Miscreated

by Dia Reeves

  “Blue birds?” Jimi asked.

  “No. Black ones.”

  “Where does this Fiamma live?”

  “We didn’t really talk about anything like that.”

  “I’ll bet you didn’t,” Grandy huffed, as she got up to answer a knock at the door. A minute later Alexis breezed in, her Narcisse Noir perfume preceding her.

  “I know I’m late, but we had to visit with Paul’s family, and then we have to visit more family tomorrow, all the way in San Antonio, so we can’t stay long.”

  Alexis had a trick of coming to family gatherings late and leaving early. While Jimi and César were comfortable with huge crowds—the boisterous Elbas down in Santo Domingo were a lot like the Belroses—Alexis was an only child and had a low tolerance for groups of more than four or five people.

  “Paul’s on his way up with the cakes. He’s such a scatterbrain; he left them at his parents’ house. How’s everyone? What’s with all the long faces—” The sentence died in her throat when she saw Jimi.

  “This was what needed watching, wasn’t it?” Jimi made one of his wings wave at her. It wasn’t that difficult to use them, he was discovering. He only had to think about it and shazam. “Good thing you took your eyes off the prize and shipped me to Dad’s. A watched pot never boils.”

  “Don’t blame her,” César said. “It’s no one’s fault.”

  Alexis stormed to the loveseat and slapped César so hard, Jimi’s own cheek tingled in sympathy.

  “You never said that skank had wings. What were you thinking?”

  César accepted the slap as his due. “She had red eyes, that’s all I saw. Honest. I never saw anything unusual enough to…”

  “To turn you off? Nothing’s that unusual.”

  “Children,” Grandy admonished. “Little pitchers have big ears, and Giselle’s sleeping in the guest room.”

  “To hell with her.” Alexis whirled on Jimi, but didn’t slap him. Though she looked like she wanted to, like it hurt her to look at him.

  Wait.

  Jimi turned his face toward the ceiling light, stared right at it, and it didn’t hurt. Was the red color of his eyes protecting him? Like a pair of built-in sunglasses that—

  “Jimi!”

  He snapped to attention.

  “I said turn yourself normal. Do it!”

  Nothing happened at first, but when he forced himself to relax, the wings withdrew into his back, a feeling like fingers stroking him.

  Not Dez’s fingers, after all.

  Alexis said, “Now the eyes.”

  “My eyes?”

  “Turn them brown again.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know! Close your eyes and will the redness away.”

  He did, but when he opened them, she said, “Are you even trying?”

  “You try willing your eye color away and see how far you get!”

  Jimi’s wings popped out and knocked over one of Carmin’s little sisters.

  “I’m sorry,” Jimi said, mostly to Alexis. “They want to be out. It hurts holding them in.”

  “They’re blue,” she said. “Your precious fairy blue. Did Dez have something to do with this?”

  “I wasn’t being haunted,” Jimi told her. “The whole time, it was just me. Changing. Into a butterfly.” His wings fluttered like they knew he was talking about them. He made them stop, much to the disappointment of the younger Belroses.

  Alexis stepped away from him and put her hand over her belly. “Go stay with your dad tonight. I have to think about all this.”

  “What’re you scared of? That I’ll grow a proboscis and suck the fetus from your womb?”

  “Will you?”

  Jimi thought of the stingers in his lower back. They hadn’t popped out when his wings had. Maybe they only did when he was in danger.

  Maybe.

  “That’s Paul,” Alexis said, practically running toward the door her husband was knocking on. “I’d better go. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  She opened the door and Jimi heard Paul say “But the cakes!” before it slammed shut.

  “I’m sorry,” César said, breaking the silence.

  “You’re sorry? I have class pictures next Monday!” Jimi stormed out in the direction opposite the one Alexis had taken and sat alone on the back porch, his wings shielding him from the wind. Very handy these wings. Except when they were driving a stake through the heart of his life.

