by Matt Wallace
“No—”
“I need you to listen to me now, girl. Okay? You remember . . . you remember Tunney? That old dishwasher I told you hipped me to you and Vargas needin’ work? When I first called you?”
Lena nods.
“That was a big ol’ lie. I knew . . . I knew about you. I had looked into it, researched you, who you were, where you’d been. I . . . I picked you.”
Lena doesn’t understand. “For what?”
“To replace me. You were who I chose. I made it so you’d have no choice but to work here. I’m sorry for that. I needed . . . I needed someone like me I can trust when the time came. You . . . had the stuff. I know I’m pickin’ a helluva time to tell you, seeing as how you ain’t rightly in a position to be mad at me—”
“Of course not, Chef,” Lena assures him, tears streaming down her cheek, mixing with her blood.
“All you wanted since you been here was out, but now I need you to choose to stay. They’re gonna . . . they’re all gonna need you . . .”
She’s still waiting for him to finish after her unconscious mind has registered that Bronko is dead. Eventually, she has no choice but to fully accept it, and then Lena is sobbing over her fallen mentor in the ugly, unbidden way only that kind of loss can evoke. She clutches his bloody smock and cries into his neck. Some time later, Darren’s arms find her, his soft touch bearing none of the brutal strength with which he murdered Allensworth, and Lena allows herself to be held in those arms.
“There’s nothing we can’t come through the other side of,” he says, his voice shaking as he takes in the sight of Bronko lying there before them. “I know that now. You will too. I promise.”
Lena nods into his chest, but no words can stop her tears from flowing, not right now.
SEAMS
Dorsky’s body is pulled by unseen hands from the dock floor and hoisted into the air, where he remains, suspended.
“I’m afraid I’m a woman of very few words, young man. However, if anyone should ask you about this later, perhaps you could tell them I offered you a pithy heart-related pun first.”
The material of Dorsky’s smock rips apart over his torso. As he looks on, helpless, a bloody incision line begins trailing down the center of his chest. The witch’s will splays his flesh as if she’s performing some unnecessary surgery. He tries to stifle it, but a guttural and agonized howl escapes his throat. The slashed folds of his chest continue to pull away from each other.
A sudden mechanical hissing draws the witch’s attention from Dorsky, whose torment is momentarily alleviated. She looks down at the deck just in time to watch Nikki blast her with the same mad-scientist liquid-nitrogen cannon she used to freeze the fire elementals’ food. The witch is quickly engulfed in freezing smoke, her surprised shrieking all that remains of her for a moment before that, too, ceases.
Nikki empties the canister on her. When the cloud of smoke clears, the woman’s bent and hunched-over form is one misshapen block of ice. What’s visible of her face is twisted into an expression of agony.
Nikki drops the cannon to the deck, her own body slumping in relief. She begins crawling across the loading dock towards Dorsky, who is breathing shallowly on his back several yards away.
She’s halfway to him when Nikki hears a brief, frantic rumbling. In the next moment, she’s showered in icy fragments as the frozen matter encasing the witch explodes.
“That . . . was unpleasant,” the older woman informs Nikki, sounding thoroughly unruffled.
Nikki feels her insides sinking in defeat.
“No . . .”
“Oh, my dear, you’re the hopeful type, aren’t you? Your kind always falls the farthest in these moments.”
She raises that stiletto blade of a fingernail in Nikki’s direction. In the next moment, the witch begins levitating into the air, spreading her arms wide. Nikki waits for what’s coming, shying away from the sight of the malevolent woman, but Nikki remains lying unrestrained upon the deck.
Looking back at the witch, she realizes the woman isn’t levitating herself. The witch is being levitated by another, apparently more powerful force. The woman is suspended there, an expression on her face of shock and rage threatening to collapse into terror.
