by Marata Eros
“Ah-huh,” she says, standing.
Bunny sways and like the chivalrous chap I am, I take her arm. “About that cab?”
I dose her between the eyes with my will—to leave, and her head sort of wobbles on the fragile stem of her neck.
“Cab,” she says like a robot.
“Gross,” Narah mutters.
“Gross,” Bunny repeats.
Narah puts her head in her hands. “Just, god, get her out of here. It's like having a zombie as an audience.”
“Oh, I don't know, I wouldn't go that far, Narah. She was a might lively just—”
“Shut. Up.”
“Yes, but would you be a dear and grab an orange juice from the fridge? Bunny will need a bit of sustenance after her generosity.”
I stop short of fluttering my eyelashes like a woman but the urge is almost overpowering.
Narah stomps off to the fridge as my eyes drift to my ruined door.
I spend a lot of money on repairing my shabby accommodations.
Plucking my pulse device out of the front pocket of my denims, I depress my thumb on the dock and think a cab to my address.
I am sure they know the way to my flat by heart.
Chapter 2
Grace
Rubbing my temples is becoming a part time job. I'm surprised I have any skin left.
Ava's scream pierces my eardrum at the exact time a wayward swath of sunlight strikes the glass window pane, spearing me right in the eye. Nausea rolls over me in a wave and I suck in a breath, smelling and tasting the last dirty diaper I changed.
Air.
I need air. Arm outstretched in front of my body like a reanimated corpse, I focus on the doorknob to the playard. The large, beaten rectangle of 1960s décor is just a few more steps.
“Grace?”
Move, Grace. One foot, then the next.
Vomit rises and my hand lands on my roiling stomach.
I cover my mouth and grab the brushed antique brass doorknob. Twist. Jettison myself right out the door where I nearly sprawl on my hands and knees. I hunker down, forearms resting on my thighs, hands dangling between my legs and chin tucked low. I take swooping inhales to stave off the rising gorge.
“Miss Grace,” the guileless voice of a four-year old says from beside me.
Breathing deeply, I center myself. Yoga taught me that. The last year of my life has taught me more. I should go to the doctor and see what the hell is really wrong with me. But I'm afraid I already know.
And O'Lamacare is for other people. Not a twenty-four year old woman who works at Sioux Falls Little People and makes ten dollars an hour. Sans benefits. Can't afford that two hundred dollar doctor visit.
I can't make rent, forget finding out why I can't keep lunch down. Keep a clear head.
Keep it together.
I look up into Toby's pinched face and large chocolate brown eyes that hold too much knowledge
I manage a smile. Probably isn't really convincing from my position on the ground. With a deep breath, I stare at the pea gravel, the smooth gray is bumpy underneath my beat up ballet flats and plant my hand on my knee, hauling myself to standing.
“Grace!”
Gah. I hang my head. Shelley. Again. I'm going to hear those words.
Just two.
You're fired.
I turn. Shelley's face is a mask of concern. My shoulders bow forward in relief.
For now.
How many more days can I be late? Call in sick? Before my boss begins to think that I can't be counted on or trusted.
Soon, I bet.
My eyes dart away from the compassion I see in her steely gaze. “You know, you should see a doctor.”
I give a vigorous head nod.
Shelley's like a second mom to me. A more real version than my bio-mom. Her strawberry hair looks more red in the broken late summer sunlight, ruddy complexion to match the hair, only her dark grayish-blue eyes cool her.
Toby, a little boy that is with me all day, every day, clutches on to my long bohemian-style skirt. “Miss Grace is sick,” he says, with the innate wisdom every kid has. Growing up wrecks their intuition.
Of course, Toby has more than most, I think sadly.
“Yes,” Shelley looks kindly at him, “she is.”
Toby takes my hand.
Her stare returns to me. “You can't show up to work like this. Sick.”
