to say, No way, when my crystal pulses white hot, and I barely manage not to cringe.

  Maybe if I gave him my phone now, he’d hold it until Mama can send the money. Assuming I can talk her into doing so. “Just a moment,” I tell the guy, and wander across the shop for some privacy.

  Mama doesn’t answer her cell, so I try the number at the farmhouse. The phone goes to voicemail. “Mama, it’s Cadi. I have a little, um, emergency. I need a hundred dollars. Would you, uh…mind lending it to me. Actually, if you could call this number…” I reel off the phone number from a sign on the front door. “It’s for a place call Lance’s Trading Post. They need a hundred dollars, so I can get my phone back.” I sigh into the speaker and continue more softly, “It’s a long story, which I’ll explain as soon as I have my phone again.”

  Returning to the counter, I say, “You’ll definitely give me my phone back if I pay you the hundred dollars?”

  I really don’t like the idea of leaving it behind. My phone is my lifeline. But my crystal’s practically on fire, burning so hot in my chest I think I smell smoke.

  Mr. Pawnshop grins. “Sure. Pay a hundred within three days and you get your phone back. After that, the price goes up twenty percent.”

  “I left my mother a message. She’ll call back and give you a credit card number.” I hope. With serious hesitation, I hand over my phone and take the crystal and chain.

  God, what am I doing?

  Mama will take care of it. You know she will, a voice whispers back.

  Was that me or the crystal talking?

  With the new crystal zipped into the front pocket of my backpack, I leave the store. Walking across the parking lot, I notice an old lady poking a stick into a dumpster.

  The moment I register the woman, my crystal goes berserk, sending a message radiating with strong intention. Get the hell out of here!

  The old lady turns my way and locks these weird glowing eyes on me.

  I scurry away, checking over my shoulder all the way back to the center of town. When I get there, it’s almost three. Time to check-in at the Mountain Lodge.

  The lady at reception hands me a card key, and I head to my room. Tight quarters, but the view of the mountains is spectacular. As I contemplate taking a shower, my crystal acts up again.

  For crying out loud.

  Its resonance keeps shifting, like it’s agitated, so I grab the crystal I just hocked my phone for out of my backpack — thinking they might want to touch, or talk, or something — and pressed the gem against my chest.

  The contact makes me jolt. A charge bursts from both stones, and then mine gets all demanding again. Like, it won’t even let me take a shower.

  I hang the other stone on my own unbroken chain and shove it in my backpack. Tempting though it is to leave all my worldly possessions on the bed, I’ve never stayed in a hotel and can’t be sure my things will be safe. So, I pull the pack onto my shoulders, and off I go, my crystal guiding me to who the heck knows where.

  19

  Idris

  Marek doesn’t turn up until four on New Year’s Day. Some excuse about his mom wanting to go to Glen Falls.

  I’ve eaten my way through two loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter and another of jelly. So, when he shows up at the Thorny Rose with two fresh loaves of bread, a new jar of peanut butter and another of jelly, I’m seriously questioning the extent of his culinary creativity.

  A man — or lizard — cannot live on PB&J alone.

  “I bought whole wheat this time,” is his only defense.

  I sigh and dig deeper into the grocery bag. Things start looking better. Bananas, apples, refried beans, SpaghettiOs.

  He hands me a cardboard box of kitchen supplies. “Figured you’d need ‘em.”

  My mood lightens, but I’m still mad he didn’t answer any of last night’s texts. It was New Year’s Eve for crying out loud. Come on.

  He spreads out on the sectional, crosses an ankle over a knee and drops his arm across the back of the couch. The pose makes him look like a businessman, but the black leather seat upgrades that look — short of a few gold chains — to gangsta.

  Marek vents a frustrated sigh. “Look, I apologized already. Brianna invited me over and her mom has this no-devices-at-the-dinner-table policy, so I turned my phone off and forgot to turn it on again.”

  I straddle a wheely chair and cross my arms over its back. “I saw you last night.”

