by Dia Reeves
He drifted for quite a while in this warm metaphysical bath and would have stayed longer if not for the incessant quacking.
Jimi knew those quacks, realized he’d been hearing them all along but had been too busy transmogrifying to pay attention.
Over there a bit. Not quite, but a sharp tug in his belly yanked him in the proper direction. Right there…was that a white blur?
He slid forward immediately and landed on his knees, felt the skin shred inside his formerly nice dress pants. His shirt was gone. His shoes were gone. It was freezing here, unlike that warm nowhere place he’d foolishly left behind.
But it was okay. He was okay. There was the sweet olive tree. There was Grandy’s bike. There was the duck pond. There was the girl in white on a bench near the duck pond. The ducks were no longer on the water; they sat instead, with the girl in white along the bench. One of the smaller ducks had even perched on her head, but the girl in white didn’t seem to mind.
The ducks flew at Jimi and circled him, whirling and quacking in celebration, a handsome green-headed tornado that quickly took to the air and disappeared over the trees.
“Thanks,” Jimi said, slow to remember his manners. The ducks had guided him back to the real world, after all, although, he didn’t feel particularly grateful. In Portero, in the real world, the wings remained.
He had no idea what he must look like to the girl in white, who stared quietly, ignoring the corpse sitting right beside her. It had been obscured by the ducks, but no longer; a dead girl in a lemon dress with a brown paper sack in her lap.
Always a corpse with the girl in white. Maybe that was why she wasn’t screaming at the sight of Jimi; she was in no position to be horrified.
Who was he kidding? Of course she was horrified. Who wouldn’t be?
The corpse fell off the bench and hit the ground, scattering tea cakes from the brown bag in all directions. One rolled to a stop near Jimi.
“I wouldn’t eat that if I were you,” said the girl in white, cheerfully. “It’s full of cranberries and cyanide.”
Jimi pulled his sore, dirty knees to his chest and hugged them. “I don’t eat things off the ground. Not even on Thanksgiving.” He reached for his phone, wanting to check the time, the date—he felt like he’d been gone for years—but it too was more than likely at the bottom of the sea. “Is it still Thanksgiving?”
The girl in white nodded and patted the bench. “Since she so kindly vacated the premises, wanna take it as an invitation from the universe?”
Maybe the girl in white had a type of blindness and that was why she hadn’t mentioned his wings.
When Jimi just sat there, the girl in white rose. She had swapped her raingear for a short, fluffy coat made of white feathers. She pulled a white, bath towel from her pocket, like a magic trick. She came at him with it, but only to wipe him down.
The towel was soft and marvelously warm as it moved through his hair and over his chest and back. Over his wings. Between them. Touching them. Her hands weren’t blind.
“Did you go swimming or something?”
That was the question? He stared at her.
“Fold them around your body,” she said gently, cleaning the blood and gunk from his feet. “Like a blanket.”
“I don’t know how—” Joints that hadn’t been there before rotated in the middle of Jimi’s back. Each of the four wings, moving individually, fanned down and enfolded him, soft and powdery now that they were fully dry, latticed with silvery veins. Was that his new blood? That silver stuff?
Except the blood on his knees and feet had been red.
The girl in white helped Jimi rise and led him to the bench. Sat with him. Seemed amazed by him. “You keep doing that, sliding in and out of the world, following me. How’s that possible?”
“You’re easy to see.” Jimi’s voice sounded strange, like he was catching a cold. Maybe he’d catch pneumonia. Maybe he’d die. “Blurry but bright. Easy to bring into focus.” He watched her drape the white towel on the back of the bench to dry. She’d probably never caught a cold in her life. “How do you do it?”
“Dunno. Dunno how breathing works, either. I do what I do.”
He wondered why she wasn’t freezing. Her coat was short, and she wasn’t wearing jeans or tights to compensate for the lack of length. Platform shoes showed off her red painted toes, and that was it. But she had not a goose bump in sight. Not like him. The warmth of his wings were negated by his cold, wet pants. He asked her if she had an extra pair in her pocket.
