by Pete Kahle
“But the Comet. You tried to poison them! What kind of mother would do that?”
“Psh,” said the Other, “I knew you would be awake first. I knew the little ones were never in danger.”
“And the car?”
“You saw that they were belted in. And I told you not to open the door. It was you who yanked it open before I stopped the car, you who crashed it, you who put their lives in jeopardy. In that instant, your anger was more important than their safety.”
Danielle remembered that sickening moment when the purse tumbled onto the gas pedal and the car bucked forward. She remembered the crunch of impact, the awful panic. “You disappeared,” she said, grasping at anything to invalidate the Other’s arguments. “When I opened the door, you disappeared. How can you possibly care for the children if you can just vanish like that?”
“Now you are thinking like a Mother!” the wet voice exclaimed. “Finally. It’s a matter of strength, you see. At first, I could only do one thing on the list, then two, then more and more. The more of your life you delegated to me, the firmer I got. My price. Yesterday was one of the first times I manifested your form. I needed a barrier between us or else I couldn’t hold together. With you safely locked away for a few days though, it shouldn’t be a problem. I will become more solid each time the kids look up at me and say ‘Mommy,’ every time Kalani calls me ‘Ku’u Le.’ By the time you get out, I will be just as much flesh and blood as you are, but for one very important thing. I will have none of your weakness, none of the conflicting desires that pull your soul in twain. And you, you will be free.”
Free. That was rich. “Kalani will never accept you,” Danielle said.
The Other laughed again. “He already has. The day I drove your kids to school was only one of the first times I manifested your form. There was a time before. Kalani accepted me just fine then.”
Images flooded Danielle’s head. How could Kalani not know the difference between his own wife and this thing? It was disgusting. Every cuss word she’d ever known streamed through Danielle’s mind, molten fury behind them, but she clenched her teeth shut against their onslaught. The orderly was watching. He’d report back to the doctor. If she had an outburst now, it could mean she’d be held longer, which meant more time for this creature to get its claws into Danielle’s family.
“Can’t you see the gift I’ve given you?” said the Other. “Do you have such a stranglehold on everything you perceive as yours that you can’t open your hand for a moment in order to grasp something better?”
Danielle hung up the phone slowly and quietly while her emotions raged inside. She took deep breaths until her body was no longer quivering with anger, and then asked the orderly if there was a place she could be alone. She had some planning to do.
# # #
The sun had crested the horizon already, but its glow was filtered through dark, wispy clouds. Shadows pooled over a back yard that was pristinely kept, the grass short and the ferns trimmed. The morning was damp, and Danielle’s hands were clammy as they gripped the cold metal of the handgun.
She crouched in the yard, watching as the kitchen lights winked to life and the Other swept in, dressed, made-up, and smiling to herself. Danielle had been planning to spring forward and start shooting the moment the lights went on, but she found herself fascinated by the Other, wearing Danielle’s form as she pulled a cantaloupe from the fridge and efficiently cut it into wedges. When she was done, she assembled a line of ingredients and pulled a mixing bowl from one of the cupboards below the counter. Soon she was spooning the batter into muffin tins. Danielle couldn’t hear, but it looked like she was whistling.
Earlier that morning when Danielle had snuck into her friend’s house to steal the gun, Danielle had been so confident that this was the right thing to do, so sure, but watching the Other make breakfast filled her with inadequacy and doubt. The Other was better than her in every way. Was she so eager to trade her family’s caregiver for a lesser model? Was she so selfish?
But then she remembered the bloody gash on Kalani’s head and the betrayal on Cheyenne’s face. The Other had caused those things, not Danielle.
She found the safety switch on the gun and flipped it back as she straightened from her crouch in the semi-darkness. Her legs screamed in pain at the movement. It had to be now, before the children woke up.
She felt disconnected from her body as she snuck towards the sliding glass door. She’d only been in the psych ward for a week, but the panes of the door had already been replaced, the red scrawl across them gone. She kept to the shadows and pressed her back to the brick wall beside the door, the roughness of the brick catching on her T-shirt. She held the gun between her hands like a prayer, her hands trembling with each pulse.
