UnCommon Origins: A Collection of Gods, Monsters, Nature, and Science (UnCommon Anthologies Book 2)

by P. K. Tyler

  He stayed and counseled her. He told her to learn about energy and spirits and how, with practice, she could solicit their help for herself and others.

  “You’ve got some natural talent,” he said.

  She went into rehab that evening.

  After she got out, her life started getting better.

  He, however, never gave her the rundown about which spirits to call on and which ones to avoid.

  * * *

  Chelsea

  Jessa sinks down onto the sectional, her skirt poofs out around her, deflating like a party balloon. Her face slackens and she closes her eyes. Then she begins to laugh (from somewhere deep inside). Chelsea is glad that, in her sister’s nervous laughter, everything is dropping away, all pretenses. But then Jessa shakes, holds herself and the laughter turns into a coughing fit. Each laugh-cough seems to strip something away from Jessa. Chelsea doesn’t want her sister to disappear, just to come clean and pay for her mistakes.

  “I was warned,” Jessa says finally. In her hysteria, both fairy earrings slip off.

  “Emily tried to warn me,” Jessa says in a raspy voice. Her eyes roll back in her head for a moment.

  “Emily?” Chelsea says. Chelsea searches her mind to call up a face. Emily—that dizzy looking woman with the fat pimply chin? Another person from the co-op? What was Jessa talking about? Chelsea screws up her face.

  “He kept coming to me. Night after night. I bled so much.”

  Jessa’s face is drawn. Chelsea has never seen her sister so shaken, so pale.

  “Are you saying Marcus raped you?”

  Chelsea’s mind works overtime. More work for her. This would be so much more difficult; with Jessa’s past, there was no way a rape trial could move forward. What would their friends think of her younger sister? No, she couldn’t have that scrutiny on the family. She would talk with Cartusciello; maybe somehow she could buy Marcus out. Make him go away.

  “We can make this right. No one needs to know. You just let me handle the details.” Chelsea says, nodding.

  * * *

  Jessa

  Once it began, she did not know how to stop it. He came to her regularly in her dreams. She thought she could bear his visits. Faunus appeared as a giant man with the lower body of a goat. Her dream body was always outstretched, her arms comically long. He would jump on one of her outstretched arms, and, with his forelegs, stomp on it repeatedly. The pain was unbearable.

  He whipped her body with branches, a storm of leaves, and with other animals’ body parts. After calling animals to him and stroking them until they shuddered, he’d douse her in goat and wolf semen, although he never entered her in the dreams. She’d wake up sweaty, often in the midst of a hip-rocking, swelling orgasm, her fingernails piercing the sheets, the taste of bliss falling from her lips.

  She should have told Emily about the visits, but she didn’t want her to be worried or disappointed in her. She wanted to be a good petitioner, a good manipulator of energy. Wasn’t she chosen to work with spirits?

  When she missed her period a month later, she knew that she had been given a boon. It worked, it worked!

  Only after Emma Jean arrived did she worry. As her daughter grew, she could see that she was different. Emma Jean’s gurgles sounded like a rushing river. Before her eyes, she had seen her daughter’s hair form locks, but they were small and she could pluck them off easily. They smelled like wet earth, dead leaves and river rocks, like him. She told herself that they were harmless things. After Chelsea had asked her about a long matted lock of Emma Jean’s that seemed to spring up overnight, she really knew. She didn’t want to know.

  In the book, she had failed to notice where it said, “Various spirits indicate their spiritual children by causing hair to spontaneously form “locks”. Faunus had answered her petition, just not in the way she had expected.

  Jessa covered her tracks through one of her old drug contacts. She found a doctor who would write out scripts to say yes, there was a hair condition. It meant bad sex three times a year, but she paid that price dutifully.

  * * *

  Jessa

  Jessa shakes her head, her left hand working the top knuckle of the right. “Her hair, it keeps curling. The coils are always sprouting up. I sometimes have to cut her hair ten times in a month,” Jessa says, her eyes red from crying. She feels as if someone has unscrewed the valve of her life, and she is losing pressure like a tire. Everything is coming through. Peace Mind says it is good for her. She thinks her crying sounds like a low horn. She trembles. Jumpy Mind berates her.