Behind the witch, Nikki watches a row of young women move inside the loading dock almost in formation. There are two dozen of them or more, most of them appearing to be younger than twenty-one. They’re all dressed nondescriptly, in simple Old Navy sweaters and flannel shirts over tank tops with jeans or sweatpants. A more mature woman with hair curling past her waist Nikki doesn’t recognize as Cassandra moves with them in the center of the row.
All of their eyes are focused on the coven elder suspended seven feet above the bay floor now. The witch is visibly trembling, her every muscle seeming to twitch uncontrollably.
“I finally see your point about solitaires, Melinda,” Cassandra says to the other witch. “It appears it is better to have friends. And while we aren’t a coven, we do all share one unifying thing. We all owe you and your kind so much.”
The witch, Melinda, can’t even summon the voice to scream, such is her current agony.
Somehow, Nikki knows what’s about to happen, and she looks away, shutting her eyes tight so there’s no chance she’ll be forced to retain the memory of what comes next.
When the witch is pulled apart at the joints, her arms and legs and head separating from the rest of her body, she finally finds her voice again.
Nikki feels hot teardrops spatter her neck and she knows they’re the witch’s blood, but she still doesn’t look. She waits out the screaming and the even more horrific sounds she never knew human flesh was capable of making. She waits through several more seconds of silence just to be sure, and then opens her eyes.
Most of what’s left of Melinda is sloshed across the loading bay floor in front of the dock. Somehow, it helps that it no longer looks like a body, but it doesn’t help that much.
Suddenly, Nikki’s brain screams, Tag!
She turns away from the gory scene and finishes her crawl to where Dorsky is sprawled atop the dock. He’s staring wide-eyed at the fluorescent lights bolted to the ceiling, his entire torso awash in blood. His staccato breathing has become calm and sparse.
Nikki’s hands hover over him without touching his body. She has no idea where to even begin. Her eyes are wide as well, but where Dorsky’s are vacant, hers are filled with horror and shock.
“I tried,” he’s whispering with barely any voice left. “I really tried.”
Nikki nods sympathetically, tears spilling over her lower eyelids. “I know you did, hon. I’m so proud of you.”
His head begins to turn toward her, but before their eyes meet, it stops.
Nikki watches the life leave his body, as clearly as if she were watching him walk through a doorway. She reaches up with a trembling hand and touches his cheek with just the tips of her fingers, feeling the remnants of warmth there, and it’s that warmth more than anything else in this moment that causes her to start sobbing.
Some time later, she’s aware of a large body kneeling beside her. It’s Rollo, his bushy beard wet with tears, though he weeps silently. They never lock eyes, but the embrace they share, clinging fiercely to each other, is a more meaningful exchange than any other they could have.
Nikki closes her flooded eyes against the bear of a man’s chest, wanting to look down at Dorsky yet not wanting to see him like that again. She settles for the picture of him in her mind, smiling and cocky and trying to hide the fact he’s not an asshole. She’s at once sorry she saw through that exterior for the pain it’s causing her now, yet grateful she did.
She hears his final words repeating in her head, and Nikki can’t help thinking how all anyone can do is try, and how so often, despite that soulful effort, it’s simply not enough.
SITTING UP WITH THE DEAD
Little Dove knows he’s gone.
It was supposed to be her and White Horse stationed togethe
r in the courtyard, the broken square of century-old cobbles and concrete open to the air between the four large rectangles of dusty red brick and gray mortar that compose Sin du Jour’s headquarters. But her grandfather decided to play Gandalf battling the Balrog, leaving her alone in this darkened well of stale air and the remnants of a thousand company barbeques, and now she’s certain he, after almost eighty years of wandering, just found his destiny. Little Dove feels his spirit travel beyond the intangible membrane separating this world from the next plane, then the next, and the next, leaving pieces of himself behind like echoes passing through many canyons.
When the first ghost comes to visit her, Little Dove is crying quietly in the dark.
