Billy Purgatory: I am the Devil Bird

by Jesse James Freeman

  They began to dance and Billy imagined that all those space-alien-leprechaun imaginary friends reappeared around the two of them. All the girls were jealous and all the guys gave Billy a smile and a big thumbs-up.

  Anastasia teased words into Billy's ear, “This doesn't have to end.”

  Billy squeezed her closer, feeling her hair on his cheek as they danced slow. “Yes, it does.”

  “No.” Her fingertips drifted up his back as she swayed. “There's no reason that it does.”

  Anastasia's fingertips closed into Billy's. “We could be together…”

  “Forever?” Billy asked over the music. “Is that your new lie?”

  “It's only a lie if you don't believe.” Her words sounded like truth to Billy. He couldn't sense the desperation.

  “Why is it so important to you? Why would anyone want to be with me forever?”

  Anastasia gripped Billy's hand tighter and pulled her face from his shoulder to look him squarely in the eyes. “I don't know.”

  She seemed like she was telling the truth.

  “That's not a good enough reason, Anastasia. I'm as close to being a high school drop-out as anyone can be. I don't have any idea where I'm headed after they finally cut me loose. That's if I make it through the summer.”

  “You're not good at mapping out your destiny, Billy Purgatory.”

  “No, I'm not. I'm not smart like that. I'm still a dumb kid and you're…”

  She stared a hole into him and the look made him not say the word, but he didn't completely shut up.

  “This dance is it.”

  Anastasia kept giving Billy that look. It was so emotionless and cold. She was a lioness suddenly questioning whether or not to finish her dinner. He had never seen her eyes so questioning before, but Billy hadn't a clue what sort of internal struggle might be ripping at her mind or heart.

  Her dead heart.

  Anastasia went soft again, and before Billy could protest any longer or say another word she let her arms slip around him again and she kissed him. Her lips found her way to his neck and Billy felt his muscles tighten in anticipation. He was going to have to push her off him again. It always ended this way with them. His mind was filling with plans: how he could trip her, what he could use as a weapon, how many steps to his skateboard, the nearest exit.

  She kissed Billy's neck as he began to flex, but her fangs never did any dirty work or tried to draw blood. She only whispered one last hope into his ear.

  “Well, if this is the last dance, Billy Purgatory, then let's make it a good one.”

  Chapter 14

  Prophesy Set On Stone

  Lissandra had watched the little fawn, which she had cradled the snowy night Billy Purgatory made his way into her woods, grow from baby to mother to finally great-great grandmother. Each subsequent female of the line springing forth from the womb was just as perfect as the one before her. It made Lissandra happy, this order of nature she was able to witness. A never-ending gift from the gods.

  This particular goddess was not whispering in Lissandra's ear, however. She was growing up and forming her opinions all her own and it pleased me.

  The gypsy girl spent less and less time at school until one morning she didn't bother going, and that morning became a whole season and then a year going on two. Lissandra knew that she was a part of the chaotic hydra that had become mankind and as such could never fully separate herself from her lost brothers and sisters, but just because you're part of the family doesn't mean you show up at each ever increasing Armageddon teasing reunion.

  Cities filled with men and women all climbing over one another for space and scraps of food and shiny things were of no interest to Lissandra.

  Humans now built their homes and temples upon the decay of those who had come before them. They never considered investigating what lay trapped in the layers of their past.

  There wasn't much about how they chose to live that made sense to Lissandra, but she had studied them enough to realize that you didn't have to dig too far down into the legacy of human civilization to discover what was still living in the cracks between ages. That which refused to perish or ever detach itself from the bone and tomb of man.

  Evil.

  On the night not long after Lissandra's seventeenth birthday, she followed the newest fawn into the clearing and found herself walking up one side of the bridge with the spray painted brand of PURGATORY. Lissandra was only momentarily shocked when she watched the ears of the deer point up towards night's new stars high above.

