Uncanny Magazine - JanFeb2017

by Uncanny Magazine

  “Freak,” he says, and yells at you until you flee, shirt flung over your wings like a cape.

  You ask your sister to make extra sure she carves out all the vestigial wing–tissue from between your shoulder blades that night.

  One summer, when you were thirteen and Phoebe was twelve, she dared you to grow your horns out as long as you could.

  “No one will know,” she said. Her voice was always a bright chime, clinking against her teeth like bells. “C’mon, I want to see them!”

  It was the summer after your uncle died and your aunt let you both do what you wanted. As long as you fed the chickens and the barn cats, weeded the garden and swatted extra flies that snuck in the house, your aunt ignored you.

  “Fine, but just once.”

  So you didn’t file down your nubs for a week. Your horns grew a few inches, black like the sky without stars. Hardly impressive. You’re relieved, though your sister looked disappointed. Still, it was nice not to have to spent hours with the lathe and another hour washing shavings out of your thick hair. So you let them go.

  A week later, you had a pair of heavy, swoop–curved horns so heavy and brilliant you could hardly hold your head up.

  “They’re magnificent,” Phoebe said in awe. And they were. Like a painting from the Renaissance: dragon horns, devil horns, monster horns.

  “If your wings grew like that,” Phoebe said, “could you fly?”

  “No.” You didn’t want to find out if there was another answer.

  It took almost six hours with a saw and file to remove your horns and the pain made your eyes sting.

  Your second boyfriend tries to rape you on your three–month anniversary date.

  You’re in his car, the mall parking lot empty now, and he climbs across the seat to straddle you.

  “Stop it,” you say, tired from a long day of pretending your horns don’t ache with the summer heat and ignoring the way he keeps running his hand up your butt and lower back, almost touching your wings.

  He’s nagged you for sex more and more, but you always stop him at first base. You’re scared he’ll run if he knows about the wings.

  He unsnaps your bra, and his other hand pulls the seat recliner and suddenly you’re almost flat on your back with his weight pinning you down. The movement startles you. He pries at your jean snap, his breath heavy.

  You headbutt him under the chin. You just want him to sit back enough for you to squirm free, open the passenger door, and roll out into the humid July air.

  Your horns shatter his jaw in four places and break his teeth.

  You leave him to fumble for help and walk home, rubbing at the sore knobby protrusions and wondering what would have happened if they’d been longer.

  “She’s sick,” is what you tell your girlfriend, a senior in college like you, and who’s better in bed than the men you’ve slept with before. “I visit her on weekends, usually, when the caretaker is off.”

  The lies slide easily across your tongue, unhindered by sharp teeth.

  You keep your wing stubs wrapped in ace bandages and tell the people you date that you have lesions that need to stay covered. You avoid medical students.

  It’s easy, once you have practice, to keep your partner’s hands off your back and out of your hair.

  “I’d like to meet your sister,” Kassy says.

  “She doesn’t like visitors.”

  “She can make an exception, surely?” She grins. “Come on. I introduced you to my folks. I want to know this mysterious sibling.”

  It’s been so long since anyone besides you and Phoebe have visited home.

  You like Kassy. She’s short, solid, fierce. You think, Maybe this one will understand .

  “Where did we come from?” Phoebe asked Mama once. “Why aren’t there other monster girls?”

  “There were lots of us once,” Mama said, her palm–mouths frowning as she braided your sister’s silky hair. It’s the prettiest thing about her: white like spider silk, long, never tangled. You envy her just that. “But times are hard.”

  “What happened?” you asked.

  “People hurt or killed us,” Mama said. “Or sometimes we did that ourselves to blend in.”

  “Why?” Phoebe asked. “What’s wrong with monster girls?”

  “Nothing.”

  Mama kissed you both on the cheek, one hand each.

  Mama was killed by a man who hated monsters.

  Or maybe he was afraid of them.

  But Mama was dead all the same.

