by Somer Canon
I woke up to orange skies and a growling stomach. It was early evening. I had slept for several hours (as I had noticed while packing that time barely moved while I was away in Grenadine’s world which helped to explain how she was able to butcher and process her victims with such unbelievable speed) and was sorely in need of some comfort food.
I forced my stiff body out of the backseat of my car and pulled my belongings from the trunk and trudged to my room. After my stuff was deposited, I returned an email and text message to Anais explaining what I had accomplished that day with regards to the file. I had to give myself a minute to remember meeting with Bridget Maditz that morning, but I was able to promise Anais another write-up the next day.
I missed Ana. I wanted to go home to our apartment and sit on our couch with her and talk to her. I wanted to tell her about Grenadine and all of the shit I’d seen, and I wanted her to listen to me with that deep look of empathy that I loved about her and I wanted her to tell me that I did a good job with the interviews. I wanted her to make popcorn and watch trash TV with me and I wanted to hear the familiar sounds of her trying to quietly move about the apartment when she thought I was sleeping. Anais was where home was for me. She was my safe place and I needed her.
When Ana and I had met in college, we had a few of the same classes together, but we really bonded doing work study in the same building. We often pulled shifts together and we found that our personalities complimented each other. All four years of school we were friends and after graduation, she remained someone with whom I maintained close contact. After my relationship with Isaac fell apart and I moved out of our apartment, Ana became more than just my friend, she became my rock. She listened to me without interjecting with her own stories. She assured me that I wasn’t to blame for Isaac’s cheating and she was the one who got me thinking that casual relationships are a good balm for a bruised soul. It was even Ana’s mother’s couch that I went to until I found another apartment with a stranger for a roommate. I was working for a second-rate local publication in those days and doing freelance writing for various blogs. When my roommate wanted to move out when our lease renewal came up, it was Ana who took her place and that’s when we started Killer Chronicles. I quit my penny paper job and put all of my focus on Ana’s idea. She’s a lot smarter than I am and it was amazing to me to see her do the work to build an idea into something as great as Killer Chronicles. She’s an amazing woman and she’s someone I wish I could be more like.
I considered calling her, but she would know something was up from my voice and she would insist on coming down to be with me. I couldn’t have that, so I sucked it up and sent her a perky text telling her I’d be busy for the rest of the night with Terry.
The truth was, I did not want to see Terry. I probably never wanted to see him again. He was a mess and I didn’t have room for that. I wanted to be alone and pace my hotel room with bags of fast food littering the bed and fret over my fate without him there.
I was sitting in the Taco Bell drive-thru when he texted me asking what I wanted to do that night. I hit my head on my steering wheel in a nice show of melodrama and thought about what to say. Stephanie was gone. Forever. He’d want to know what happened to her. He might know that she was following me. He might suspect that I did something. I might have looked guilty if I suddenly stopped wanting to see him. I chickened out.
“Sorry, can’t tonight,” I texted back. “Got a lot of writing and note taking to do. Sorry.”
“No problem! There’s always tomorrow!” He texted back.
“Yeah right,” I said to myself, tossing my phone back into my bag and taking the food from the person at the drive-thru window.
My food accompanied me to a laundromat near my hotel so that I could wash all of my clothes. I’d given up on having a timeline for going home, so I sat on a hideous orange plastic chair from the 1970s and ate chalupas and read nonsense on my cell phone while my clothes were tossed about the enormous machines. Two hours later, I was back in my hotel when my phone dinged at me, alerting me to a text message. I was relieved to see that it was from Anais, but the content of the message did not make me happy.