She’d never fired a gun before. She’d have to be close. With the Other behind the counter, that meant that Danielle would have to go inside the house to be sure of her shot. She allowed herself two deep breaths before she spun and slung open the glass door, striding into the kitchen, her gun held unsteadily out in front of her in both hands, aiming at the form behind the counter. The Other’s eyes widened in shock, and it held up its hands. One of them had an oven mitt on it.
All the voices of doubt crashed into Danielle’s head then, jumbled with her feelings of hate, of jealousy, of pure vengeful justice.
She took one step forward to be sure she didn’t miss. That’s when the Other reached down into a drawer and came up with a gun of her own, her hand a blur. Danielle lunged to the right before she could even process the threat, and a gunshot ripped through the still morning like a cannon.
She grunted as she slammed into the tile floor, then scrambled forward on all fours. Shock obliterated all strategy. All that was left was frantic, adrenaline-fueled action, the need to survive. The Other rounded the edge of the counter, swinging her gun low just as Danielle grabbed the leg of a stool and heaved it the creature’s abdomen. It halted the Other for a bare second, and then it fired again, Danielle rolling away from the counter as bullets boomed, one, two, three, sending tile shattering every which way.
Danielle just remembered the gun in her own hand when the kid’s table halted her roll and the Other’s gun finally lined up with its mark. There was no place to hide, to run. But, then again, the Other had beaten her at everything else. Why not this?
“Wha’ hell?” yelled Kalani, running into the room with an overturned table lamp brandished in his fist like a club. The Other whipped its head around. The part of Danielle’s brain that was in react-mode saw an opening. She sprung to her feet and threaded her finger into the trigger guard, aimed it at the Other.
Kalani, bare-chested and in his sleep-shorts, stood stock-still. “I don’ know wha’s goin on, but stop. Now.”
The Other’s face suddenly took on a fearful cast. When her voice came out, it was trembly with fake vulnerability. “It’s the imposter,” the Other said. “She came in through the patio door.”
Kalani looked at Danielle, but there was no special recognition there. Danielle needed him on her side, and fast. She needed to say something that the Other wouldn’t know.
“Kalani!” she shouted. “We met at that oceanography class we both dropped. I was moping afterwards and you came up and said you needed some ice cream after that mess. It was the first time I ever had mac-nut flavor.”
The Other couldn’t possibly know such a detail. It . . .
“You had sorbet,” said the Other, “because you were going through that whole ‘no-milk’ thing. Remember when you fed me that dairy-free grilled cheese sandwich?”
Danielle couldn’t believe it. How could the Other know that? Kalani was having a hard time too. He was frozen in the living room with that stupid lamp, looking back and forth between them as if he could find some clue to their true identities by just looking.
“You lived in that crappy dorm room in Wainani,” tried Danielle.
“And worked as the R.A. so you wouldn’t have to pay,” said the O
ther.
“You lied to the other grad students,” said Danielle, but the Other finished the thought for her.
“Told them you were living with an auntie who was senile and didn’t like visitors.”
Danielle glared at the creature over her gun. How dare she pilfer her memories like that? She couldn’t help but notice that the Other’s gun wasn’t shaking like her own was.
“Kalani,” said the Other, “I don’t know how she knows all this, but look at her clothes. She’s all wet from being outside, her shoes are all muddy.”
Kalani looked at Danielle, and to her dismay, his eyes narrowed. No. Not him too. Him not believing in her would be worse than being shot. The tremor in her arms got worse, and the more she tried to steady her gun, the more it bobbed. The Other’s gun was still dead-on, and there was a glimmer of a smile on her lips.
Kalani let the lamp fall from his hands to the carpeted floor so he could put both hands on his head, his crazy hair poking up between his fingers. “Jus’. Quiet fo a second. Jus’ let me tink. If you--” he pointed at Danielle -- “ are de real one, den I been . . . . I don’ tink you are. You can’t be.”
