“No,” Crixus said, backing into another wave of grasping hands. “Don’t look at me like that. The guy you want is over there. Hung like a horse and can go all night. In fact, I’ll bet he can take you two at a time.”
“He looks pretty busy,” a petite, apricot-haired woman in a purple sweatsuit observed. “I’ll bet a nice young man like you could help us pass the time.”
“Oh my, yes,” agreed a muumuu-wearing compatriot. “I’ma sit on that face like a padded toilet seat after a hemorrhoidectomy.”
“Oh gods no. Please,” Crixus begged, turning his blue eyes toward a sky of a lighter hue. “Please. I’ve done everything you asked. Mostly. Take back my immortality. Kill me. Kill me now—” This last word changed pitch so abruptly that I wasn’t sure Crixus had spoken it until I spotted the bony hand squeezing his crotch.
“Oooh!” the grabber announced. “I think we might have a fireman here! This one’s hiding quite the hose in these trousers!”
The demigod went down to his knees, drowning in the sudden surge of bodies piling atop him.
I sagged within the hands of my captors, going limp as a boned fish, crawling my way over to dig for Crixus’s hand among the slack flesh and fragile bones.
Pain seared a thousand needles into my scalp. The ground disappeared from beneath me as I was dragged backward over the tangle of bodies by my hair. I flailed at the hand holding me, my fingers closing on the buttery leather cuff of Persephone’s outfit.
“You stupid, pathetic slut.” The voice rolled over my body like smoky velvet, hoarse and sexy as a lounge singer’s. “How dare you defile an immortal with your soiled flesh?”
“I didn’t mean to!” I hissed through the terrific pain burning in my temples.
“What?” a sweet, silky voice answered. “You tripped and fell on his dick?”
I was tossed down to the concrete at the perfectly pedicured feet of Aphrodite, who pressed her stiletto heel into the divot where my collarbone met the base of my neck.
“First my son, Cupid, and now my consort. Your habit of sticking your pointy little nose into my affairs is most unwelcome.”
I swallowed against the pressure crushing my neck. Lack of air threatened to steal any remaining capacity for thought. “Does Adonis belong to you alone, then?”
“No,” Persephone spat. “He belongs to us both.”
“Not always,” Aphrodite retorted. “He was mine. Until I sent him to you for safe keeping.”
“In a box.” Persephone’s slim, pale arms crossed against her slick bustier. “I freed him. In many ways.”
The pressure on my neck lessened incrementally. “He wasn’t yours to free,” Aphrodite spat.
“No more than he was yours to keep,” Persephone bit back.
Aphrodite’s golden skin drank in the sunlight, growing more luminous by the second. She turned her attention back to me. “Well, if it weren’t for you, he would still be with us.”
“How can you say that?” I cut in. “After what he told me about why he left?”
“Don’t speak about matters that don’t concern you, mortal.” Wind whipped Persephone’s hair into black flame.
“It may not concern me,” I said, “but it certainly concerns Aphrodite. She has a right to know.”
“What do I have a right to know?” Aphrodite demanded.
“There’s nothing.” Persephone insisted. “Can’t you see the mortal is baiting you?”
“Baiting? No. I just think relationships should be built on trust. And if I were Aphrodite, I would want to know.”
“The rumors!” Aphrodite gasped. “They’re true?”
“Completely,” I agreed, having no idea whatsoever the rumors might be.
“You lying bitch!” Rage deepened Aphrodite’s voice to a rumble that threatened to fill the sky. “We agreed to work together to deal with the doctor. And you’ve been plotting against me all this time.”
Persephone’s words were a low, threatening hum. “All that sex has addled what little mind you had, Venus.”
“I will see you pay for that in blood from your black heart.”
They sprang at each other, two colossi of the feminine aspect. Robbed of their ability to employ whatever supernatural powers they might possess, they resorted to the good, old-fashioned scratching and hair-pulling common to women battling over the same morsel of man.
No longer the subject of the goddesses’ attention, I turned back to the fray, seeking signs of Liam, Adonis or Crixus.