“Hey, I know you’re busy right now, but I’ve got to address a problem with the name you’ve picked for your killer out there. I know you’ve got a thing for alliteration and usually that’s fine, except for when you tried to get me to call the site Killer Kronicles. I love you, but that was awful Chris. I thought it would be a neat idea, since this is our first hit-by-hit file, if we allowed our readers to name the murderer. I know it amps up the sensationalism, but I’ve got bills to pay. I’ve already put the offer up on the forum, and so far, there’s been some really good ones on there. Catchy ones. I hope you don’t let this one get you down. The work you’re doing down there is amazing and we’re getting a metric fuckton of hits on the site because of this and that’s all because of you. This was your idea and you were right on the button with it, so please don’t let something little like the name get to you. I’ll let you know my top three favorites tomorrow and we can decide together what the new name will be. Miss you, mami.”
I sat my phone back on the desk in my room and slumped back on my chair. I wasn’t angry, but I was a little hurt. Of course it wasn’t Ana’s fault and I wasn’t really upset with her, I was upset with myself. Why did I have these hang ups that made me so weird? I’d never be seen as a legitimate journalist if I couldn’t stop being so neurotic. I liked the Micksburg Mauler. There was a classic feel to it.
“You just use alliteration as a crutch. You get stuck on things that make you feel safe and comfortable and then you beat them into the ground until they no longer serve that purpose,” a voice said from my bed.
I yipped and spun around, mistaking the chair at the desk for the swiveling office chair in my home office and I hit my ribs and left breast on the hard curved back of the chair as I spun. I grunted and held my screaming boob and squeezed my eyes shut until the initial flashes of pain subsided to a dull, throbbing ache. When I opened my eyes again, I actually sighed when I saw Nummy Nellie sitting cross-legged on my bed, looking at me.
“Those are sensitive, aren’t they?” Grenadine asked me, gesturing to my offended breast.
“If you smash them into a hard chair back, then yes,” I said.
“I thought that I’d visit you to let you know that Stephanie D’Agostino’s car has been found abandoned near my pond, on that little country road. They’ll find her hands in a box by the telephone of the ASPCA tomorrow complete with a nice note. You’ll be busy tomorrow, Christina,” Grenadine said to me. My stomach knotted. I needed to deny having seen Stephanie at all that day.
“Why are you still in that form?” I asked, a bad mood taking a tight hold of me. “You said you didn’t care for this one and I’ve seen the real you. You’re very close to ruining Nummy Nellie for me.”
“Don’t assume that I do anything for your comfort at this point, Christina,” Grenadine said to me, getting off of my bed and rifling through my bag. She pulled a cellophane square out containing a Fudge Mound and opened it, sniffing the heavenly confection before folding the entire thing into her mouth.
“These are marvelous,” she said, closing her black eyes and savoring my last Fudge Mound.
“I like them too,” I said, wanting to keep her in a chatty mood, hoping she wouldn’t flip out and attack me for a third time that day.
“People used to make cakes themselves, but you buy them. Why would your kind unlearn a necessary skill like cooking and baking?” she asked me.
“We didn’t,” I answered. “Personally, I don’t bake or cook simply because I don’t want to. I’m busy with other things in my life. But there are a lot of people who cook and bake quite well. We didn’t unlearn anything. And those cakes you love? Those aren’t even widely considered to be good. They’re junk food that isn’t even considered a decent dessert.”
Grenadine frowned at me and started pacing the room. She was starting to lo
ok agitated. I got nervous and considered hiding under the desk until she went away.
“I remember,” she said softly. “There used to be honey cakes. They were dense and coarse. They were good, but not as good as this junk food you give me. I remember.”
“What happened that you forgot so much?” I ventured, more interested in keeping her talking than anything. I flinched when she turned to me too quickly, but she frowned and started pacing again.
“I don’t know,” she said. “There used to be a lot of us. Being around my kind, I think, would have kept me from forgetting. But I haven’t seen another of my own in a long time. I don’t know why. I don’t remember.”
She was pacing, wringing her little pink hands together. I’d get flashes of her real form every now and then, sort of like whatever glamour she had going on was losing its potency with her agitation. One minute I would be looking at a confused Nummy Nellie and then for just a split second I would be looking at the real Grenadine in her soft brown shift, bare feet stomping on the low-pile carpet of my hotel room.