  Your sister paints all the time. The walls turn into murals. She fashions brushes to hook at the tips of her claws, ambidextrous, and fills canvass and stone and the air with color and vivid, haunting images.

  All she paints are monsters, so you keep the rooms of your walls flat and blank.

  Your girlfriend whistles when you pull the car up the old drive.

  “When you said it was a castle, I didn’t think you were being literal!”

  You smile tightly, surprised. The glamour Mama put on the property makes anyone not–monster or not–family think it’s a big, shambly Victorian with peeling yellow paint and a manicured lawn.

  “How does no one know about this place?”

  “We don’t get visitors,” you reply.

  Your horns itch. They always grow faster in the winter, when wool hats should be easy disguises—any kind of fiber or synthetic rubs the nubs and makes you want to scream. You never feel the cold, anyway.

  A normal girl keeps up appearances, and normal women don’t go out in sub–zero temperatures in T–shirts and sandals, not even up north where the cold is always lurking.

  “Come on in,” you tell Kassy, and almost take it back, half–hoping for the briefest second that she’s the kind of woman who needs an invitation to cross a threshold.

  The castle is old; it was your grandmother’s, Mama told you, who ruled with her daughters and moved the land and the stone as it pleased her. Old magic, Mama said, suitable for old monsters. But it faded, like all things do, and now it’s worn granite and crumbled battlements and drafty halls. It’s fitted with electricity stolen off a rich neighbor’s grid—four miles away, unnoticed—and a satellite fixed to a retrofitted tower gets decent internet.

  Inside isn’t luxury, but it’s comfortable. Modern furniture, modern appliances. It’s not like a castle means you need to stay in the Middle Ages. And your sister’s artwork is everywhere.

  “Wow,” Kassy breathes. “Wow.”

  It’s awe in her voice, and you let yourself smile.

  Phoebe liked to eat her toothbrushes when she was little. “They tickle!” she’d say when you made a face.

  It wasn’t so hard to look at her when she laughed.

  “Why are her hands always so big?” you asked Mama once. You were never too young to notice that your wings and horns grew slower than your sister’s teeth.

  “When we’re happy,” Mama said, “we don’t have to hide.”

  Your ex, the one whose jaw you broke, finds you again. At first, you just see him walking on campus—he doesn’t seem to notice you.

  Then he’s in the same grocery store, passing you a few aisles away, never looking but always there .

  You change your route when you drive to work and school—you stay in a tiny apartment in town, working as a barista and when finances are tight, you can dip into the trust Mama left.

  Twice, you spot his red Honda Civic behind you in light traffic, but he always turns off the main road before you hit your exit.

  Then for a few months, you don’t see him at all, and you think you’re safe.

  Except that’s a lie Mama fell for. Men aren’t safe, especially not for monster girls.

  Your sister hides in bed, her hands tucked under heavy blankets, a scarf wrapped about her mouth. She hates being indoors, trapped by clothes and walls. She roams free in the woods behind the castle, or runs in the fields, or tunnels with her big, big hands through the grounds and paints vistas of what she
sees under the earth when she emerges.

  Once, you asked her: “Don’t you want to try? You could get cosmetic surgery or… something. We could move to the city. People would be different there.”

  “I don’t want to be the same,” Phoebe said. “I want to be me.”

  You dropped the subject and let her be.

  Of course Phoebe doesn’t shake your girlfriend’s hand. Kassy doesn’t mind. She chats with your sister, never seeing her mouth or her teeth, and you relax. Everyone thinks you’re both normal.

  That’s all you want.

  Mama was the only one who could tell when you were lying.

  “You okay?” Kassy taps on the bathroom door again. “ Zaria?”

  You grind down harder with the file. The horns are harder to keep hidden; there’s more blood when you trim them. And it hurts, it fucking hurts . You thought you were used to the pain of snipped wings and buzzed horns, but ever since the winter night you brought Kassy to visit, everything has been worse.