  “Who knows what happens in those genes,” Chelsea says.

  Jessa lets out a sigh. “I wasn’t strong enough.”

  * * *

  Chelsea

  Chelsea feels like she is conducting this conversation under water. Jessa has become delusional.

  “You’ve never been strong. I’ve been the strong one,” Chelsea agrees while patting her sister’s shoulders.

  Chelsea looks at her niece and curls her lip in disgust. It was worse than Chelsea thought. Her sister really needed her. Keeping this from me has driven her over the edge.

  “This all needs to be orchestrated with care and I’m willing to do it. You know that she can’t stay with you much longer. You’re barely making a living. It’s time to give up the charade. We’re going to get her in a prep school far away from here.”

  “What?” Jessa says and looks at her with those buttery soft hazel eyes.

  “I’ve already started to look into it. Come,” she says invitingly, “…the papers are in the study.”

  * * *

  Jessa

  Jessa jolts forward and reaches into her bag for a tissue to wipe her nose. The papers! Jumpy Mind is excited and tells her to run. She ignores the command.

  “Get your dolly, little mama. We’re moving,” she says to Emma Jean.

  With care, she gathers up her daughter who has just let out the biggest fart. Emma Jean squeals with delight and claps her hands. Close to her body, she buries her head in the girl’s neck and smells the baby powder she sprinkled on hours ago. Under that gentle smell though, she can smell the wild smell, too. It’s the smell of the forest at night.

  Collecting herself, yet feeling dazed, Jessa tries to catch the thread of conversation. What was her sister just saying? She wants to float away. That old feeling of wanting to get high courses through her. She wasn’t good about dealing when things got rough. She breathes again and adjusts Emma Jean. Holding Emma Jean makes her come back to the moment.

  “What school?” she says watching her sister stride ahead. They pass from the outdoor living area into a long hallway and then make two left turns. Jessa looks at the paintings that line the walls, mostly of still lifes. Jessa finds irony in the fact her sister collects art, but misses everything that could be wild, beautiful and original right under her nose.

  Chelsea pushes open the door into her study, a magnificent room with vaulted cream-colored ceilings and soothing amber-colored furniture.

  Smiling, Chelsea holds up a glossy folder and hands her a thick packet. “Ecole Humanite is where I’ve made arrangements…serving gifted children, though we don’t know that yet about Emma Jean. Still, they’ll take the money.”

  Jessa notices that her sister’s eyes are the most animated and shiny they have been all afternoon.

  Chelsea turns her back to Jessa and Emma Jean and looks out the large bay window. “It was once on the list of places we were to go for high school. Before you…” she pauses, “decided to go another way. I would have loved it there, but father said I needed to be here, watching out for you.”

  The regret in her sister’s voice squeezes Jessa in a way that she has not felt before. She’s given up so much for me. She thinks about the reckless way she has spent her youth; her stupidities striking her with pinpricks, as if she is being allergy tested. Yes, so much of my life, I’ve been allergic to good sense.

  “Switzerland,” Jessa says, in a squeaky voice
. As she looks at the happy kids on the cover, her stomach churns like she has to go to the bathroom immediately. Shitting fear, that’s what getting clean felt like. That’s what it felt like to face up to the lies and everything bad you’ve done. Your bowels just drop from under you and everything goes soft. It’s not polite. It’s a run to the nearest bathroom. She clenches the lower half of her body.

  “That’s why you’re here, so we could talk about this like adults. I think you’re capable of that much. I’ve already explained everything to Cartusciello.”

  Jessa puts Emma Jean down, “Just sit down and stay for a minute,” she says. “Don’t touch anything. It’s a special room of Auntie Chelsea’s.”

  Emma Jean scampers over to a corner and looks at a big deer figurine sitting on a low table.

  “I said, don’t touch anything,” Jessa repeats.