“Not in your size.” She smiled. “Why’re you at the park? Shouldn’t you be at home praying to turkeys and eating corn?”
What were these questions?
“Shouldn’t you?”
“We don’t celebrate holidays.”
“You’re an atheist?”
“More like apatheist. Religion is boring.”
Jimi could smell her, despite the nearness of the sweet olive: slightly fruity with a dark undertone, like a poisoned apple.
“I died, didn’t I?” he said. “I’m dead, and you’re the Angel of Death.”
She harrumphed. “You’re you, Jimi. Remember? And I am me.”
“But I’m not me. I’m a fucking insect! Why don’t you care?”
“I’ve seen wings before.”
“On people?”
“Yup.” She cupped his chin and studied him. “Never did meet a person with red eyes, though. I have a cousin with pink ones, but he’s albino. What’s your excuse?”
She let him go, and Jimi tried to process what she’d said.
“Red what?”
“Red eyes. Red as that spicy wine my auntie likes to drink.” The girl in white reached into her bottomless pocket and removed a round silver case, the kind girls carried that snapped closed and had a mirror inside.
He took it from her and beheld his gleaming irises. Feral as a cat.
Red as a demon.
“But I can’t be the Angel of Death,” he exclaimed. “I’m not qualified!”
The girl in white shoved the case back in her pocket and moved one of Jimi’s stingers, which curled between them on the bench, to give herself more room. “The Angel of Death is wingless.”
She pricked her finger on the barb. It swelled.
Without thinking, Jimi grabbed her hand and put her finger in his mouth to suck out the venom.
But her finger was gone. Her whole hand had disappeared to the wrist.
The girl in white wasn’t human. That’s why she wasn’t bothered by him, by anything. He had to stop forgetting that.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, chagrined. “Where’s your hand?”
“I’m fine and somewhere the poison isn’t.” She wiped the deadly drippings from the bench with the white towel, and by the time she’d draped it once more over the back of the bench, her hand had returned to its proper place on the end of her arm.
“What’s up with you sticking my finger in your mouth? You can’t just suck on me all willy-nilly.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want you to die. The last guy I stung died.” He started shivering and not because of the cold.
“What happened to you?”
Jimi told her everything, about the return of the scarf, his unexpected ocean adventure, the men he’d killed, and spilling his guts felt almost as good as stretching his wings. He even told her how he’d thought Dez had molested him in his sleep.
“But it wasn’t her. Dez was the sweetest girl in the universe. None of this had anything to do with her. It was my wings shedding or something and, like, nocturnal whatever.”
“I knew you weren’t being haunted. Didn’t I tell you? Now I have to figure out why you have power over winged creatures.”
“Power?”
“The blue bird that attacked that guy for you. The ducks that led you home. I guess it makes sense now, seeing as how you’re not human.”
“I’m not, am I?” The shivering intensified. “Those winged men called me kin. They knew my nam
e, but I can’t be…our wings weren’t the same. Theirs were red and mine are blue.”
“It doesn’t matter what color you are. Didn’t you learn that on Sesame Street? I think Big Bird should come and explain your life to you.”
“I don’t want to have things explained to me! I want this to go away!”
His wings unfurled and smacked her in the face, but she still didn’t get upset. Only folded his wings out of her way, gently, like she knew they were sensitive. She rubbed between his shoulder blades, around the wing joints he’d never operated.
“Learn how to contract these muscles right here. If you do it just right, your wings’ll retract. Probably those stingers too? Hopefully?”
They did. Wings and stingers, folding and telescoping respectively into his back, which now felt uncomfortably full, his muscles weak and overworked.
“When you get better control, you won’t have to think about it. You’re lucky. Hardly any winged people I know can hide their wings that easily. Or at all.”
