Briar

by Ripley Proserpina

  Cupping her cheeks in her hands, she examined her face. It could have been her face that melted, not her back. As it was, her scars horrified her. An ever-present reminder of the need to be careful. She couldn’t forget again.

  Mentally, she groaned. Would there ever be a time when she forgot the mess she’d made the night before? She’d thrown up in front Professor Nors and Marcus. Now, if she was ever to see them again, she’d picture the sight she must have made—screaming, sweating, and then, the piece de resistance: barfing.

  In order to distract herself from reliving her embarrassment, Briar forced herself to turn her thoughts to her graduate program and opened her laptop. Just the idea of taking classes with some of the most acclaimed researchers in the world made her pulse race. On Monday, she would have a molecular biology class, and then a meeting with her graduate research advisor to take the first steps in defining what her thesis would be.

  She’d been thinking about her research and thesis since she’d made the decision to study biology. What caused her genes to mutate?

  Opening her old files, she scanned articles she’d already read a thousand times, but the answers weren’t there. Why had this happened to her and how could she stop it from happening to anyone else?

  The darkness was no place to live. Briar opened a new tab on her computer and searched for Professor Nors. She’d saved his articles to her computer, but it was his faculty profile page she wanted to read. Unlike the other professors, his didn’t list office hours or class schedule. Somehow, he managed to lecture on a whim and focus primarily on his research.

  What had made him run away last night?

  His face, when people in the atrium at the lecture hall had surrounded him, had been panicked, eyes skittering as if to find the nearest exit and escape. The man had gone from caring, to distant, to considerate, to angry, and then back to distant—a series of emotions that were impossible for her to follow.

  Her phone chimed, and she glanced down and then at the blackout curtains. It was dusk. Standing, gloves in place, she flicked the curtain to the side, allowing a small shaft of light through. Without checking the weather on her phone, she had no idea what sort of day it was. A warm Indian summer or a brisk New England autumn day—it didn’t matter when she had to wait for the night.

  No. Things were different now. She’d made the decision to rejoin the day and take whatever precautions she must in order to be part of the light.

  Ironically, it was dark out. Heavy, gray clouds hung low in the sky, and the cars speeding by her apartment splashed water onto the sidewalk. The people on the street held umbrellas above their heads, hurrying to wherever they were going.

  Clouds and rain. The best possible weather for a girl like her. Donning her hat, Briar slid her gloves onto her hands and her backpack on her back, fairly bouncing outside. The other wonderful thing about the rain was that she didn’t standout in her hat and gloves. People assumed she was cold, not odd.

  She locked the door to her apartment and faced the street. Her plan was to make it back to BC and explore the campus more. She wanted to see McMullen Museum, though it would probably be closed. Even in the dark and the rain, it’d be beautiful because it was hers. Her college. Her plan. Her future.

  The T, Boston’s subway system, wasn’t hard to find. Soon, she was on her way to Brighton. Briar tried not to stare at the people coming and going, or rubberneck every time the train made a stop. West Virginia was a long way from Boston and couldn’t be more different.

  Beckley, her hometown, was nestled in the Appalachian Mountains, which made it feel closed in on all sides. Boston wasn’t like that. Yes, there was a lot of leafy greenness, but everything was so stately. Houses were built side-by-side—stone, mortar, brick, leaded glass.

  “Commonwealth Avenue. End of Green Line.” A robotic voice announced as the train came to a jerking halt. She was one of only a few people left on the train, but she was nearly crushed at the influx of people trying to get on. Elbowed and shoved, Briar had to stand on the sidewalk to get her bearings. In the time she’d been traveling, the rain had stopped and the streetlights had come on. The darkness surrounded her like a blanket—safety.

  A wide drive led to the McMullen Museum, but she could make out the building, windows still bright, from the sidewalk. The interior section of the building was illuminated and made of glass. While she wanted to appreciate the architecture, the survival part of her brain made a note of the glass-enclosed stairwell and how she’d have to avoid it if she was ever to get inside.