  The deer gave Lissandra a startled look, and its eyes urged the girl to go with it as it turned from her side and sprang away into the trees from whence they had come. The gypsy watched the deer flee and turned her attention back to the arched cobblestone bridge. She could feel that there was another on the opposite side of the path, but she couldn't see who was there due to the steep angle before her.

  The gypsy girl began her ascent up the sloping arch of stone. When Lissandra found the high point of the cresting arch, she looked down, and there was the girl with the dark hair, darker dress and green eyes standing quietly at the base of the other end of the bridge.

  The gypsy of the wood folded her arms as she peered down at those eyes that seemed to glow in their green even though there were no moon rays yet to reflect off them.

  Lissandra didn't even attempt to mask her disdain. “What do you want, Anastasia?”

  The vampire girl took two steps onto the stones in black laced up boots. “I come with a gift, gypsy.”

  The girls both had their arms crossed, sizing one another up. The unspoken thought in each of their brains was completely irrational, but it was there just the same.

  What does he see in you?

  Anastasia stopped the posturing first, which angered Lissandra in a way but did not make her nearly as angry as when the vampire lifted a familiar dark leather bag to the eyes of the gypsy.

  “I have your grandmother's cards,” Anastasia said with not near the emotion that was showing in Lissandra's eyes.

  “How could you have them?”

  “What do you care how? Isn't it enough that I do have them and that I offer them to you now?” the vampire girl asked with bittersweet charisma.

  “I will not be tricked by you, Anastasia. I'm no foolish boy on a skateboard.”

  “It's not a trick,” Anastasia promised. “You can have them.” The dark girl raised her arm, letting the bag with the cards in it dangle before Lissandra.

  “They are of no use to me if you offer them. If you've so much as laid a fingernail on them their magic is forever fouled by your evil.”

  Anastasia let the leather swing playfully. “Still in the bag.”

  Lissandra uncrossed her arms, and try as she might, she began to take the steps down the bridge towards the literal representation of everything she hated in the world.

  “My Master was a big fan of your grandmother's work.”

  Lissandra reached for the bag of cards, but Anastasia swept them away, faster than the gypsy could grasp.

  “Not so fast. We're trading for them.”

  Lissandra's eyes went hot, and she nearly spit out the word, “Lies.”

  Anastasia shook her head. “No, little girl, truth. Fortunes and prophesy.”

  Lissandra crossed her arms again so that she might stop herself from jumping the vampire and doing her best to rip from her smug face the fangs dripping over her smile.

  “You want me to read the cards for you?” The more Lissandra began to understand of the meeting on the bridge the more she was disgusted by it.

  “I need to know some things about my future.”

  Lissandra laughed at the vampire and cut with her words. “Monsters have no fortunes.”

  Anastasia shrugged, dangling the bag once again, “Is that anyway to talk? I'm pretty certain that you and I have a lot in common, gypsy Lissandra.”

  “How could that possibly be so?” But the gypsy knew the dark turn the conversation was abou
t to take.

  “Well, you and I are the only two girls who've ever kissed him.” Anastasia could not contain her glee. “I'm sure it stops around there though. I dare not think that you would have enjoyed the other things which he and I…”

  Lissandra snatched the bag of her grandmother's tarot cards from the vampire girl. “You wish a fortune? So, you will have it.”

  Anastasia nodded and let herself drift delicately to a seated position crossing her legs on the stone bridge. Lissandra sank too, with much more caution in her movements.

  Putting Anastasia from her mind for a pleasured moment, Lissandra took hold of the drawstring of the bag, which had belonged to her grandmother, and pulled. She was hesitant at first to slip her fingers into the bag, knowing that if the cards were not hidden within that she would have to endure all of the heartache that had overtaken her for so long after losing the old woman.

  Lissandra's fingers did in fact find happiness as they caressed the tarot deck, the images that spelled the fortunes of so many, painstakingly painted by the hand of the woman who had raised Lissandra as a little girl.

  Anastasia was still smiling when Lissandra looked up, her gypsy princess fingers moving of their own machinations, shuffling the deck.