“How do you know this stuff? My wings aren’t death related.”
“Ninety percent death.” She tapped her temple. “That leaves a whole nother ten percent. You’re not the first winged boy I’ve met.”
“Who else?”
“Lots else. You want photos and résumés?”
“I wanna slide away again. I should have stayed where I was, in that warm place. I can’t live like this. How can I live? Where? In the dark park? With the other monsters?”
“Being different doesn’t make you a monster. I don’t live in the dark park.”
“Where do you live? What are you?”
“A Porterene.”
“You don’t dress like it,” Jimi said, poking her feathered arm.
“How do you know what I’m dressed like? You like my feathers?” she asked because he kept smoothing his hand over them. Jimi made himself stop.
“I bought this coat because of your wing obsession. I knew you’d get a kick out of it.”
The girl in white had done something to please him. Had been thinking about him.
“Tell me where you live.”
“Downsquare. On the dark side of El Pasillo. In a white house with a dead lawn. Just like people do.”
She knew the difference between parkside and darkside. Big deal.
The girl in white reached into her pocket and removed a small skeleton key, silver and ornate, twin to the one Jimi carried in his shoe, which was now at the bottom of an ocean in a world that no longer existed.
His shoes were lost, his phone, but not his key. He reached in his own pocket. There it was. The Mayor herself issued the keys to Porterenes at birth, and they couldn’t be lost or faked. Transy-ass Dan might even get one, if he survived for a year. Porterenes were doorkeepers. Doorkeepers needed keys; that’s what the Mayor always said.
So though the girl in white’s key had come from that bottomless pocket of hers, she was definitely one of them.
“Where do you live?” she asked, putting her key away.
“Sometimes I live with my dad in the square, above a photography studio.”
“Darkroom? On Sixth? I know where that is.” Like she was still trying to convince him.
“Sometimes I live with my mom way upsquare.”
“No wonder your clothes always look so nice.” She frowned at his sad pants. “Usually. So which parent has red eyes and wings? It’s your mom, isn’t it? That’s why she can afford to live way upsquare. You have to be clever to pass as human, and clever people can always figure out how to make money.”
He could only stare.
“Jimi, obviously one of your folks is a red-eyed, winged creature or had a torrid love affair with one. The question is, who?”
Jimi didn’t remember moving, but within moments, he was off the bench and biking out of Portero Park. When he reached Grandy’s house, breathless, he barreled into the living room, and the family descended on him at once.
“Did you do it?”
“You destroyed the last thing?”
“Why did you run away like that?”
“What happened to your eyes?”
“What happened to your clothes?”
“Jesus Christ, what happened to your eyes?”
Jimi ignored them, focused only on his father…and César’s face told him everything he needed to know. Well, not everything. Not even close.
“How about it, Dad? You seem like a man who has all the answers about why a boy with two brown-eyed parents all of a sudden has bright red eyes and wings.”
“Wings!”
Grandy exclaimed, “I’m calling Sister Judith.”
César drooped into the loveseat and hid his head in his hands, like he didn’t want to look at Jimi.
“Closing your eyes won’t make it go away,” Jimi said. “Already tried that.”
Grandy hustled over, phone to her ear. “Did you douse the scarf?”
“Yes.”
“Did you vomit?”
“No.”
“But the scarf was the last thing? You’re sure?”
“Yes, Grandy.”
She listened a bit, and then said to Jimi, “Sister Judith says the fountain is still full of water. The ritual didn’t work, which can only mean that you weren’t being haunted.”
“I figured that out already, thanks.”
But Jimi hadn’t really thought about what it meant. He’d known for years that Dez had loved him so much, she’d escaped the bonds of death to be with him. In reality, he’d been the one escaping—his chrysalis.
Dez hadn’t loved him enough to defy death. She was in heaven right now laughing at him and his delusions of grandeur. Maybe she’d never really loved him at all.
His wings exploded from his back.