  “You what?” He gives me a wide-eyed look.

  My head is bare and ridged and green, and I think I might have horns coming in, so it’s a lot to take in.

  I nod and wonder if he thinks I was stalking him. “I couldn’t take being stuck here, so I took a walk.”

  His arm pulls from the chair back and his propped leg drops to the floor. “Jeez, bro. What if someone saw you?”

  I squeeze the back of my wheely chair. “Someone did.”

  “Christ! Do you think the cops’ll come looking? Do you think your parents have reported you missing yet? Don’t want my mom getting in trouble for harboring a—”

  “Freak?”

  “Runaway,” he finishes, frowning.

  “I didn’t run away. I walked. And I left a note. Said I’d be back once I figured things out. I’m hoping Dad’ll take my word on that and let me be.”

  Marek leans forward and plants his hands on his knees. “You can’t go outside looking like—”

  “The Creature from the Black Lagoon? How else am I going to go out, with a Jason mask strapped over the top?”

  His frown deepens. “I mean you can’t go out at all.”

  “You want me to go insane? I can’t stay holed up in here. This place is like a morgue, minus the bodies. Damp, dusty and as silent as the dead.”

  Marek stands and puts his hands on his hips. Another great businessman-gangsta pose. “Better that than being out on the street.” His voice carries the undertones of a growl. “You could always pick up a rag and dust the place.”

  Is he serious? I picture my reptilian body dressed up as a French maid, waving one of those sticks with pink feathers glued to the end. I may be a lizard, but I’m still a guy under all these scales and ridges. And guys don’t dust.

  Even so, I can’t really protest because he’s right. Living out on the street, like John Sellers, is quite a few rungs lower than this place. I shouldn’t be complaining.

  I wonder about John. Hope he made it through the night okay with that rotten tarp wrapped around him.

  Going back to the subject of dusting, I say, “Yeah, I could,” in a tone that says, No way in hell.

  “Maybe you could get a few tips from Rebecca.”

  I freeze.

  He doesn’t realize he just said the worse possible thing anyone on the planet could say to me. Rebecca.

  The mere mention of her brings back the memory imprinted on my iPhone lock screen. A fall evening in the park. Rebecca wearing a ruby and rust sweater with a high neck that matches the colors in the falling leaves and makes her look like a queen. She’s leaning back on a giant boulder, shoulders forward, inviting me to sample her royal wares.

  I leap forward to last night’s conversation, which scribbles dark lines all over that sensual image until nothing’s left but a mess of black marker. Mentally, I tear up the picture and toss it in the trash.

  “We broke up.” Need I say more?

  Marek’s mouth splits open like a cracked egg. His eyes reflect shock. Then sympathy.

  There’s no place for that. Not here. Not now. And especially not from my best friend.

  I pirate Rebecca’s words. “Yeah. I said long distance relationships don’t work for me.”

  His arms drop against his sides. “Am I hearing you right?”

  I narrow my eyes. “You’re the one who said maybe the writing was on the wall.” Yup. Let him take the blame. “Guess I took you serious. Told her we
needed a fresh start.”

  Marek takes a moment to process this proclamation. “Well, your timing sucks, bro.”

  Yeah, the timing sucked. Majorly. But he doesn’t have to know I’m not the one who chose it.

  A new year. A new skin. A new girlfriend?

  Jeez. Marek’s right to think I’m mad to drop Rebecca. A long distance relationship is about the only relationship that’s going to work for a guy with a face like mine.

  I unwind from my seat. “Who needs a girlfriend, anyway? Maybe I’ll move to Tibet, become a monk.”

  “If there still is a Tibet,” Marek counters. “Besides, you and celibacy go together as well as ice cream and soy sauce.”

  I laugh. “You’re just jealous ‘cause I scored first.”

  If Marek’s eyes were lasers they’d cut me in two. “Didn’t realize getting laid was a competition.”

  He’s still hoping.