“Kalani,” Danielle started, but he cut her off.
“No. No. I woulda known. You de bad one, de one she told me about.”
Danielle flicked her eyes to the Other. Yes, she was definitely smiling now, her eyes agleam with victory. If her power came from Danielle’s family accepting her, then this was going to solidify it for good. They’d never be rid of her.
“We have to kill it,” said the Other. “It’s the only way, Kalani. That’s why we bought the gun. We have to end this.”
Kalani’s eyes were swimming with tears, but Danielle could tell he was about to nod when Cheyenne walked into view behind him, stuffed Dolphin in her hands. “Daddy?” she asked in a thin, scared voice. “Mommy?” The question in those two simple words was plain. What is going on? What was that noise? Why does everyone look so upset?
Her face looked much as it had the day the Other had attacked Kalani. Cheyenne had thought her home was safe and if that day hadn’t shattered that concept, here were two people who looked like her Mommy pointing guns at each other.
In that moment, the thinking part of Danielle’s brain kicked in. She imagined shooting the Other, what witnessing that would do to her daughter. Cheyenne would never recover.
Danielle crouched down, slowly, and placed her gun on the plastic table behind her, making sure to flip the safety switch on the side. Her hands were shaking as she put them up in the air beside her head, still half-crouched. “I’ll leave,” she said, taking a step back to the glass door to show she meant it. “I won’t come back. I… I’ll...” What could you say? She took another step backwards. She’d leave the islands. Go back home to the mainland. If that’s what it took to save her daughter the nightmare of seeing her mother gunned down in front of her, so be it.
The Other’s gun followed Danielle as she stepped back. “We can’t let her go, Kalani,” the Other said. “She’ll just come back.”
“I won’t,” said Danielle. “I promise.” She took another step. A few more and she’d reach the sliding glass door, then turn and run away.
“You’re right,” Kalani said to the Other. “Give me the gun.”
For a brief instant, a smile bloomed on the Other’s face, wider than was natural, but Kalani didn’t see it. He stepped forward and took the gun.
“Kaikamahine,” he said, turning to Cheyenne, “I need you go back fo ya room now. You havin’ dem bad dreams. Daddy gon’ be wit you in a sec once he scares dem monsters away.”
Danielle expected some sort of resistance, but Cheyenne looked up at him, then at the scene in the kitchen, and just said “I can leave my lights on?”
“Yes, baby,” he said. “I’ll be there right soon.”
Cheyenne gave Danielle one last look and then padded back down the hallway. Danielle was so relieved to hear the bedroom door shut that she almost forgot she was about to be killed. She also realized she’d stopped moving backwards, and took another step.
Kalani raised his gun and pointed it at the Other.
“I don’ know how you know all dat stuff about me, but you got ten seconds to leave before I pull dis triggah, whether you wearin’ my wife’s face or not.” His voice was clear and quiet, like it only was when he was truly angry. All his confusion was gone.
“Kalani, no!” said the Other. “Last night we—”
“Don’ you tell me ‘bout last night,” he snapped back. “Now you got eight seconds.”
“But—”
“I don’ know what kine sick game you playin’, but I know what you are, so shut up and get out of my house.”
“I’m your wife,” the Other pleaded.
“You’re an imposter,” he said, “and you’re not welcome. Now go.”
The Other looked over at Danielle then, its eyes pleading. For what? For mercy? For the permission to stay here? “Leave,” said Danielle, feeling a surge of triumph. Her husband knew. He knew!
The Other’s face went ashen, it’s eyes wide. “Why?” it mouthed, but no sound came out, because its lips flaked away like paper. The flesh of her face came next, unfurling like an onion as the Other fell to the broken tile floor. When it hit, its entire body dissolved into mismatched paper, all balled up to form her shape, but unspooling now into loose sheets. There were all kinds of paper. Old receipts. Torn envelopes. White pharmacy bags. Notebook paper. Printer test sheets. They spilled onto the floor, years and years of lists.