  A wrought-iron gate stood open, and she started up the drive. Behind her, the sidewalk was crowded with people leaving BC and headed to the T she’d just left into the city. It was Saturday night, and even though she was trying to fit in, she managed to stand apart again. She wanted to explore the campus and get into the museum, while everyone else was looking for a bar or excitement.

  The closer she got to the entrance, the more uncertain she grew. The last twenty-four hours made her wary, and with her luck, she’d end up tripping through the plate-glass window.

  Forcing herself to step forward, she peered in through the door, trying to make out some of the exhibits. Supposedly, there were beautiful Renaissance tapestries inside.

  “Museum reopens at ten tomorrow,” a deep voice said, and Briar jumped, spinning and covering her heart with her hand.

  “Yes. I know.” She smiled nervously at the security guard, trying to convey how non-threatening she was. Imagine if it was daylight, and she was wearing her protective clothing. She’d look like a cat burglarizing gardener. “Sorry,” she continued. “I was trying to peek.”

  “You a student here?” he asked.

  Reaching into her purse, she took out her wallet and showed him her BC student ID. “Yes, sir.”

  “Came to a museum instead of finding a party?” He had a thick Boston accent, and the word “party” came out “pah-ty.”

  “Yes, sir.” She wasn’t going to explain her day-is-night, night-is-day schedule. Truth be told, she’d be a fantastic party animal. She’d been staying up all night for years. Now, slowly but surely, she was becoming diurnal again—active during daylight hours.

  “The museums in the city stay open later.” There it was again, late-ah. This might be her favorite part of being in Boston.

  “I start school Monday. I’m a graduate student,” she explained. “No parties for this girl, and I’m still exploring.”

  At that, he sighed and rubbed his hand down his face. “Uh. I probably shouldn’t do this, but I’m locking up anyway. Come inside, and you can check out the tapestries on the lower level. You’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “Thank you.” She hadn’t expected to get inside. A private tour—for fifteen minutes anyway.

  Boots clicking against the stone steps, she followed the guard inside. A woman, hair gathered in a bun, glanced up when they came inside. “Hello.” Her eyes flicked to the guard, and she raised her eyebrows in question.

  “Student. I’m giving her a couple minutes as we shut down.”

  “Okay.”

  Briar had expected more sideways glances and suspicion, but both guards waved her on her way. “Thank you,” she said as she walked by the desk, eyes already trained on the muted-red tapestry she saw hanging on a wall.

  The closer she got, the clearer the image became. A man wearing a red cape knelt at another man’s feet. She read the small plate. Emperor Caesar Augustus Receiving the Spoils of War. The cape held her attention because the rest of the tapestry was done in beautiful golds and blues. It swirled around the man’s neck, spilling onto the ground. One step closer, and she stopped. Suddenly, the cape stopped being a cape, and instead became blood. Blood poured from the supplicant’s neck, pooling at Caesar’s feet.

  Moving away quickly, she passed a series of tapestries about Venus and Adonis. What was the story with them? Venus was the goddess of love, and Adonis was handsome. She knew that much.

  “Adonis’s beauty attr
acts the goddess, but he is young and only interested in the hunt. Venus sees him and falls in love with him. She begs him for a kiss, and he refuses. He tries to get away, but she holds on to him and won’t let him escape.”

  “Awful woman,” Briar replied, shifting to see who spoke.

  “Hello.” It was the man from yesterday, the rude one.

  “You?”

  “Me.” Bright, white teeth flashed in a bitter smile. His handsome face was serious as he fixed his attention on the tapestry again. “One of those women who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Are you like that?” He faced her suddenly, and she stepped back at the hard, cold glare he gave her.

  “I suppose with some things.” The words felt as if they were pulled from her. She didn’t want to answer him or confide in him when he looked at her that way.

  “With men?”