“It's nothing contagious,” I mumble, thinking of the waste baskets I've filled with a breakfast I can't stomach. I'm so thin now my belly is concave.
“It's not that,” Shelley insists, lightly touching my arm.
My gaze rises to meet hers. Shame makes my ears burn.
“It's that you're unwell, Grace. And, though you can perform your duties, you seem as though you're surviving them.” Her ginger eyebrows slowly rise.
I hear: you can't do your job. I swallow all the replies I could make. All the excuses.
I need this job.
Glancing at Toby, I think about what he is to me and hold his small hand tighter. His golden brown hair is longish, beginning to curl around the tops of his ears. Big saucer eyes regard me—the infallible daycare worker.
Yeah, right.
“I'll get an appointment this week,” I lie through my teeth.
Shelley lets out a breath. “Good.” She ruffles Toby's hair then frowns. “You know, Toby always reminds me of you. He could be your little mini-me.” She grins, and turns to swiftly walk across the yard. Checking on the other little kids, she swings Baby Ava, who promptly gnaws at her fingers, up onto her hip.
Teeth coming in, I think absently.
A trembling smile affixes on my face as I watch the two.
He ought to look like me. Toby Cline is my half-brother.
“Are you seeing the doctor, Miss Grace?” Toby asks in a whisper.
I shake my head. Him—I'll never lie to. “No.” He gets only the truth from me.
“Why?” he pops his thumb into his mouth and my heart swells with the action. Toby comforts himself because he knows what waits him at home.
Our wasted mother and whatever abusive asshole she's drug home like a stray cat.
Her men always have claws.
“There's no doctor that can help me,” I say quietly.
Because I know.
The signs are all there. The nausea, the headaches—light sensitivity.
I know what I am. What I'm becoming.
And I can't let that happen. If I do, then who will take care of Toby?
One of mom's men, that's who.
I shudder. Even if I had the cash to see a doctor, he or she would file a report and I'd get noticed. No. I have to stop this process, take Toby away. Save him.
Save me.
*
My hands fist, crescent moons imprinting on my palms as I watch the latest guy come pick up Toby. The car sounds like its exploding.
His car's muffler isn't working. I'd like to play that off on him just being down on his luck. But the truth is it's not. He's just one of those guys that thinks the noisier his ride is, the cooler it makes him seem.
Only to him.
Ten other little kids run around the play yard, demanding mine and my co-worker, Sondra's, attention. A few hurl shredded mulch at each other from the square of railroad ties used as a border that houses the wooden play set.
“Dick,” Sondra says as she watches the scrubby, tatted, ex-con hop out of the car, tear open the back door and chin flick to Toby, indicating wordlessly he should get in.
Toby drags over there. Slides in the back and turns. Pressing his palm to the glass his eyes find me like a lifeline. A grain of stable in the desert of his life.
I hold my palm up and mouth, tomorrow.
Just hang on, Toby. Sister will be here, sick or not.
Thinking about tomorrow reminds me my mom's got her probation officer coming over. She'll be on her best behavior, of course.
Drug free—just for his visit so she can pee in
a cup. Banana bread will be baking in the oven so the house has that lived in, homey smell that fools the soul.
Rough and tough will be hidden in her bedroom or in whatever hole he can crawl in.
She'll show the probation stupe all the paperwork proving she's looking for work—keeping shit legit. When really? She's nothing but a whore.
Thank God Talbot Cline can't have more children.
Having had me at sixteen wasn't enough of a lesson. She had to repeat it at thirty-six to see if she still could. But Toby's birth tore her up and the doctor had to take out her female parts.
It's a blessing. There'd been a bunch of miscarriages in between. Every child's life is precious, but the thought of Talbot having more children to screw up leaves me chilled to my marrow.
My eyes narrow as the thug of the week pulls away in his illegal fossil-fuel beater. Toby's little nose is pressed against the window, fogging it. He stares at me until I'm surely just a dot in a big yard full of brightly colored toys.