  “Sucks about Dez, man.” It was Carmin standing at his back, squeezing his shoulder. Weird that Carmin of all people would pick up on that. Despite the suffering Jimi had endured today, losing Dez—knowing he’d never had her to lose—hurt more than everything else combined.

  “You came out here to console me?”

  “I guess.”

  “Then where’s the pie?”

  Jimi waited, and when Carmin returned, properly outfitted with warm apple pie, Jimi took a bite, let his mouth fill with sweet, buttery goodness. Such a familiar Thanksgiving taste that he felt almost…

  Normal?

  “What’s so funny?” Carmin said.

  “I just realized that being fake-haunted by my dead girlfriend is the last normal experience I’ll ever have.”

  Chapter 11

  After Jimi had suffered through what would no doubt be the worst senior picture in all of history—a snapshot of himself seated and scowling while half the senior class crowded around to get a closer look at his red eyes—he was called to the principal’s office.

  He sat there now, sipping the peppermint tea Principal Conford had poured him. She tried to keep her office full of cozy things, like a tea set and doilies and cushy chairs, all meant to counteract the view. The windows on this side of the school had once been infested with some type of parasite that had warped the glass; even on the prettiest of sunny days, the world outside remained gray and half-melted. Like a Dali painting left out in a storm.

  Principal Conford herself was the coziest item in the room, in her fuzzy pink sweater set and pearls. Her powdery face, her tidy bun. But Jimi had an idea why she’d summoned him and wasn’t taken in by her give-grandma-a-hug chicanery.

  “Your folks called and let us know about your…changed circumstances. This isn’t the first time a student has undergone a metamorphosis of one kind or another, so please don’t feel alone in this or think you’re being singled out. Change is inevitable, normal. Except when it isn’t. So I feel obliged to tell you that if you attempt to go on a murderous rampage, we will gun you down as sure as we are talking here today. One shot, one kill.” She tapped her head as if to indicate where the bullet would go. “I’ll do it myself as a favor to you. You’re a good boy, Jimi. Always were. But if I have to choose between you and the school…” She took a sip of her tea. “Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Jimi said, the tea he’d swallowed burning in his belly. He did understand. Understood that as far as the world was concerned, he was no longer a person.

  His classmates, for instance, kept coming up to him, not to say hi or ask how he’d enjoyed Thanksgiving, but to scrutinize him. To study him, like scientists with a new species of insect. The most random kids ever approaching him for reasons both real and imagined and then trapping him into staring contests.

  Over the weekend, he’d practiced retracting his wings until he felt confident he could hold them in check and not humiliate himself in front of the whole school, but there was nothing he could do about his eyes. Giselle kept on about contacts and sunglasses, but Jimi wouldn’t do it, wouldn’t consider it.

  People not getting to see his wings was one thing. That was like people not getting to see his dick; most people would go their whole lives without earning that privilege. His eyes, on the other hand, were windows to his soul. It would be dishonest to alter his soul or hide it.

  It was a relief when, at lunch, Casey just came out with it:

  “So, what’s with the red eyes?” he said. “You a demon now, or what?”

  Utter sil
ence in the cafeteria, every ear straining to hear the story.

  So Jimi told the truth, told his friends everything he knew about what had happened to him.

  “That’s why your back was sore,” said Rishi, smugly. “Not because you were being haunted, but because you were mutating.”

  “Not a mutation,” said Amy, nervously tugging her hair. “A curse. Right? Like a voodoo curse?”

  “It’s not a curse, brainless,” Lecy said. “It’s genetics, if his mom is like that. Your other mother,” she corrected herself, throwing Jimi an apologetic look. “Your real mother.”

  Sugar Lynn asked, “What was your real mother? What are you? Cuz if you have wings, that has to mean something. That you’re an angel or a demon. Or half angel, half demon or—”

  “Angemon,” Carmin said, and then laughed, even after Lecy elbowed him in the side. “How Rasta is that? Picture it: his dad got high down in the Caribbean before Jimi was born and performed some occult sex ritual. That’s gotta be it. Ganja plus voodoo—you do the math.”

  “You got a D on your last algebra test,” Lecy said. “What do you know from math?”