“There were giants once. I remember that. We hunted them and tricked humans into killing them and then we would take control of their enormous castles. That’s why so many tales of my world involve all fairies living in castles. At one time, we did. I don’t know what happened to those castles, though. I don’t remember. Why don’t I live in a castle anymore? Where are the other fairies? How did I end up alone and with no memory?”
I became cognizant of a tremor going on beneath me. It was like when I lived in a small house and the whole house shook when the washing machine was on its spin cycle. The more she paced, the more questions she asked, the more things shook. It never swelled, it never got more violent, and it just stayed a soft, nearly silent tremor.
“Stop that,” Grenadine said absently, waving a hand at the air. The tremors stopped.
“What was that?” I asked, worried.
“It was me. I could split this hotel in two if I really concentrated on it. I could end this world with just a thought, Christina,” Grenadine said.
I swallowed hard and tried to look at something other than Grenadine. She was talking quietly to herself, barely registering my presence. Maybe in my attempts to remain a calm little cucumber, I had not taken the time to properly let my brain absorb exactly what it was that I was dealing with. I’d thought it, sure. But I hadn’t really let it sink in. Grenadine’s cheese had slipped right off of her pizza.
“Were you ever considered a deity?” I asked, hoping to get her to stop that damned pacing.
“Yes,” she answered. “I was worshiped, and sacrifices were laid out for my service. Oddly, that wasn’t my favorite time. I liked it better when humans left little cakes for me so that I wouldn’t bother them. It was bothersome when they felt that my good graces gave them bountiful crops and healthy children and my displeasure was the reason for their horse dying.”
“You didn’t like their adoration?” I asked.
“I wanted their fear and respect, not their problems,” she spat at me. “You things are so weak that you need to always have something to thank or blame for things that are simply nature.”
“Fairies are nihilists, then?” I asked. Grenadine stopped pacing and stared at me. I broke out into a cold sweat under that black-eyed stare, thinking that her chatty mood was about to turn abusive again.
“No,” she said. There was an undertone of belligerence to that word, but she was still talking, so I assumed that I was still safe.
“We worshipped higher powers and I assume those higher powers worshipped the even higher. Things just get bigger and more unimaginable the deeper you look. To know that you are but a speck on a map of monoliths, well that is humbling even to a fairy,” she said.
I was about to ask something else when she threw herself at me. Her small frame was on my lap, black eyes boring holes into me. She reached up and grabbed my left ear and yanked down, like a granny with an unruly child. I yipped at the pain and tried to hold very still, staring back at the fairy, not being defiant, but attempting to show a backbone.
“Why is it that you avoid your mother, Christina?” Grenadine asked, her usually deep voice going high-pitched in a mocking way. “You haven’t even told her how close to home you are. I bet she keeps a stash of your little cakes on hand just for you, hoping that you’ll surprise her and drop in someday. She just sits on her old, ratty couch and smokes and drinks beer and watches bad television and talks to her friends on the phone about what a great writer you are and what a shit your father was for dying on her. It would be good for her to get a visit from her only child, but here you are avoiding her. You want to have a conversation with me? Then I get to ask the questions, human.”
I looked back at her, relishing the feeling of her letting go of my ear. She huffed into my face in disgust and got off of me and flopped back onto my bed, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling like a moody teenager.
“You would think that it was terribly unfair if a family member avoided you like you avoid your mom. How is that okay?” Grenadine said, examining her fingernails.
“She wanted me to stay here and take care of her,” I said. “She wanted me to live in that dead-end town and work my ass off so that she could spend my money on Misty’s and Coors. She wanted to be my burden.”