The statuesque woman inexplicably standing in the courtyard reminds Little Dove of Jett, but lacking the open, earnest, and helpful demeanor of Bronko’s most stalwart lieutenant. She wears eyeglasses with oversized ebony frames that match her smartly pressed pinstriped skirt suit and leather heels. Her hands are clasped formally in front of her, and she regards Little Dove with a practiced, brilliant, unshakeable, yet mirthless smile.
“Good evening,” the woman says. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure. My name is Luciana Monrovio.”
Little Dove quickly wipes her eyes with the backs of her palms, sucking in acrid-tasting snot.
“I know you,” she says. “You’re a . . . what - do - you - call - it . . . succubus. You tried to take us over.”
“I formally served as liaison between Chef Luck and Mr. Allensworth, yes. Unfortunately, Chef Luck and I failed to achieve the appropriate synergy and our professional relationship was remaindered.”
“I hear Jett beat the shit out of you.”
The slightest tremor upsets Luciana’s brochure-cover smile, but it is quickly forced under control.
“You’re not . . . alive, are you?” Little Dove asks as if she’s fully aware of the answer.
Luciana nods. “I have shuffled loose this mortal coil, yes.”
“And you’re not . . . I mean, you’re here, but you’re not here. You’re a spirit.”
“I am a noncorporeal entity, yes.”
“Why are you still here?”
“I remain in Mr. Allensworth’s service in my current and admittedly limited state.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to murder your coworkers to the last sad, pathetic reject among their ranks. Immediately following that, I want to tear this eyesore down around their twisted, mutilated corpses.”
She says all of these things without a hint of irony or malice, as if she’s a mail carrier who has knocked at Little Dove’s door and is informing her of a delivery.
And Luciana’s smile doesn’t falter.
Little Dove’s tear-glazed eyes turn hard. Her right hand reaches for the deerskin pouch hanging around her neck, an early bequest from White Horse. He told her it was filled with pebbles from a sacred stream and eagle feathers, but when Little Dove opened it later that night, she found only a red-and-yellow Hot Wheels racing car that looked as though it’d been chewed up by a dog. She thought it was a joke, then remembered White Horse’s lessons about the words and the artifacts mattering little, if at all; they were only props to activate the true power from within.
“And you started with my Pop,” she says to Luciana.
“No, Mr. White Horse took it upon himself to force the issue and met his fate early, albeit awfully, I assure you.”
Little Dove clenches her teeth so hard, her jaw trembles. She steps forward, still gripping the pouch hung around her neck.
“I’m going to send you somewhere just as fucking awful,” she promises the spirit. “I know how.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do, but if you would kindly wait a moment before initiating that process, it would be to your advantage. I will explain why.”
“You are so goddamn annoying. I get why Jett broke your face.”
“You stated previously you know me,” Luciana says, unperturbed. “I am familiar with you, as well. Your juvenile record is quite extensive and includes several brief yet revealing reports from the counselors and social workers that interviewed you in your formative years. They paint a portrait of an angry young woman who, more than anyone, wishes to change who she is and above all, her current circumstance.”
“I’m not a kid anymore.”
“No, you’ve undergone a thoroughly 1980s coming-of-age film mystical transformation, haven’t you? Under your late grandfather’s tutelage, you’ve become quite the . . . Is medicine woman an offensive term? I would think it’s a progressive concept among your people.”
“I’m what my grandfather was,” Little Dove says with conviction. “Hatałii, and I’m not the first woman to be that.”
Little Dove becomes aware of another presence in the courtyard, and it causes her to shiver as if she’s walked into an arctic frost.
“You’re not alone, are you?” she asks Luciana.
Luciana’s masking smile becomes more of a genuinely pleased grin. “Of course not. Mr. Allensworth has called in several favors and debts from beyond the veil, as it were. He’s formed quite the elite spectral battalion, including several entirely infamous serial killers and at least one notorious dictator. I won’t resort to name-dropping, but needless to say it’s an A-list lineup.”
“Then why are we talking?”