  Not to say my sexual magnetism got me to home plate more than once. If anything, it was a now or never situation. Rebecca was about to take off for NYC, and I was certain she was the one.

  Seemed only right we should bind our relationship before she left, and given how little time it took me to convince her, I figured she felt the same way. Though she seemed kind of upset afterward. Had she seen the writing on the wall that Marek talked about, all the way back then?

  Marek grabs his coat with an angry swipe. “I gotta go.”

  Already? “But you only just got here, man.”

  His eyes chill to their coldest stare. “And it only took you that long to piss me off. When you’re feeling a little less like a jackass, send me a text.”

  He stomps upstairs and the back door slams.

  A repetitive banging breaks me free from a dream where I was wandering through a derelict house with swinging shutters and a gecko walking across the stuccoed wall. The little guy stops and looks at me, with Jim’s eyes.

  Jim! God, I hope Mom remembered to feed him and cleans out his cage at least once a week. I may be a doofus when it comes to dusting, but I’m fastidious about Jim’s terrarium.

  More banging. I sit up from my sprawl across the sectional, squint at the side-table light I left on and check my smartwatch.

  Six thirty in the evening.

  Another series of bangs pierce the air like gunshots.

  D-flat.

  I could ignore it. I should ignore it. But I don’t.

  The basement stairs are made of some fancy wood, like black walnut or something, thick, and they don’t squeak. I creep up the staircase confident I’ll make no sound.

  As I reach the top, darkness wraps me like a cloak. I feel invisible.

  Laying a hand on the passageway wall, I wait for the next string of knocks.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

  The front door.

  I take slow steps through the nightclub, using the edge of the bar as a guide. A weak puddle of light pushes its way through the stained-glass window with the thorny rose.

  I reach the door just in time for the next round of knocks, and jump, like a foot.

  The muddy glow from the streetlights darkens as the triangular patch of a face presses against a section of clear glass. An eye with a strange violet glow stares into the room.

  Horror balls into a knot at my throat. I can’t breathe. My heart pounds in my ears, so I can’t hear. Because I recognize that eye. It belongs to the weird old lady I ran into the first time I came out here alone.

  Jesus. How does she know I’m here? And what does she want?

  I don’t expect answers to those questions because there’s no way in hell I’m opening that door. The Thorny Rose is like a fortress, so I know I’m safe from that madwoman. I head back downstairs.

  The constant barrage of knocking doesn’t surprise me. This time.

  Eight o’clock and the old bag is back. What the hell can she possibly want with me?

  My profile has changed somewhat since I ran into her on the street. Maybe an eyeful of my green scaly face is the antidote she needs to cure her obsession with knocking.

  I stalk up the silent staircase and cross the nightclub floor to the front door.

  Bang. Bang. Bang. “Is anyone in there?”

  Odd. Doesn’t sound like that old lady. And now she’s at the back door. Doesn’t matter though, because whoever it is, she’s seriously annoying me.

  I keep moving toward the front, check I’ve got my key, and unbolt the main entry. A soft creak sounds as I pull the door open a crack. I check for any sign of that old bag.

  None. I slip outside and shut the door behind me.

  The chilly air tries to grip me in a strangle hold. Didn’t occur to me to put on my coat. Not a bad thing, though. Except for the cold. All the more scales to scare her with.

  I circle the building on big bad wolf feet, careful not to slip, now the parking lot’s an ice rink. Whoever Marek’s mom hired to plow this place ought to be fired.

  By the time I reach the back door, the knocker has gone.

  I stare through the darkness. Don’t make me chase you round this building because I’ll win.

  More knocking. Further down, at the nightclub’s kitchen window, which whoever-it-is has to stretch to reach. The tap, tap, tapping sound is much quieter out here.

  “Hello? Is anyone in there? I-I…” Her teeth chatter somewhere inside a giant tan coat. “I’m pretty sure you’re in there.”

  Who’s she hoping to find? Grandma?