  You moved into her apartment a bit at a time, smuggling clothes and textbooks and your plush unicorn collection in your backpack or in shopping bags. You haven’t seen your ex around in a week, and never near Kassy’s place, but normal girls are careful.

  Ironic that fear is never something you’ve had to fake.

  “Yeah, fine.” You rinse the bloody file in the sink and splash your face to hide the puffiness of tears.

  On the anniversary of your mother’s burial, you bring Kassy with you to see Phoebe. You brought roses for the grave, even if the petal edges have wilted and the thorns have been chipped down. Kassy asked to come. She says she’s not afraid of a cemetery and she wants to support you.

  You try so hard to remember Mama’s lessons: monster girls don’t find love.

  The castle is cold, lights turned off, the door unlocked.

  You smell him.

  Your ex was here, and your sister is gone.

  Your girlfriend found the horn shavings in the wastebasket after you forgot to dump the trash. She looked concerned, so, for the first time in your life, you showed someone besides your family your wing stubs.

  “I hate them,” you whispered, as Kassy dabbed cotton swabs against the horns, which had started bleeding again.

  Kassy said nothing. You wondered how soon she planned to break up with you.

  The last time you saw your mother, you were trying to file down your sister’s claws in her sleep.

  Mama’s barbed wire shadow writhed and slashed the walls, peeling back the layers of paint and paper and cracking stone beneath.

  You dropped the nail file and the shears you’d found in the garden shed.

  “What are you doing?” Mama said, both hand–mouths tight and her face–mouth set in a cold, neutral line.

  “I want her to be normal so she can be happy!” You stomped your foot, your tiny wings fluttering in anger under your nightgown. They felt bigger than before, like they were growing with your temper. “I’m tired of everyone thinking I’m the only child.”

  You’re tired of being alone , is what you want to say, but even to your teenage brain that sounds too harsh, too cruel.

  “She should get to go to parties and movies with me and not be… caged up here like a freak!”

  Your shouting woke Phoebe, who sat up and blinked. Her heavy hand knocked over the light in a frantic effort to turn it on. Bulb and lamp shattered on the floor.

  Phoebe started crying.

  “What did you do, Zaria?” She held up her left hand, her middle two claws rubbed down to the quick. Blood seeped at the edges of the exposed bone. “What did you do?”

  “We’re monsters!” you screamed, and weren’t sure if that was a plea or an excuse or an accusation.

  Mama bandaged your sister’s hand, sent you to bed, and left a note that she was going to see an old friend who would be able to help you understand what it was to be a monster girl.

  I will be back tomorrow night, she wrote, but it was a lie.

  Kassy tugs your arm, says, “It’ll be okay, we’ll find her,” but you can’t listen. Where would your sister go? Why was he here at all?

  Phoebe: the wild one, the artist, the girl comfortable in her skin—your sister was content here. Her paintings almost seemed to be alive in the half–light of evening, and she told you that somewhere, sometime, there were others like you. Like her.

  She was content to wait for the other monsters to come.

  But she forgot a crucial thing: humans and monsters don’t get along, and in the end, the monsters always lose.

  Kassy drives you back, her mouth animated. All you hear is your pounding blood and the memory of waking up to find your sister crying by the front door the morning your mother was found dead.

  All you want to do is curl up on your girlfriend’s couch and scream into a pillow. But monster girls don’t cry, and you are going to find Phoebe and get her back. There will be no more graves with wilted roses.

  “How can I help?” Kassy asks, and you tell her about smelling your ex, about how you were sure he was stalking you. When you tell her his name, her eyes narrow. “I know him. Premed. My cousin knows him from Duncan General.”

  The private hospital up on the hill, an old establishment, run and owned by an old family. Mama told you to stay away from there.

  You touch the aching tips of your horns. “Find out if she’s there, please?”

  Kassy nods and makes some calls.

  He has your sister.

  Then he emails you.

  Zaria,

  At first I just wanted to see you again. I wasn’t sure how to approach you, given how you broke up with me. I thought we could make amends, try again.