More gasps and screams. Jimi ignored that too but couldn’t ignore the guilt in César’s eyes.
“You knew the whole time what the real problem was, what was really wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.” Even now, the same old song and dance. “It never mattered to us. She said it was for the best. She couldn’t take you home.”
“Mom said?”
“Your biological mother.” He tried to look Jimi squarely in the eyes, but failed. “She wasn’t exactly…human.”
Grandy looked away from Jimi’s vibrant wings. “Well no shit, César!”
Chapter 10
César and Jimi squared off in Grandy’s living room, Jimi perched on the arm of an oversize rose patterned chair, César on the matching loveseat, the Belroses crowding the periphery, touching his wings, being nosy. César wanted Jimi to sit next to him on the tiny sofa, but Jimi refused. He didn’t want to squash his wings or retract them. He’d stretched them as far as they would go and was finally comfortable. In his skin, at least. His mind was full of cramped corners and bear traps, hungry to clamp tight on something. His dad, perhaps, unless he came up with the greatest excuse in the history of everything.
“Jimi,” César began, “I didn’t think it would affect you.”
“Wouldn’t affect me?”
César looked so miserable, Jimi almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“The whole time I thought I was being haunted, and you knew—”
“I didn’t know! There was a chance you could have stayed the same, and then it wouldn’t have mattered. It still doesn’t matter. You’re my son. For a long time, I never believed I’d have children. Alexis and I tried to have a baby for the longest time, but she kept miscarrying and blaming me. She wasn’t really blaming me, but I took it that way, that if I was manlier, the babies would have been stronger. Strong enough to last the full nine months. But they never did. So I prayed and wished and hoped, and one day, I met this woman. It was a foggy day and she seemed to materialize from nothing. From my dreams. She was tall and beautiful in a way no one ever truly is, not without makeup and illusions. Beautiful and red-eyed.”
“Demonic,” Grandy muttered.
“Exoti
c. Her name was Fiamma, and I could tell there was something peculiar about her, but I could also tell she was harmless.”
“You don’t know what she was,” Grandy snapped. “Harmless demon, my foot.”
“She was the answer to a prayer. We spent one night together, and nine months later she knocked on my door with a baby, with you, Jimi, and said she wasn’t allowed to keep you.”
“Why?”
“I never asked. I only cared about the part where she said would I mind raising you? It was perfect. What Alexis and I wanted. Our own baby.”
Jimi couldn’t help but be thankful his dad hadn’t been raped by some hellbeast or something equally nightmarish. Thankful that his folks didn’t regret his birth. His dad anyway.
“Mom went along with it? She was okay with it?”
“She was thrilled. We both were. Still are. You’re a great kid. Just slightly…”
Jimi’s mouth twisted. “Kafkaesque?”
“Metamorphosis!” Carmin said, snapping his fingers. “I’ve been trying to remember the name of that book since your wings popped out. You’re like that guy who turned into a bug.”
Everyone had to weigh in.
“What kind of bug? A sweetbite?”
“I like sweetbites!”
“Sweetbites have different wings, and they ring. Like bells. Do you ring, Jimi?”
“Sweetbites only ring when they’re in heat. Are you in heat, Jimi?”
“Can someone shoot me right now? Grandy go get your shotgun and shoot me in the face.”
“If anything needs shooting, it’s your old man.” Grandy had sat next to César on the loveseat during his recitation, but the image they projected was anything but lovey-dovey. “What was this Fiamma’s last name?”
“I never knew.” César thought about it. “Or I forgot.”
“She had wings?” asked Grandy. “This Fiamma?”
“Not that I saw. She had marks on her back, though. Long dark lines.”
“So does Jimi. That’s where the wings come from.” He felt little fingers poking him in the back.
César continued, “She said they were tattoos. I don’t remember much about her. Except that when we were out in the fog together, birds flocked around her. Wherever we went.” César’s smile was rueful. “Like a Disney princess.”