Danielle stared in awe and then lifted her gaze to Kalani, who looked equally astonished. He didn’t say anything. He simply stepped right through the paper and swept up Danielle in a hug, crushing her head to his bare chest. “Ku’u Le,” he whispered into her hair.
“How did you know?” she asked, pushing back form the embrace so she could look up into his obsidian eyes. “You seemed like you thought—”
“You didn’t want Cheyenne to see,” said Kalani. “I knew den. Dat… ting... it didn’t care. It jus’ wanted you dead. But you... Would you have really stayed away?”
Danielle looked within herself and answered truthfully. “Yes,” she said. “If it meant you all were safe.”
Kalani shook his head, kissed her brow, then gestured to the gun in his hand. “Let’s trow these God-awful tings away, and go see Cheyenne. Da boys too.” He pointed at the gun Danielle had brought in, now resting on the plastic kids’ table.
She picked it up, and they hid both of them up above the cupboards, vowing to get rid of them the first chance they got. “We’ll get dat later,” Kalani said, gesturing to the remains of the Other. “Right now, the kids need dere Momma.”
His words filled her with warmth. The kids needed their Momma. Danielle smiled. Their Momma needed her kids too.
She took Kalani’s hand and they went down the hallway together, leaving the mound of old lists behind them.
Jared Oliver Adams lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he writes, explores, and dabbles in things better left alone. He holds two degrees in music performance, a third degree in elementary education, and is utterly incapable of passing a doorway without checking to see if it leads to Narnia.
Check him out at http://www.jaredoliveradams.com/
The Esurient Hyrst
By Michael Picco
I didn't know what "esurient" meant when I was thirteen. I did know what hunger was, in the way that we tend to define it in the industrialized world — although, I had only just started to discover that it meant something more than satiating my body's need for sustenance. I only had a child's understanding of lust. And, a child's understanding of the dangers of the world.
I had just turned thirteen when I first saw the esurient hyrst. That is, me and my first girlfriend, Jesse. We had hiked to it during one of those impossibly long, languid summer days, when the summer thunderstorms pile high horizon to horizon, and things such as hungry trees seem the stuff of fever dreams�
� but, I am getting ahead of myself.
Jesse and I terrorized the small town that we lived in the summer of '78, as only two kids on bikes can do. Me, on my Black Widow banana-seated, Huffy 5-speed and Jesse astride a formidable and aged 3-speed adult Schwinn. Hers was a hand-me-down from her cousin and came with all of the accoutrements that you'd expect from a bike made in late sixties and early seventies: mud fenders, chain guards, wide-set handlebars, a basket and even a bell. Jesse's Mom, Cheryl, had attempted to paint it a gaudy and certainly all-too-girly pink, but the paint flaked revealing the gangrenous gray green paint underneath. But Jesse didn’t seem to care. The bike was far too big for her and she'd spend most of our afternoon rides perched precariously between the basket on the front and the duct-taped seat, her knees endlessly banging into the basket bottom, announcing our arrival wherever our adventures took us. I often rode behind her, for reasons that I couldn't initially explain, except that I had become steadily more mesmerized by the burgeoning curve of her hip and the gossamer golden hair that covered her long, summer-bronzed legs.
Although Jesse was only six months older than me, she was an entire grade ahead of me in school. This made her the youngest in her class and me, the oldest in mine. Jesse lived with her mom a couple of houses down the road from where my "typical nuclear family" lived — about 7 miles outside of town. The neighborhood there was fairly rural, and consisted of small homes with large yards dominated by rusting Airstream travel trailers on wooden blocks. It wasn't much of a kid's neighborhood, really. It seemed to us then to be over-populated by caustic retirees and vicious dogs — neither of which had any use for us other than hostility and suspicion. Although Jesse teased me that I was one of the "little kids" in the neighborhood, we were, in fact, the only kids (with the exception of Bill Demsey, but he was about 4 years older and used to shoot at us with his BB gun as we rode past his house). I still like to think that it was more than mutual isolation that brought us together that summer. Maybe that is just wishful thinking or the romantic tint that seems to stain memory.