  “I told you,” Anastasia said to her.

  Anastasia pulled her knees to her chest, readjusting how she sat on the hard stone. “Poor Lissandra. For someone with a legacy of reading fortunes you certainly know little of destiny.”

  Lissandra stared into the face of the vampire sitting across from her, as if they were two girls passing the time by sneaking off and playing a child's game.

  “Nothing is ever truly lost to this world.” Anastasia was sure of her words. Lissandra was not sent to a peaceful place by them though. This was the ego of a monster talking, a thing that was far too thrilled that it had cheated death and in doing so cheated the entire universe as well.

  Lissandra pulled the first card from the deck, laying it on the stones between she and Anastasia.

  It was The Fool. Both girls took the image in and then shared a look with one another. The card could only mean one person.

  “Grandma should have painted a skateboard under that idiot minstrel's feet.” Anastasia grinned.

  Lissandra agreed, but ignored the giddy talk of the evil soulless cheerleader whose fortune was playing out perfectly so far. The gypsy pulled the next card from the deck.

  The Tower.

  A horde of barbarians. Grandmother had given such detail too that you could see the greed and damnation in their faces as they swarmed about the base of toppling stone skyscraper. Righteous lightning from a thick-clouded smog-sky had cleaved and shattered it a third of the way up, and those trembling in the high windows had the look of the judged on their faces.

  Fire was overtaking the hemorrhage of flying stone where the lighting had struck the side of the high keep.

  The gypsy fortune-teller couldn't take her eyes away from the flames her grandmother had painted in orange and gold rings about the tower.

  Anastasia seemed fascinated with them too, and only broke the silence to ask Lissandra, “Who's reading whose fortune here?”

  Lissandra looked up. “What is it you want to know, vampire?”

  Anastasia leaned back. “Just keep dealing until I tell you to stop.”

  Chapter 15

  The Greasy Utopian

  Billy Purgatory was nine years old as he went through the motions of unlocking the front door:

  CLICK! CLICK! CLACK!

  There stood an Indian. He was old and really dressing the part up right. He smelled like jerky – or Billy was most likely thinking about jerky at the time and simply synestasia-ed the moment.

  “My people are all but gone. The way we once lived has long ago ended.” This Indian Dude was serious and Billy wondered if maybe he was selling insurance – Billy had no idea what that was, but he figured if someone was gonna talk about that insurance stuff they'd be all serious. “The time has come when the Great Spirit would soon gather those of us together to bring forth a great warrior and send him to the world - the very last hope for us all. Do you understand?”

  The Indian's eyes were black rock circles beading down on Billy.

  Billy Purgatory only half considered Indian eagle-eyes though - he was busy eating barbecue potato chips.

  “I like these better than hot rinds. They turn my fingers orange.” Billy wasn't kidding either; he really liked having orange fingers, and he felt he might better state the serious back at the guy.

  “You REALLY understand then?” This Indian was a broken record.

  Billy nodded and crunched all at once. “Yeah, I get it. I'm the great warrior.”

  The Indian pulled up his coup stick and smacked Billy in the head so hard it knocked the boy over. Orange chips went flying in the most serious fashion.

  “No! Stupid! You stay home. Get it?”

  The Indian sent the feathered stick at Billy again, right between the eyes this time.

  “Get a job. Maybe at a gas station. Skateboard until you get too fat. Hopefully get arrested.” The Indian guy sure could scream for an old geezer. “Ride this one out. We got it!”

  Billy looked up, dumbfounded. “This test I took at school said I should drywall. Like that?”

  “Whatever keeps you out of sight. Don't try and be special.”

  “I'm pretty good with spray paint.” Billy rubbed his noggin, and normally he'd have cracked someone in the gutter balls who had just hit him across his head with a stick. This was way too freak-zone though, and Billy started to understand why people hated insurance salesmen.

  “Sniff deep. Take chances. The divine warrior is already chosen by the Spirit Gods, and he ain't you. Keep his path clear.”