Luciana sighs. “The answer to that question is, ultimately, the reason for my visit. You see, as capable as our noncorporeal forces are, they . . . it seems . . . unanimously refuse to violate these premises, at least temporarily.”
“Why?”
“You,” Luciana says, trying and failing to hide her reluctance in making that admission.
Little Dove can’t even attempt to process that.
“Me?”
Luciana hesitates for the scantest moment and then nods. “It appears there is a vast nexus of extradimensional power in this building, and the source of that power . . . apparently . . . is you. Not to belabor the matter or flatter your ego, but there isn’t a malicious spirit on this plane of existence who is willing to cross you. We’ve searched.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Neither do I,” Luciana admits, the irritation behind her words creeping through and bleeding into her expression.
She smiles anew, shrugging her padded shoulders. “But then, some people are simply born with ability they never earned. It is an unquantifiable fact of life.”
“Are you afraid of me?” Little Dove asks, almost amused despite everything.
Luciana pauses, her delicate brow (or at least the astral projection of it) wrinkling.
“I find myself more curious than anything. However, I can see it in you, like a wellspring. It is much like looking upon a toddler carrying a bazooka. Although you’ve no doubt learned just enough about your natural gifts to be dangerous to . . . my particular subgroup.”
“Then why don’t you fuck off?” Little Dove spits at her, the brief amusement gone and unbridled vitriol replacing it.
Luciana sighs again. “I have a proposition to outline, and I would advise you to seriously consider it.”
“No.”
“Then simply begin by listening. You have strong feelings for your grandfather. I respect that. However, he is gone, or at least he’s left behind his Earthly concerns. The truth is you never wanted to be here. You never wanted to be anywhere you’ve found yourself. You’ve been tethered to death and decay since birth. Your people, their reservation, your family. Here, you’ve found only more of the same, and there’s more to come still. I understand your obligation to your grandfather, but what is your obligation to these people, especially now that he’s gone?”
“They’re my friends.”
Luciana’s grin turns lupine, almost predatory. “Are they, my dear? Why, because Miss Glowin taught you how to bake a cake? Because the women of this company enabled your underage drinking for their amusement? Because they patted your head when you told them your
problems and offered you big-sisterly advice? Tell me, have any of them ever invited you into their homes or their confidence? Have any of them offered you any more than the courtesy that was convenient for them at the time? I regret to inform you that you are not their friend, young lady; you are their pet Indian girl. It’s a tale as old as this sham of a country, I’m afraid.”
Little Dove’s breath is hot and elevated as she says, “I’m not an Indian; I’m Navajo.”
“To them you’re a novelty,” Luciana insists. “Look at you now. They’ve left you alone, here, in the dark to face what comes without their aid or friendship. They’ve already forgotten about you.”
“That’s not true!”
“Then call to them,” Luciana urges her. “Call to them for help and see if any of them come. Go ahead.”
Little Dove says nothing. Her mind is suddenly racing through thoughts as ugly as Luciana’s implications.
“We all knew what this was,” she says quietly a moment later. “We all knew our jobs. We all knew . . .”
“You’re making excuses for people who don’t deserve your loyalty,” Luciana says forcefully. “The tragedy is you’re capable of so much more. You have power, young lady. It’s rare and potent and highly valuable. It could attain for you literally anything you wish. You want to travel the world? You want wealth? You want respect? You want to meet famous people and have them want to know you and please you? I know you’ve thought about all these things. I know you hate dreaming about them, because it pains you too much to even visualize what you know you’ll never have.”
“Shut up!” Little Dove screams at her, new tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I am trying to help you,” Luciana insists. “I am offering you everything. Everything you’ve ever wanted. I work for the people who can make all of your repressed dreams a reality. I can give you everything you’ve ever wanted. You can have the life you truly deserve, far away from here where you’ll never have to think about this pitiful company, its employees, or the troubles of your people and your family again.”