My shoulders sag once he's out of sight.
Sondra, puts her arm around me. “Don't.”
“I can't,” I say in a despondent hush. “Talbot picks beaters. This guy's a beater. He has the look.”
“Ah, yes. I gotcha.” Sondra grins, putting her index and thumb about an inch apart. “He's a compensator, Grace. Ya know, he works out and gets all bulky because he has a nub for a penis.”
I burst out laughing, the threat of tears called back from the trembling brink in the face of her humor.
“That's terrible, Sondra.”
Sondra's wide, friendly smile flashes across her dark face. “Refute my logic,” she challenges.
I shake my head. “I don't think his dick plays into it,” I say wryly.
She flips a palm out as a few more cars pull up to retrieve the kids we watch all day. “He's male, right?” Her dark eyebrow quirks.
“Yeah.” Sort of. Not a real man. Not the one I imagine, anyway.
She shrugs. “Case closed. I can't imagine a man alive who cares about anything more than his dick.”
I sling an arm around her shoulders, our height exactly the same at five foot six. We stand together comfortably, watching the controlled chaos of kids getting scooped up and taken home. I try to put my worry for Toby on a shelf inside my head. “You're probably right.”
“Damn straight,” she thumps her chest. “I know I am.”
I crack the first real smile of the day, glad the sky's gone to overcast so my eyes won't hurt. “You're okay, Sondra.” I say. I love her.
“Don't ya go all sappy on me, Grace.”
“Never,” I say, wiping my eyes.
She squeezes my shoulder and saunters off, getting into her POS Buick sedan she got for five hundred bucks. I hear her pulse the engine on and turn to walk to my place.
Too broke to own a car. Or anything else.
*
His eyes follow me. Like ink. Unyielding. Spreading over me like a safe blanket of night.
I remember the aptitude I had in high school for language. I was encouraged to pursue English at the college level.
Then mom got pregnant with Toby from an encounter she doesn't even remember. So there was no college in my future. But if I had a fancy word to describe the eyes that drift after me as I restlessly dream, they'd be obsidian banked by fire.
Smoldering black glass.
On me. For me.
Like ebony water flowing over my headache, my aching, constant nausea.
My hopelessness.
They slide over me obsessively, covering, sucking—protecting.
I jerk inside my bed, clutching the covers with sweating palms and a hammering heart. Waking as I always do lately.
Unrested.
Anxious.
A feeling of a vague, unfulfilled something, causes me to compulsively seek the dark corners in my small apartment space.
The memories of this man are thin wisps of vapor that escape my consciousness. But he's not like my mom's men. Or the men I know.
He's different.
He makes my heart beat faster—my core throb, my nipples tingle.
He eases my pain.
I breathe deeply, gripping the sheet high and tight underneath my throat.
Closing my eyes, I swear I can hear the roar of blood in my veins.
The heat.
Swinging my legs to the edge of my futon I resign myself to sleeplessness again. Sleep's not in the cards.
I slip into my flip flops and walk across the threadbare and molted apartment carpeting and head to the bathroom.
I could find it if I were blind. The drip, drip of the faucet gives the location away. That, and the dinky size of my apartment where the kitchen runs into my living/pseudo bedroom.
The digital clock on top of a tall, thrift store highboy-style dresser reads 4:45. Its colorful numbers are a bright spot inside my apartment. It's not dawn yet and I yawn. A shower will wake me up.
Turning the faucet on, I run my hand underneath the spray and adjust the knobs until the temperature is just right. Standing, I pop the stem for the shower and the water beats the cast iron sides of the decaying tub.
I walk into the kitchen and slug a glass of water down. Setting it on top of the scarred and worn window ledge. I peer out into the gloom.
The beginnings of white light frost the midnight blue of night, faded color weeping like bleached denim toward the coming day.
The water from the shower drums within the stillness of my apartment, gaining heat.