“It was her turn,” Grenadine said. “She worked demeaning jobs to make sure that you always had your little cakes. She gave up on the idea of another man in her life because she knew that you would never be okay with another man taking your father’s place, a man who died because he was an alcoholic behind the wheel of a truck that weighed several tons, by the way. He killed a man and his little boy who were going out to get ice cream. He wasn’t that great.”
“He was a good man with a bad problem,” I said, tears welling up in my eyes at the memory of that awful night.
“He certainly wasn’t irreplaceable,” Grenadine said.
“I loved him,” I said.
“So did your mother,” Grenadine said, sitting up and giving me a level look.
I furiously wiped at my eyes, angry at the conversation that I was being forced into. Grenadine laughed.
My dad was a trucker. My dad was also an alcoholic. One night while hauling something or other a few towns over, he drunkenly veered into a lane of oncoming traffic on a two-lane road and plowed over a car containing a father and his four-year-old son. My father’s truck fell on its side. The man and his son were killed, and my father died from injuries a few hours later. My mother and I got the call that night and we rushed to the hospital. My mom wouldn’t let me into the hospital room to see my dad, something I never forgave her for since he later died. But the family of the man and his son came and prayed with my mom in that hospital. They held me on their laps, crying and praying. It was the scariest night of my life up to that point. They were at my father’s funeral, assuring my mom that if she ever needed anything, they would help. I’ve never since known people with such generous and kind dispositions. My mother felt too ashamed to ever contact them again and they faded into memory for me. It was an awful experience, not only because I lost my father, but because I really learned shame.
“Not so fun, is it?” she asked me. “Questions are easier to ask than answer, human.”
“My life is working just fine the way it’s going right now. My mom understands that I’m very busy. And I am. I’m busy here. I’m not sitting here slouching, I’m working and producing results,” I said, a bit of defiance coming out of me. Maybe I wasn’t the best daughter in the world, but I wasn’t very keen on a murderous fairy calling me out on it.
“You really are wonderful,” Grenadine purred. “You are not at all self-aware, my Christina. You really have no idea what a horrible person you are. You are capable of love, you DO love, but you are so very selective about it. Unless someone earns one of the very few slots in that heart of yours, they are nothing to you. You even have to fake your empathy. It’s marvelous to
watch you.”
I frowned at her, offended by what she said.
“I’m not a horrible person!” I said. “And I don’t fake my empathy! I’m polite and I’m warm and I do feel for those people.”
“You’re polite and you’re warm because you know it will make people more at ease with talking to you,” Grenadine countered. “And you can stop lying about feeling empathy, Christina. You know you fake it. You even take the time to wonder why it is that you can’t truly feel for the victims you interview.”
“If I’m so evil, why am I alive and other evil people end up in that stew pot of yours? Huh? You can’t tell me that a seventy-five-cent snack cake has redeemed my evil ways. How am I, the evil manipulator, alive, and Stephanie, who was really guilty only of being ambitious, bits of stew?”
Having her read my brain like it was a bestseller was a huge pain in the ass.
“Your mind really is marvelous,” Grenadine said, tilting her head back and looking as if she were hearing her favorite music. “It’s art, what I’m doing to you, and your nightmares are my brushstrokes.”
“You’re playing with me?” I asked, anger and fear boiling together in my chest.
“I’m going to make things very clear for you soon, Christina,” Grenadine sneered at me. “But for now, you’ve got company.”
A soft knock at my door nearly scared the greasy contents of my stomach right out of me. I turned to look back at Grenadine and she was gone. That disappearing trick was a devious way to make sure that she always had the last word.
I double checked my appearance in the bathroom mirror and aside from looking abnormally pale and tired, all was well. I looked through the peephole and mouthed a curse at the doorknob before opening it.
“I know you said that you were busy tonight, but something has happened, and I thought that, professionally, you would want to know about it,” Terry said to me, brushing past me and into my room.
Of course, I knew what he thought was breaking news. In fact, I knew a hell of a lot more than he did. I had to feign concern and interest.