  “Are you ready to hear my proposal? It’s very simple. If you send her away, then I will say that you are fit and that you should inherit your share, as the will stipulates. As you’ve been waiting for. If not, it will be ten years before the money is released to you. Unfortunately, you’ll get all the money then. Father figured you would have to have your act together by then. I wanted it to be longer, but he still had some hope in you.”

  Jessa’s fear bubbles up into her throat. She automatically wraps her arms around herself and hugs. She’s about to double over with the news. She feels small and powerless, like a white lab rat running into corners, in a maze not of her making. Please, oh please, not ten years!

  BabaJesusYemayaKaliArchAngelMicheal… SOMEONE GIVE ME SOME GUIDANCE! Peace Mind is strangely quiet.

  For a moment, Jessa feels as if she has entered a surreal game show. Three white doors appear in her mind’s eye. She believes that Jumpy Mind is making them all open and close rapidly. She sees glimpses of trees crashing down on cars behind Door #1. She wants Jumpy Mind to stop opening and closing that door.

  What’s behind Door #2? A door swings open and she sees Marcus, and for a moment she feels the delicious contact of his skin against hers. She remembers when he bumped into her by accident, in the storeroom. She lost her balance and began to fall backwards, her rubber clogs slipping on the floor. He grabbed her arm, steadying her. His caring grip made her blush and sent pleasant signals to every part of her body. Who could not want to sleep with Marcus? She had. Not because he was black, but because he was grounded and beautiful and believed in her. She had met him two weeks after her recovery, when she had nothing. He gave her a job and a place at the co-op.

  Her thoughts cloud together. Maybe she made up Faunus so that she could have Marcus? Maybe she was still high, making it all up.

  Door #3 swings open and lots and lots of tiny pink pillows spill out. Behind the pillows, Jessa sees herself as she had been on the last day of her addiction. Tricking for food and for drugs. Dirty and poor. That last year on the street gave her a reality lesson on being poor; she couldn’t take that again. The nasty looks from people, not being able to go where she wanted to go, diving in dumpsters. How did people endure it?

  And then, from behind all those pillows emerged another version of her, confident, clean and walking with a steady stride. Jumpy Mind said, “Step over that gutter rat. That was never you. You were never meant to live a hard life. You always knew you would be coming back, didn’t you?”

  Emma Jean bounces her doll up and down.

  “For how long?” Jessa asks.

  “At the school for a year or so, but ultimately you’ll move to give her up for adoption. I’ll make it as painless as possible.” Chelsea says this while turning around slowly, looking right into Jessa’s eyes.

  The eyes that Jessa sees now are very cold. Adoption? Jessa feels she is one step away from dog panting. Jumpy Mind doesn’t miss a beat. “Make it easy on yourself,” it says. “Yes, yes, yes, you can give her up. Just for a little while. While you travel on the boat. Don’t forget about the boat!”

  She feels a scratch on her foot. Emma Jean has unhooked a paperclip and is running it over Jessa’s foot, slowly.

  She bends down and snatches it from her daughter’s hand. “Don’t play with that,” she says, harsher than she means to. “Go play with dolly while I talk with Auntie Chelsea,” she says through gritted teeth and a fake smile.

  She looked at Emma Jean. It could be easy to release her. Different, odd, strange. Of her body, but of something else. Wild.

  “What about the truth?” Peace Mind offers.

  Are you on another planet? she answers back. Yes, of course you are, you’re not even real! No, I must try to reason with her.

  “She’s not black, I can assure you that,” she begins quietly. “If she was…Chelsea, if she was, what are you saying?”

  “It’s someone else, not Marcus?” Chelsea says as she pulls out a black chair behind her desk and sits down. Her face deflates and clouds over.

  Jessa sees that it has not occurred to her sister that she could be wrong. She was not the wrong one.

  Jessa swallows hard. “Yes, it is someone else,” she says.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Chelsea says. “It doesn’t change anything.” Her eyes harden into steel flints that seem to give off sparks. “You’re bound to mess up again.”

  Jessa rushes to the desk and leans on it, “Just sign the papers saying I’m okay. I am okay. And then, you never have to see us. We can go away. It’s like you won’t have a sister.” She smells her pungent fear radiating out from her yellow tank.