  Then I found that poor girl you’ve had locked up at that wreck of a house. My god, what kind of depraved psycho does that? She needs medical attention! She has severe physical deformities and is in unstable mental condition, given the artwork I saw displayed, and she needs help.

  I won’t report you to the police if you come see me in private. I need to know what happened. I think you need help.

  In the meantime, I’m going to see that poor girl gets the care she needs.

  You know what “care” means: he’ll take her claws and pull out her teeth and make her safe. Make her normal.

  But isn’t that what you wanted?

  “Why can’t Mama take the mouths out?” you asked your aunt once. Mama never wore gloves, because then she couldn’t breathe.

  “Once your… traits bloom in full, you can’t remove them anymore,” your aunt said. She rubbed the side of her neck where the scars knotted in her wrinkled skin. “They are who you are.”

  “Is that why you help me keep the horns away?” you asked. “So when I grow up they won’t come back?”

  “Since that’s what you want, dearie.” Your aunt wouldn’t look you in the eyes and your mother wasn’t there to tell if she was lying.

  Somehow, you’d never thought to ask what your aunt had done to herself to unmake herself from being a monster girl.

  It’s near midnight, the new moon clouded out, and no stars to bust through the threatening rain.

  Phoebe is quarantined in the upper floor of the hospital.

  “Please talk to me,” Kassy says. “You are not thinking about answering that asshole’s demands, are you?”

  You don’t want to lie, so you shake your head and wait until your girlfriend falls asleep on the couch to the sound of a thunderstorm.

  The receptionist at the hospital is expecting you. She’s a thin girl, wrapped in a heavy maroon sweater, and there are dark hollows under her eyes. She smiles like its nothing more than a preprogrammed response.

  The reception room is all cold mahogany and stainless steel, and the row of plush leather chairs against a bank of windows is empty. Everything feels empty in here.

  “The doctor is waiting upstairs.” The receptionist stands, sways, and shuffles out from behind the desk. A breath might knock her over. “Come, I’l
l show you up.”

  His office is windowless and the walls are blank. He’s so much older now, florescent lights making his thinning blond hair look brittle. “Thank you, Mel,” he says, rising.

  The receptionist nods and shuts the door behind her. You wonder if that small gust of air sent her spiraling through the hall like a sheet of tissue paper.

  “What did you do to her?” you whisper.

  “I helped her.” He rubs his face. “Melanie used to have five shadows,” he says, and you remember the receptionist’s nametag. “She couldn’t go out in the sun without drawing attention. She needed help, and I gave it to her.”

  “Did she want your help?”

  “Of course she did. Who would want to look like that?”

  You fold your arms, trying not to shake. “Where’s my sister?”

  He sighs. “She asked about you.”

  “Where. Is. She.” You don’t have horns to impale him against the wall until he talks; no wings to break his arms with a gale until he hands her over. You didn’t think to bring a weapon, as a normal girl might. “I need—”

  “I’ll show you,” he says, still leaning his hip against the desk. He was never handsome, you realize. He just paid attention to you. “But first, Zaria,” and he hesitates, watching you as if you’ll shatter his jaw again, “I need to know… will you let me help you?”

  Isn’t that what you’ve wanted? A way to make your wings and horns disappear?

  Does it really matter whose scalpel turns you into a girl like all the others?

  “Where’s my sister?”

  He slides away from the desk and moves to the wall, where there’s a hairline crack. “I’ve had to keep this private. For my other patients’ safety.”

  He presses his palm against the wall, and it slides open like a glass patio door, and then you’re following him inside a sterile hallway. Your heart pounds like the beating of wings.

  “That night we… broke up. It made something click for me. My dad always talked about how monsters were real, but they could pass as human if they tried. So I started researching. Looking. And I found his journals after his funeral, just a few years ago. They had sketches. Pictures.”

  Like Mama, with her mouths. Like your horns. Like your sister’s hands.