  “That’s why I told you to do it. Duh.”

  “I’ll do the math,” Rishi said. “Current school president plus demon equals new school president.”

  Silence again.

  “Not to be mean, but I don’t feel comfortable being ruled by something I don’t know what the hell it is. Or what it’s capable of.”

  Lecy said, “Jimi wouldn’t do anything.”

  “How do you know? He doesn’t even know.” Rishi sneered at Jimi. “Do you?”

  Everyone looked to Jimi for the answer. They always did.

  Jimi had none to give.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  If Jimi’s school life had grown frosty, his home life with Alexis was downright Antarctic. He was sitting in the living room with Paul on a Saturday morning, watching grown men wrestling alligators when Alexis called from upstairs:

  “Paul, bring caviar!”

  “Sure thing.” Paul heaved himself out of his armchair, muttering. “Pickles and ice cream like other pregnant women? Of course not.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  As soon as Jimi left the couch, his wings popped out and knocked over a lamp.

  Stuff like that kept happening. As much control as he thought he had over his wings, as soon as he relaxed and forgot they existed, out they popped. And his shirts! He was going to singlehandedly turn Ducane’s into a multibillion dollar industry with as much money as his folks were spending to replace his shirts.

  “Better let me,” Paul said, as Jimi righted the lamp and then peeled off what remained of the basketball jersey he’d slept in.

  “But I’m already up.”

  Paul shifted Jimi’s wing to the side to go past, and didn’t bother arguing.

  Because Alexis didn’t want to see Jimi. Couldn’t stay in the same room with him for more than two minutes. Continued to think of him as this radioactive specimen and tried to minimize the amount of time she spent in his presence. For the baby, she said. Just in case, she said.

  His family couldn’t stand him. His friends couldn’t stand him. Jimi couldn’t have life sucking at home and school.

  He stomped upstairs. Jimi could talk anyone into anything. Even the random troll girl had picked up on it, his ability to bend multitudes to his will; Alexis was one person. Surely he could win over one person.

  But when he reached Alexis’s door, he didn’t barge in.

  What if he really was radioactive? What if something went wrong with the baby because of him?

  He backed away from her door, backed all the way to his own room to change.

  Almost an hour later, Jimi was picking his way carefully through the dark park.

  He’d have never done such a foolish thing in his pre-wing days, but life was different now. Why should he be afraid of beasts when he was one? If anything stepped to him, he’d flash his wings and make himself seem huge and difficult to swallow, like the animals did on his Saturday morning nature shows. If he had to face off with anything bigger or more clever than him, he would die, but death was always a high probability in Portero. A careful expedition into the dark park was sometimes worth the undertaking, though; effective defenses could often be found among the gantlet of dangers. If Jimi could secure one of those defenses for Alexis, maybe she would feel safe enough to breathe the same air as him for more than two minutes.

  The dark park was a regular forest for the first several yards, cool despite the warm December morning, but the further in he went, the more irregular it became. Doors popped up all around Portero. Doors that didn’t always look like doors. Holes in the world. Holes between worlds that anyone could step into and anything could step out of. The dark park was full of such holes, and the dark park was huge. It was difficult to know if the footsteps and whispers Jimi heard were really behind him or in another world. Though his ears played tricks on him, Jimi’s eyes fared much better, despite the darkness

  Ever since his eyes had turned red, daylight no longer bothered him, and at night, he could see like an owl. Everything glowed in blues and violets, as if lit from within.

  Just ahead and well off the bluish path stood one of the defenses he’d come searching for, blazing in the dark like funeral pyres—spindle trees.

  The trees bristled with long thorns, thin and red, that would cause second degree burns or worse to anyone silly enough to handle them. Silly like Jimi. He didn’t want the red thorns, though; he wanted the stubby green ones, the immature ones.

  He put on Paul’s BBQ mitts and went to work, but the mitts didn’t shield quite enough of Jimi’s long arms. By the time he’d finished collecting several green thorns, the red ones had scorched not only his sleeves, but the flesh beneath.