  Her face tingled where heat seeped into her cheeks, and she cursed her pale skin. She didn’t have any experience with men, and she knew it had to be obvious. Therefore, he had to be making fun of her. Instead of answering, she stepped around him to stare at the next picture. More blood.

  No.

  Another red cape.

  She read the title: Desperata Venus Retia Comburit. “What does that mean?” she whispered, forgetting about the angry man in the face of Venus’s sadness and Adonis dying on the blood-red cape beneath him.

  “Adonis died, gored to death by a wild boar.”

  “Was she the boar?” Briar asked, remembering other stories of gods and goddesses taking the form of animals in order to harm mortals.

  “No, but some believe it was due to her interference that Adonis went hunting the next day and was killed,” he answered.

  “How?” Interest piqued, she forgot about his earlier rudeness and waited for him to answer.

  “If she hadn’t stopped him from hunting in order to beg a kiss, he’d not have gone out into the woods the second day,” he said after a moment’s pause. His dark eyes flicked toward her forehead, and then down to her cheek, and lower, to her neck. Self-consciously, she covered her throat with her hand, not wanting him to see the puckered, melted skin there.

  “How’d you get inside here?” he asked.

  “The guard let me in,” she answered quietly.

  “Miss?” a voice called, and she spun. The female guard strode toward her. “We need to close. I’ll escort you out.”

  “All right. Are you—” The words stuck in her throat. The man was gone. Spinning, she examined every corner of the room, but there was only her and the guard. “Where…”

  “Miss, please.” The woman’s voice held a hint of impatience, and Briar hurried to follow her directions. They’d been so nice to let her in. She didn’t want to make a bigger nuisance of herself.

  A moment later, she found herself on the stone steps again, completely confused. She stood, waiting to see if perhaps the man would be escorted out as well, but no one came and the lights in the entrance shut off, a clear dismissal. Whoever the man was, he was obviously not coming out. Taking her phone out of her pocket, Briar checked the time and sighed. A forty-five minute train ride, a fifteen-minute exploration of the museum, and now what?

  Her injured arm ached, and she was tired. Excitement and stress and hurt all combined to do her in. Home it was.

  Ambling down the driveway, she struggled against a sense of failure. She should be doing more, introducing herself to the people walking by, making friends.

  This was the problem with her. She’d lived her life so closeted that now she was free to make her own decisions, she wanted to do everything, all at once.

  Her mind went to the man at the museum. He was interesting, she decided. Yeah, he’d been grumpy, but maybe he’d had a bad day.

  She thought about the way he’d behaved the day before, biting her head off for standing in his way—maybe he’d had a bad week, or maybe he wasn’t good with people. He’d had a glimmer of niceness tonight.

  Briar suddenly stopped in the center of the sidewalk, aware she’d been walking for a while and hadn’t happened upon the T station. This wasn’t Commonwealth Avenue.

  She’d gone the wrong way when she’d left the museum. Pulling her phone from her pocket, she thumbed into the maps app, but it flashed a battery symbol at her and died.

  Perfect.

  Backtracking, she headed in the direction she thought the museum was. But the longer she walked, the more unsure she became. What had been a busy street was now a quiet neighborhood. On one side of her sat the houses, while on the other was a grassy incline and forest. If she’d done what she suspected, on the other side of that forest was Commonwealth Avenue.

  After waiting for a car to pass, she crossed the road, climbed over a low stone wall, and walked into the woods. She could hear traffic, but otherwise it was quiet, her feet shuffling through the dead leaves on the forest floor the only sound.

  Above her head, the clouds broke and the moon illuminated the woods. Two eyes, low to the ground, flashed. Briar gasped, and jumped back, but the clouds covered the moon, obscuring anything else she may have seen.

  Her heart pounded in her chest, and the back of her neck itched, like someone was staring at her. It made her lift her shoulders to her ears and whirl around, squinting into the darkness. Okay. This was dumb. She admitted it. Rushing into the woods, hoping to make her way to the T station, instead of staying on a well-lit, residential street was a stupid move.