I found the first in this list wide-eyed and wild-haired, his face covered in smears of fuchsia, rose and tangerine lipstick. He waded through bodies rolling in the throes of ecstasy at his feet, the knobby elbows of one persistent grandmother wrapped around his waist like a belt as the rest of her body dragged behind him.
“Can’t unsee,” he mumbled. “Can’t unsee. Tits. Snatch…like a wizard’s sleeve.”
I pried the knuckles at his zipper open and peeled the hands off his pants. Taking his face in my hands, I pulled his eyes level with mine. “Liam, I need you to focus. We need to find the head to the rabbit costume and get it back on Adonis. Do you think you can do that?”
“Head,” he mumbled.
“Yes. The pink rabbit head. Can you find it?”
He nodded.
“Good. I’m going to go try and help Crixus.”
The women were beginning to lose energy. Their movements slowed, their bodies easier to move. Beneath a pile of exposed, liver-spotted flesh, I found Crixus staring blankly up at the sky, sandwiched between pairs of drooping breasts whose nipples pointed toward their orthopedic shoes.
“Off!” I shouted, elbowing my way through them. “Get off of him!”
“I’ve got it!” Liam’s triumphant voice announced. He held the maniacally grinning head aloft like the trophy of a bested opponent.
“Go put it on Adonis!” I ordered. “Hurry!”
As the last body fell away from the demigod’s prone form, I saw the extent of the damage. His shirt hung from his torso in shreds, his skin marred by the indentation of bite marks and angry purple-red hickeys. The deep, muscular grooves cutting down between his hipbones were wet with saliva where countless tongues had traced them until they disappeared into his jeans.
I leaned over him and pressed a cool hand against his feverish cheek. “Crixus? Are you okay?”
His voice was barely a whisper.
“What?” I brought my face closer to his and was rewarded with a lightning-fast blur of movement as I was rolled beneath him on an uneven surface. Crixus’s hands tangled into my hair, his lips crushing down over mine as his tongue plumbed the depths of my mouth in silken strokes.
A strobe light blinked against my closed eyelids, pulling me back into the present, back to the unwelcome knowledge that I was passionately kissing a demigod on a bed of felled senior citizens in various stages of undress.
“God, this is great stuff!” the Ferret’s voice gave me the final dose of reality needed to fit all the puzzle pieces together.
That hadn’t been a strobe light, it had been a camera’s flash. I was enmeshed in the largest cluster fuck in the history of cluster fucks, and the Ferret had captured it all.
I shoved Crixus off of me and scrambled to my feet.
“Sorry,” he said, looking not sorry at all. “Palate cleanser.”
“Do me a favor?” I asked him.
“Anything,” he agreed.
I nodded toward the Ferret, who had yet to cease snapping photos. “Go break that guy in half and shove the camera up his ass.”
“My pleasure,” Crixus said, cracking his knuckles.
“This is a free country,” the Ferret insisted, backing away. “There are no rules against taking pictures in a public place.”
“The rules don’t apply to me,” Crixus said.
“Get her off! Oh my God! Someone get her off!” Liam’s bellow of pain spun us all in his direction. The rabbit head had vanished, and a head of a completely different k
ind was sandwiched under his arm, the dentureless mouth fastened to his wrist. He had succeeded in replacing the head to Adonis’s costume but had drawn the ire of his attacker in the process.
“Lay the ivory to him, Mary Ellen!” came the shouted encouragement.
“Ma?” the Ferret asked.
Mary Ellen’s head jerked upright and she released Liam’s arm. “Brett?”
Mother and son considered each other across the distance. Mary Ellen straightened her blouse and smoothed her hair.
Adonis reached down to the crotch of his costume and handed over a pair of dentures, which Mary Ellen slid back into her mouth. “What are you doing here?” she asked the Ferret.
A quick analysis of the Ferret’s face revealed a conflicted mixture of hope, distress, and shame.
“He’s taking pictures,” I answered for him. “He has a real eye for dynamic shots. You wouldn’t believe how much people are willing to pay for someone as talented as he is.” A stretch, perhaps, but all technically true.