  Jimi carefully wrapped and stored the thorns in Paul’s insulated lunch bag, which he hung over his shoulder, and made his way back to the bluish path. Away from the tree, the forest had once again taken on a blue/purple tinge. When he found the path, it had altered from when he’d last been on it, but not by much. At any rate, it was still leading toward Avispa Road. Maybe.

  If Jimi got too turned around, he could always fly to freedom over the treetops. If he found a clearing. The thought of releasing his fragile wings amid all these sharp, scabrous branches was enough to make the slits in his back clench tight.

  Sniffling and shuffling.

  Right behind him.

  Drawn to the delicious aroma of Jimi’s burned flesh, no doubt.

  His sight was just good enough to pick out the low shapes—a pack of them, purple and slithery. Halloween orange eyes, six pairs of them, trained on Jimi like he was candy, and they were trick-or-treaters.

  “Piss off!” Jimi said. He had every right to be in the dark park; who were they to gang up on him?

  The trick-or-treaters didn’t piss off, but they didn’t come closer either.

  When he felt the tentacular slip of the stingers at his lower back, Jimi removed his shirt and shoved it into Paul’s lunch bag with the thorns and oven mitts. He turned his back on the trick-or-treaters, his stingers swaying behind him, ready to wage biological warfare on anything that moved.

  So busy protecting his back, he forgot to watch his front and smacked into a man on the path. A man who hadn’t been there a second ago. Naked. Bluish. Horned, like a deer. Taller than Jimi. Taller than any human. Tall enough to be frightful. Before Jimi could react, the horned man slapped him, with enough force to knock him off the path. The horned man vanished.

  No. Not vanished. The horned man was probably still in the dark park, on the path, maybe playing a game of fetch with the orange-eyed trick-or-treaters.

  It was Jimi who’d vanished.

  To where, he had no idea. Night vision only worked when there was light. Here, all was black, as though light hadn’t been invented yet.

  Jimi felt about. Nothing. Not like the warm nothingness he’d slipped into the day he’d
gotten his wings. This place was empty and cold enough to numb his skin. Too cold for his stingers, which quickly retreated into his back.

  No ducks to lead the way, no white blur. Dark and cold. But Jimi could feel Portero. Had felt it before in the warm nothingness—a homey, violent tug in his gut, an umbilical cord that could never be severed—but at the time, he hadn’t been lucid enough to understand the sensation or what it meant.

  Jimi spun toward the tug, though this place had nothing so fixed as directions. It didn’t matter; the tie that bound him was strong, almost painful, stretched as it was to the breaking point. He relaxed and let it reel him in. Was suddenly breathless and soaring.

  Light punched him in the eyes, blinding him in a way he thought he’d never have to experience again, but the pain was already fading. Until he hit the ground, skidded across it, leaving behind bits of skin.

  When he finally rolled to a stop, Jimi could only pant and gasp and wait for his thrumming heart to slow down. Eventually, he rose to his feet, spat grit from his mouth and only a little blood. Paul’s lunch bag still on his shoulder. A sunny sky overhead. A Portero sky, filled as it was with leaves and branches. That hometown smell: fresh bread from the Miss Bitsy factory way downsquare, and blood.

  Jimi had landed in the middle of Avispa, the two-lane road bordering the massive tangle of the dark park. St. Michael’s Church across the street, tree branches twining about its dark spire. A cluster of Bloody Annas growing in a ditch.

  A car speeding toward him. Too fast to stop.

  Chapter 12

  It was the girl in white’s car. No one else in town had a Rolls-Royce Phantom V. As soon as Jimi realized exactly who was about to grind him under her wheels, the Rolls stopped, less than a foot from his body. No skidding or braking. A real phantom, her car, unbound by the laws of physics.

  Jimi’s own reflexes weren’t as good, and he did this stammering backwards shamble before falling on his ass. The girl in white, leaning against the hood, looking down her nose at him.

  “You think I’d fall for something that desperate? If you wanna kill yourself, fine, but leave me out of it.”