  Lesson learned.

  She whirled, took a step back toward the street and stopped. An arm, cold as ice, with fingers sharp, wrapped around her waist and pulled her back. A chill seeped into her skin from her back to her neck, and she froze.

  “You smell… so good.” A voice like a snake, sibilant, curling and hissing, wound its way into her ear. “And not altogether human. Do you smell her?”

  From the corner of her eye, something glowed. Like her gaze had thrown a switch, two eyes lit up. She glanced down, then immediately wished she hadn’t. Something crawled at her feet. White, vaguely human, with yellow eyes and long, distorted limbs, the being stared at her. Man or woman, she had no idea. The clouds parted, and she gasped. It wasn’t animal, but its mouth was wide, reaching from one side of its face to the other, and its tongue was black, tasting the air.

  “I smell her. Human, yes. But more.” Long fingers reached for her body, and she jerked, but the person who held her only tightened his grip, fingers digging painfully into her side. Using her body as a prop, the thing at her feet dragged itself upright until it was eye-to-eye with her, its fetid breath washing over her face.

  In that moment, something clicked into place for Briar. Through her fear, she felt wonder. Of course something like this would exist. If she was possible, a person who would burn up when the sun touched her skin, the world could devise a creature as twisted as this one.

  Like her brother had always teased, she was a mutant. But God help her if these were the other X-Men.

  “One of us?” the person holding her asked.

  “Perhaps. There’s one way to know for sure.” Briar twisted her head to see the person who held her, but they tsked, and the creature in front of her curled a moist hand around her chin. “No, love. Watch me. Watch me while I taste you.”

  Briar kicked, struggling, as the lips and black tongue came closer to her face. She cried out. When she did, her mouth was smothered by a hand, the cold searing her as surely as the sun did.

  In all her preparations for the real world, never once had she considered having to fight another person for her life. Her mind blanked for a second before coming back online with a vengeance. Letting her weight fall, she threw the person holding her off-balance, and the creature holding her face, fell back. She landed on top of it, and it was just as disgusting as she suspected. Unlike the man who stopped her, this thing was soft. Her hands, when she threw them out to brace herself, sunk into its skin. It let out a cry of pain, and she rolled to the side.

  Without glancing behind her,
she pushed herself to her feet. Her arm folded from the weight, pain shooting through her as a reminder of the injury she’d suffered yesterday, but she muscled through it. Behind her, the thing was silent, but she knew it was after her. In her mind’s eye, she saw them both, one slithering after her on its belly, arms and legs propelling it forward like a spider, while the other one chased after her on silent feet.

  Her lungs burned, but it didn’t matter. Safety was ahead. The streetlights shone through the trees—fifty feet, forty, twenty, ten. Something caught on her ankle, and she went down. Before she could open her mouth to scream, the creature was on her, yawning maw open to display rows of blackened fangs.

  It dove toward her, and instinctively she shut her eyes, but the pain she expected never came. The soft weight of the thing left her, and she heard a thud, as if it had been thrown onto the ground.

  Twisting, she pushed herself up, hands up, ready to fight. But the woods were empty. There was no creature, and no evil buddy. The wind blew, rustling the leaves innocently, while behind her, headlights of a passing car illuminated the neighborhood for a second.

  Lifting a shaking hand to her face, she touched her skin. Maybe it was all in her head, but she imagined the creature had left a film of filth on her. Her hand, when she studied it, was clean.

  Briar took a wobbling step toward the light, and then another, and another, until she was scurrying and sliding down the hill and back onto the sidewalk. Not caring which way she was going, she ran. She ran until the road met up with another, and she suddenly and inexplicably found herself back in front of the museum, panting and sweating.

  Students walked by her, totally unconcerned there was a man-beast in the woods with a mutant sidekick. They were dressed up, boots and short dresses, high-heels and scarves. Headed downtown.