The Ferret cast a curious glance in my direction.
“Really?” Mary Ellen asked. Her cast iron face began to soften around the edges.
“Really,” I said.
“You look so…professional,” she said. Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
“You look good too,” the Ferret replied. “Ma, I—”
“No,” Mary Ellen said, shaking her head. “It’s okay, Brett. I owe you an apology. I’ve wanted to call you for the longest time.”
“It’s my fault too, Ma. Do you think we could maybe we could get coffee sometime?”
“I’d like that,” Mary Ellen said. “Will you be staying around for the Women in the Workforce event tonight?”
“Sorry, Ma,” the Ferret said, handing the camera to me. “I have to go grab some pictures I owe Dr. Schmidt. I’m afraid I have a little too much on my plate right now to give her profile the proper attention.” His wink only sent my skin crawling a few inches this time.
“Oh no!” I heard someone behind me lament. “The bake sale!”
Over at the edge of the crowd, the battle continued on between Aphrodite and Persephone. They had crashed into the table bearing cupcakes, pies, and other assorted goodies, and were slicked head to toe with chocolate frosting, whipped cream, and pudding.
Their slippery bodies slid against each other, cleavage to cleavage, their slick legs entwined as they swore and scratched at each other.
“Holy shit,” Adonis breathed behind me. “That’s hot. Gotta go.” He was a pink blur, bolting over to the two women, separating them so they could run behind a building to engage in a calorie-laden orgy before vanishing back into the immortal ether.
Persephone whistled as they disappeared behind the church, and Cerberus trotted into view.
Only when I saw his pink-stained maw did the thought fully crystalize in my head.
“Marvin!” I gasped, turning to Liam. “Where’s Marvin?”
“Over here!” Crixus called.
On numb feet and legs filled with sand, I jogged over to the patch of grass where Crixus crouched.
I pulled up short, the force of shock stopping me in my tracks as effectively as if I had run face first into a brick wall.
Marvin lay crumpled in the grass, his matted, bloody fur a pink-red mockery of Easter against the vibrant green church lawn. His yellow bow tie had been torn from his neck, his vest punctured and shredded by any number of Cerberus’s teeth.
I was only vaguely aware of the curb biting into my knees as I collapsed beside him. “Marvin! Oh, no!”
His little chest rose in fell in shallow gasps, trying in vain to drag life from the air. “It’s...” The words came in time with the breaths and waited for another spasm to pass before speaking again. “Okay.”
“Why isn’t he healing?” I demanded of Crixus.
“He can’t,” Crixus said. “Not this time.”
“But he’s been hurt worse than this before! He told me so himself!” I scooped a hand under Marvin’s head and stroked the lacework of veins in his still-warm ear. “Marvin, please,” I begged. “Please try.”
My tears thinned the blood on his ruined body. Each one landing with a gentle pat as it sank into his fur.
“I want this,” he whispered. “To be free.”
“But you”—a sob broke my sentence in half—“you saved Sigmund. You can save yourself.”
“I found…him. Death. He’ll take me now. Now that I…” Breath ebbed away from him like the tide, taking longer each time to return to the shore.
“Now that what?” I demanded.
“Now that he sacrificed himself,” Crixus answered. “For you.”
A fresh wave of grief vacuumed the space from my chest, collapsing me in upon myself.
Marvin’s chest inflated on a sudden gasp, his chocolate-brown eyes widening one final time. His pink lips curled in a serene smile as he sent his last breath up to meet the clouds reflected on the surface of his gaze.
He was gone.
*****
“Next!” Crixus’s voice echoed in the empty space of the church’s auditorium, graciously allotted to us by the Women’s Rotary Club in exchange for my generous donation.
I had filled in Pay To the Order Of space on the ten thousand dollar check the Ferret returned to me and handed it over to his mother, Mary Ellen.
It proved the perfect venue to interview potential applicants for the new Easter Bunny, an occupation now vacant with Marvin’s unfortunate passing.