My eyes shift to the eviction notice on the worn speckled laminate countertop. Yup. I've got three weeks. Can't pay my rent, running two months behind now.
I sigh, gripping the chipped edge of the countertop. Look up.
Eyes look back at me.
Not black, like those from my dream. Not comforting.
But reflective—evil.
I stumble backward, whirl—tear through my tiny studio apartment and hit the bathroom door, slamming it shut behind me.
Steam strangles my vision.
The tinkling of glass fries my nerve endings.
All I can think of is one of my mom's men have found me. An animal.
Toby, I think with a mental scream, fear scrambling my breaths before they escape.
I have to survive whatever this is to help him. It's more than myself.
Footsteps pound through my apartment. Stop at the cheap, hollow-core door that pretends to keep me safe.
Snuffling and shadows border the small space at the bottom, floating like small, captured ghosts at the ominous crack revealed between door and floor.
I soundlessly step backward, get into the shower fully clothed and use the shower curtain as an additional barrier.
My breath releases in a gush, as warm water soaks my clothes against my body.
Squeaks, yelps and other weird sounds stab the noise of the water.
My heart hammers, and my hands ache from the grip I maintain on the cheap yellowing vinyl between stiff fingers.
I silently will whatever's gotten into my apartment to go.
A gargantuan headache breathes its pain into my skull and I shiver, though the spray from the water is hot.
After ten minutes of silence, I release the shower curtain. My fingers tingle as feeling returns.
I peek out from behind the curtain and release a held breath.
The door is intact.
I step out of the tub, dripping water everywhere. I begin to shake as my body heat flees.
Someone's banging at my front door.
Still, I wait until the banging stops. I count to ten, put my hand on the knob. Take it off.
Count to twenty.
This time I twist the metal ball and throw the door open, crouching.
My apartment's in ruins. Everything in the entire place is on the floor. My gaze skates over the mess of silverware and broken dishes. When my eyes reach the bed my bottom lip trembles and I capture it between my teeth.
A
prized quilt, from my long-dead great-grandma is full of lengthy rips, the batting between the patchwork and the backing scattered like decimated clouds. The colorful squares appear as wounded rainbows.
I shuffle across my floor, glad for the footwear to protect my feet from the littered debris.
There's not a bare space anywhere. Everything cloth is torn—everything fragile is broken.
The drywall has punched holes through it like Swiss cheese.
A second round of banging at my door rips through my reverie and I startle, hand to heart.
Walking over to the door in a daze I lean forward, shutting one eye and peering through the peephole.
My landlord's one bloodshot mud-brown eyeball glares back.
I let my forehead drop against the cheap wood. Then I do the bravest thing of my life.
I open the door.
Chapter 3
Murphy
I stand from my crouch. “Fucking Mutables.” I don't bother reining in the disgust in my voice.
Mollie, my distasteful co-worker, and acting wench within Final Enforcement turns to me, crossing her arms. “So, because you got into a few skirmishes, now you're the expert?” Her dark, severely plucked eyebrows are two frozen lines high on her forehead.
Somehow, her being a woman is something I can never keep in the forefront of my mind. “Expert is a relative term, Mollie.”
Her nose scrunches. And I take a stab at admiring the view of her figure. She's solid, like all enforcers, with curves in all the right places. Taller than my sire, Narah, but not by a lot.
Then she speaks again and ruins all the fun. Why do I insist on engaging her? Manners get in the way of my life.
Her hip juts out, full lips pursing. “I'm not one of your vampire groupies, Murphy.”
I hang my head. Here we are, with evidence of Mutables in the area and she has to get fucking needy.
“It's not about groupies, Moll. Stay on task.”
She points at me, hazel eyes flashing, the amber withing her irises flashing with her temper. “Narah turned you. You've had battles with the supes and now you claim every case like peeing in a corner.” Mollie mimics my voice, “Oh love, not to worry, let me and my big vampire penis flog the bad paranormal.”