  “I could work on the side of the highway.” Billy figured this one might shut the Indian down.

  The Indian turned to go. “When everything starts falling apart, run, kid.”

  Billy stood up shaking his head. His board was in the corner of the room sitting on top of a stack of old newspapers.

  “There's no room for you at the inn at the end of creation.”

  Billy shut the door, noticed that the end of his nose was all orange when he caught his reflection in the brass doorknob. Billy didn't answer the door anymore all week and hid out anytime he found himself with a bag of bbq chips and some ‘Billy time.’

  II

  Billy Purgatory did in fact graduate from high school. There is much contention regarding how this came to pass, but most agree that it involved school administrators and accountants meeting together in secret in a locked room and running projections as to just how much damage Billy might cause if he had to repeat his senior year one more time.

  The numbers in this respect were in Billy's favor.

  A brief stint in summer school was decided as the perfect compromise and Billy found himself free from the learning environment afterward, supposedly forever, as even the junior colleges and trade schools had been put on high alert to flag any application sent to them in crayon and containing the word Purgatory. Any envelope with orange stained fingerprints on it was to be filed immediately in the trash bin.

  Not that Billy sent any such letters to anyone.

  Billy was still living at home then, and had been working part time for Mr. Buckworth Golden at the gas station on the corner of Smearman Street and Highway 10. Billy didn't really remember the time when the Indian jacked him in the face on his own doorstep, but something inside the young man told him that he was in the right place at the right time anyway. Billy even used the word destiny a lot.

  Most never asked him to elaborate on his destiny as he was powerless to do so. He just stuck the label on his life and ran with it.

  Mr. Golden went through a long period of repeating the phrase, “Don't touch that, dumb-ass” over and over. Billy pumped gas and cleaned windows of cars running up and down the highway. Buckworth took care of all the heavy mechanic lifting. Things went on l
ike this for a few years, while Billy was still finishing up high school and until Buckworth Golden fell down one afternoon out behind the station in pain and was rushed to the local hospital. It was discovered that the old man had a faulty gallbladder and would be out three weeks.

  Billy watched his boss get loaded into the back of an ambulance on a stretcher, telling him “not to worry.” Just before the doors got slammed shut by the paramedics, Buckworth pointed a dead serious finger at Billy and stated more crucially than ever, “Don't touch anything, dumb-ass.”

  Billy sadly waved the ambulance off.

  When Buckworth Golden finally returned to his gas station empire, he found, not much to his amazement, that Billy Purgatory had not listened to a word he'd said and had, to Buckworth's amazement, repaired eleven cars. From then on the boss took it easy, and Billy took over as head mechanic.

  The Gods themselves were just as shocked as anyone that there was something besides skateboarding that Billy Purgatory could do well.

  Billy's boss came to the shop less and less, even talked about retiring and maybe selling out to the kid. With Billy's hands full fixing radiators and changing oil he one day came to work and found that there was a new addition to the gas station payroll.

  Elizabeth was someone that Billy hadn't paid much attention to while they were in school with one another – not that Billy paid much attention to anyone there. Now that school was over, Billy had even less of a social circle than he'd had when he periodically showed up for classes. Most everyone he had known was off living lives far away from this place and even Pop had taken to vanishing for long periods of time. Lissandra never came out of the woods anymore and Billy was too busy to go looking for her, even though he kind of missed her sometimes. Anastasia and anything weird or fantastic had long since become a memory and didn't even seem real anymore.

  Billy was letting the backyard of his place slowly grow up and never saw the Devil Bird anymore.

  So, there was Elizabeth now. She was always smiling and had short blonde hair that was seriously cute on her, and big blue eyes that lit up just a little when she'd talk to Billy – even though their conversations at first were mostly centered on business. The interior of the gas station was turned into a little convenience store that Elizabeth ran and she had a penchant for wearing jean shorts and her little store apron over a T-shirt with the logos of bands that Billy had never heard of but that Elizabeth loved.