  Believe me, Little Red. I’ve got big eyes to see you with. Wish I could say the same for my teeth, but lizards are somewhat lacking.

  The back door has a small threshold, just deep enough to keep the rain off if you happen to be standing, waiting for someone to let you in. I slip into the shelter and wait, figuring she’ll either go away or come back to this spot to knock again.

  I hear a couple of sniffs coming my way. Chest inflated and shoulders squared, I prepare to make my move.

  Another sniff.

  Stepping out to face her, I take a Hulk pose, hands clenched and arms lifted. “What do you want?” I say with my best imitation of Drax the Destroyer.

  A penlight flashes in my face, then hits the ground. Her hands jerk out, barely making contact with my chest, yet I’m flying backward across the parking lot like the victim of a hit and run.

  I land on my ass on a patch of ice and go skating across the tarmac until I hit a snowbank.

  Holy shit. What is she?

  I’ve lost sight of her. I stagger to my feet, ready for the next onslaught, and wish I hadn’t dropped out of karate all those years back, when I was, like, seven.

  But she’s not coming at me. Where the hell did she go?

  Is she even a she? Maybe that was a guy with a prissy voice and a helluva set of pectorals.

  I slide across the icy asphalt toward the back door and spot her…him, whatever, lying on the ground, face up.

  Must’ve slipped and whacked her…his head. My answer to the cops when they find the body, I didn’t touch her…him, officer.

  They’d never believe me.

  I tiptoe to the back door, unlock it and dart inside. Door slammed, bolt shot, I slide onto the floor like a melting snowman…lizard.

  Not sure how long I sit there, pooled on the hardwood, before my conscience comes knocking with the same determination as that old lady with the violet eyes. Whatever happened to that person outside, he or she will freeze soon.

  Shit.

  I draw back the bolt and sneak a peek. Ugh. Still lying there, waiting for someone to come chalk a line around the body.

  Could be a trick, of course. I creep out into the cold and kick at one foot, then the other. No movement. Damn.

  As irritated as I am, I can’t abandon someone out in the cold to freeze to death, so I grab both ankles and pull the body across the threshold without ceremony. The head thunks a couple of times, but I don’t care. This is probably the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.

  Door closed, I flip
the light switch. Another stupid move, but I need to know what I’m dealing with, and my infrared-lizard-vision won’t tell me enough. I bend, cautiously, and pull back the hood.

  A pale face — with blue lips and a mess of shoulder-length curls that can’t seem to decide whether they’re brown or blonde — looks back at me. The facial structure suggests a girl. There’s only one way to know for sure, and I’m not going there.

  I resume my melted snow-lizard pose against the passage wall and wait.

  My butt goes numb and I’m cold. Judging by the color of her lips, so is she. I roll my eyes, pick her up and carry her down the basement stairs.

  The sectional is more convenient than the bed, so I dump her there. After loosening her coat, I cover the girl with a comforter, turn up the thermostat and wait.

  20

  Cadi

  I wake up warm with a super-soft comforter tucked under my chin. My crystal purrs with contentment, telling me I’m safe.

  Turning my head, I examine what’s around me, a windowless space that looks more like an office conference room than a bedroom or lounge. I’m lying on a leather sectional. A lamp, at the foot end of the couch, lights the room, which is devoid of life, except for me.

  A staircase leads up. Must be the way out. Unbarred and unguarded. I could leave, escape, but my crystal wants me to stay, because it’s found what it’s looking for.

  My stomach growls while I’m waiting for a spate of lightheadedness to pass. I sit up and realize my neck is sore. I must have passed out like I did when I lifted the tractor off Papa. Not a brilliant conclusion to a fight or flight auto-response. At least, not if the idea is survival. The guy with the lizard face could have eaten me for lunch.

  Speaking of lunch, my stomach complains again.

  The last thing I ate was fast food, who knows how long ago. I glance around and notice a clock on the wall. Ten to either midnight or noon. The agonized growl of my stomach suggests the latter, that I haven’t eaten in close to twenty-four hours.