“I really don’t feel qualified to make this choice,” I announced, glancing past Liam and four sets of small, sneakered feet to Crixus, whose own motorcycle boots were propped up on the chair in front of him.
“Those are the rules,” Crixus replied. “You kill the Easter Bunny, you pick the replacement.”
“You killed the Easter Bunny?” a wide-eyed Maddy asked me.
“No,” I argued. “ I did not kill the Easter Bunny. He sacrificed himself for me. That’s entirely different.”
“She killed the Easter Bunny,” Maddy whispered to Caden.
“Quiet,” Liam hissed. “Doctor Matilda was nice enough to let you stay and watch. If you don’t stay quiet, she might make you leave.”
“Sorry,” Maddy whispered. Her heavy-lashed blue eyes glanced to the side. I fought a painful surge of affection for the dark-haired cherub who folded her hands in her lap and redoubled her efforts to keep her eyes forward.
The sound of hooves clomping across the stage announced the next applicant before his golden horn poked into view from behind the curtain.
“A unicorn!” Maddy’s ever-ready squeal soared through the open space.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I grumbled as the rest of him wandered into view. His rainbow-hued mane gleamed beneath the overhead lights, a matching tail swishing from the end of his powerful white haunches. He tossed his muscular neck, casting a shower of sparkles across the stage from the pair of glittery bunny ears attached to the headband perched over his eyes.
“Forget it, Wallis,” Crixus said, dropping his boots to the floor with a resounding thud.
“What?” Wallis the unicorn asked. “The rules say the position is open to any and all magical creatures. And as you can clearly see, I am one magical unicorn-load of flaming awesome.”
“Did he just wink at me?” I whispered to Liam.
“That would explain the overwhelming urge I just felt to punch him in the face,” Liam replied.
“You can’t punch unicorns in the face!” Maddy gasped.
“Believe me, kid, you can,” Crixus drawled, fixing an icy stare on Wallis. “In fact, some unicorns should be punched in the face at least three times a day.”
“Look, I thought we agreed to leave that little Crimean War incident behind us, Crixus,” Wallis said.
“The hell we did!” Crixus said, shooting up from his seat.
“Oops. Better take this,” I interrupted, holding aloft my jingling phone.
&nb
sp; The angry back-and-forth of an argument volleyed behind me as I stepped out of the auditorium and into the hallway. “Dr. Schmidt,” I said.
“Well hello, Doctor.” The snicker that followed sent ice water sluicing through my veins.
“Who is this?”
“The one who still needs the key you promised to get.”
Panic swirled around me like smoke. I had hoped the reprieve the Ferret’s resignation brought would have lasted longer than the few quiet days I had enjoyed. “I have all the pictures,” I informed the voice on the other end. “Barrett showed me the negatives.”
Another chuckle. “Good thing I have something even better. I have someone here who wants to say hello.”
Something rustled against the phone, the sound faint over the heartbeat pounding in my ears.
“Matilda? Is that you?”
The ground rushed up to meet me as my back slid down a brick wall. A voice I would know instantly and forever.
“Mom?”
<<<>>>
To be continued…
Don’t miss Matilda Schmidt in Unbearable—coming June 2014.
Did Unhoppy make you want to sneeze rainbow sprinkles of AWESOME? Did it make you want to poop jellybeans of FAIL?
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About the author:
Cynthia St. Aubin wrote her first play at age eight and made her brothers perform it for the admission price of gum wrappers. A steal, considering she provided the wrappers in advance. Though her early work debuted to mixed reviews, she never quite gave up on the writing thing, even while earning a mostly useless master's degree in art history and taking her turn as a cube monkey in the corporate warren.
Because the voices in her head kept talking to her, and they discourage drinking at work, she started writing instead. When she's not standing in front of the fridge eating cheese, she's hard at work figuring out which mythological, art historical, or paranormal friends to play with next. She lives in Colorado with the love of her life and three surly cats.
Unhoppy: The Case Files of Dr. Matilda Schmidt, Paranormal Psychologist #3 Page 9