  “All the years of what I put you through, I can’t make up for that. Never. Never. Never. And, I am so sorry. But, after today, I promise, I will be no trouble,” Jessa says.

  Emma Jean jumps up and runs over and assumes the stance like her mother. She places her small hands at the height of Jessa’s knees and leans into the frame of the desk.

  “If you don’t put her away, it’s ten years,” Chelsea says.

  “I am fit and I will contest it,” Jessa shouts and spit flies out of her mouth. “Spitefulness shouldn’t be legalized! This is not what Daddy wanted,” she says.

  “Contest it with what?” The sneer is ugly and contorts her sister’s face. “The $175 saved up in your checking account?”

  Registering the surprise on her sister’s face, Chelsea adds, “Yes, I’ve done some digging on you. “Don’t you see it is for the best?”

  “Trust me, Chelsea, I’ve been paying for my mistakes.”

  “So you’re admitting Emma Jean is a mistake?” Chelsea says, her eyes opening wide.

  “Is that what you want me to say? That she’s a mistake? I wasn’t talking about her. I was talking about everything else…what I put you through and Dad through and everyone.”

  Chelsea’s eyebrows arched. Jessa notices how she has the same look like when they were girls. Jessa could see now how she has always made her sister look good. Weariness crept over her, like when she was coming down from a long high. Her throat felt dry.

  “You’ve never believed that I could change, that I could grow. That I didn’t need saving,” Jessa says. “All of my 12 stepping, all of my reconciliation letters, everything I’ve tried and committed to. You’ve never believed me, or in me.”

  “Addicts always lie,” Chelsea says.

  The finality in her sister’s tone hits Jessa like a punch in the stomach.

  “And you’ll do anything in the name of family, won’t you, even if it means becoming a monster?”

  Jessa could feel in her whole body how she’s been her sister’s foil. I always make you look good. The one who needs saving. She sees herself locked in this struggle with her sister. Jessa takes two steps forward and wipes away the tears. She sees her sister now in a way that she has never seen her before. She’s never been interested in the truth.

  Jessa feels a cone of power rising inside of her that wants expression through her hands. “Maybe the spirits were right. They told me that you never had the capacity to love. I didn’t believe them. Maybe it was in your genes, y
ou know?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chelsea snaps. “Your energy jibber jabber fails to impress me.”

  “Always so quick to protect what you didn’t even earn. Always thinking you’re better than everyone else,” Jessa says.

  Chelsea’s face grows a deep flash of red. She shakes her head as if trying to shake off an insect.

  “What happened to you when we were young? Was the good squeezed out of you?” Jessa says.

  “The papers are waiting,” Chelsea says pointing and then she scrunches up her face.

  Jessa comes toward her sister, putting all her concentration on the middle of Chelsea’s heart center, at her breastbone. Jessa breathes out the light from inside of her. I’m sorry, big sister.

  “I need some some water…” Chelsea says trying to rise out her chair.

  Jumpy Mind and Peace Mind are, for once, speechless.

  Could it be this easy? she wonders. Her fingers tingle and her whole body feels awake. She’s forgotten about the boat, the money and the new life. She is high again, so high. This was a high she had been seeking, waiting for. The best high. All her attention is in this moment, surging forth with power. She sees the webbing around her sister’s body and, with her hands, she starts to direct it upward. As it unfurls, it begins to lift with it a faint outline of Chelsea’s body. The outline rises slowly. Chelsea’s body is fighting now; she’s pounding the table and her face is a burnt autumn red. Jessa goes deeper searching for the seed of her sister’s heart, wanting to squeeze it, rupture it.

  Emma Jean comes away from the desk and tugs on her, “Mama, what are you doing? Aunt Chel-Chel?”

  I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. Don’t make me stop.

  Emma Jean looks at her and, for a moment, Jessa is back in the forest and there is the sound of water and the feeling of soft leaves underfoot. Something else is looking out at her from her daughter’s eyes. Strange. Wild. Wise, perhaps. She’s not sure what she sees.