by Brindi Quinn
A sneaky dip? I tread around the ‘sneak’, which is nothing more than an inoffensive slope that would have caused little strife if she’d just taken it at normal pace. Sil walks only a tad slower in the aftermath. “Might you consider behaving a little less sporadically?” I suggest.
“Sporadically?” Her voice is too innocent. There’s no way she isn’t aware of her own erraticism.
“You’re here and there and have no sort of rhythm to your life,” I explain, impatient.
She takes the comment with consideration. More so than I’d expect. For a spell she is quiet, but for the crunch of leaves beneath her feet. When she finds her answer, those same leaves kick up in a flurry as she swivels to face me.
“The same could be said about you,” she says.
“That’s untrue.”
“No it’s not. You get into these depressions of yours, all emo and quiet, but then you’ll switch into seduction mode without warning. Isn’t that sporadic?”
She waits for an answer, but the ‘sporadic’ part isn’t what I choose to respond to. It’s this ‘seduction mode’ business. I don’t know why, but the label strikes me. My ‘mode’ is the means to an end, true; but hearing her call it ‘mode’ feels so . . .
“I’m not made of robotics, Sil.”
“I know. You’re a demon.”
I frown at her, unimpressed. “And it isn’t as though I’m choosing to be inconsistent. I merely must try at the opportune moments. We’re running out of time.”
“That’s your problem right there, demon boy. ‘Opportune moments’, yada yada. You’re forcing it. Although, I can’t really blame you; it would never happen on its own.” She ponders our romantic likelihood. “And for that matter, it would never happen WITH your help, either.”
“Then what would you suggest?”
She shrugs. “Dunno.”
“What?” I blub. She’s turned me dry. “Then what was the point of even bringing it up?”
She shrugs again. “No reason.”
Sporadicality at its worst!
My teeth begin to grind. Sil makes me want to be destructive.
“Almost there,” says the destruction-inducer, clueless. While I mumble foul things to myself, she obliviously draws up the hood of her sweatshirt. “I hope this makes you less crabby,” she adds.
The interest in my wellbeing is something new. Something ‘forced’, to quote Sil herself. And I won’t be taken in by it. I’m positive she has an ulterior motive; I just haven’t figured out what it is yet.
We push through the next leg of forest. Therein resides a clearing. But it isn’t a clearing alone. Surrounded by wood, a vacated building sits, no larger than a convenience store. The place is dirtied gray and broken, and atop its roof protrude a weathered steeple and cross.
A cross?
I shake my head. Another cleverless stab at my ‘demonicness’. Now I understand.
“A church?” My voice shifts into a drone. A thing of habit. “Hate to disappoint, Sil, but the joke’s on you. I’m not bothered by crosses and the like. Nice go, though.”
“Huh?”
The twit appears genuinely unaware. She looks to the cross for clarification. Several seconds, more than necessary in my opinion, pass before she realizes what I’m suggesting. “Oh! Hah! I get it! No, no, the church isn’t the thing I wanted to show you.” She gestures to the side of the building. “Over there. It’s kinda cool actually.” She continues to talk to herself. “A church and a demon! Hah! I never even thought of that!”
The fact that I, and not Sil, was the one to bring up the stereotype makes my bad mood deepen. Annoyed, I follow her around the forgotten building’s corner.
It isn’t only the building that’s been forgotten. The whole of the grounds are overrun. Secluded. The kind of place you could easily murder someone.
Sil’s ponytailed hair swings back and forth, like a temptress baring her neck beneath. A warm thin neck that could facilely be snapped. Were she an immortal, I’d steal up behind her, slip my fingers around her sinewy throat, and . . .
But Sil isn’t an immortal. And she wouldn’t recover from something like that. She’d be dead, and I’d never see my horns again. What a frustrating situation, forced to behave like a mortal without even knowing how mortals experience emotional release.
I’ll make it a point to find out soon.
“Ta-da.” Sil opens her palm and presents our endpoint.
Ununiformed stones – some light, some dark – stand from the leaves in staggered clusters; ash-colored commemorations marked by etched words. Names and dates – those are the things the wind-worn faces of the stones claim, thought some of them are too dirt-coated to make out completely. The land has shifted in the time since the markers were placed, for they rise unevenly, appearing to teeter and lean. The scene is drab beneath a sky that’s continued to gray as the day’s progressed. Dull. Hollow. But I appreciate it because something about it feels familiar to home, though I can’t put my finger on what exactly.
“The dead are buried here,” I say.
Sil moves slowly and pensively through the stones. “They are,” she says. “Does it suit you, demon?”
I hate to admit that it does, so I don’t. “I’m not a demon.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
My hands, which were stowed into my pockets at some point, I now remove and rub along the top of a nearby stone. It’s the smoothest sort of rough. Only a small divot ruins the groove. I rest my fingertips there and scan the rest of the cemetery. Bumpy, patchy ground marked by shaped rock. The dead are buried below.
Mortals have an end.
Sil has an end. When she dies, her body will be placed in a hole in the ground just like the rest of them. How do I feel about that?
I’m not sure. I feel nothing.
Sil leans against the wall of the church, eyes closed; head back. “Do you come here often?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Not anymore. But I used to come here all the time.”
“Until . . .?” But she won’t say anything more on the subject. Fine by me.
I travel through the graves and read their text. “The dates are what? Birth and death?”
Sil nods. “There’s a big cemetery at St. Gregory’s down on Second Main. It’s newer. Well, newer than this I should say. Some of those tombstones have open death dates. Like a birth year and a dash and then nothing.”
“You mean the patrons have a grave, though they’ve yet to die?”
She stares ahead. “Yeah . . . I’ve never liked that,” she says.
“Morbidly awaiting their deaths.” Scoff-worthy. “The lives of mortals are so trivial.”
“Oh, that’s not it,” corrects Sil. “They do it that way because their spouse has already kicked it, and they want to make sure they’re buried together. Sorta like, ‘Wait for me, I’m coming soon.’”
“What’s the point in that? They’ll be dead, won’t they?”
“Yeah, but it’s saying that death can’t separate them or whatevs.”
Ah. I should’ve known it would be a thing like that. “And still you say you don’t like it?” I ask. “Why? Seems to go along with the paltry mindset of you humans.”
But again Sil refuses to elaborate. Why the hell bring things up if she won’t follow through?
“Anyhow,” she says, folding her arms. “I like it here. It’s one of those places you could get lost in, you know? Like it would be a good place to slip off the face of the earth.”
She was speaking more to herself than to me. “I can’t wait to slip off the face of the earth,” I mutter.
“Oh. Yeah.” She bares a wicked smile. “Guess it doesn’t apply to you, demon.”
“Daem,” I stand to rectify. Alas, what’s the point in arguing with her?
Sil takes a rise and moves through the grave-heads, sluggish now that we’ve reached our destination. Her feet slog through the dropped tree-cover. Scraping. Scuffling. The sound isn’t unpleasant. And when she reach
es a stone she deems worthy near the center of the cemetery, she slides to her bottom. The leaves answer with a great crunch!
Sil’s sitting upon a dead person. She’s sitting upon a dead person, and she doesn’t even care.
I study a few more of the etchings, until I realize that I have no interest in the individuals concealed beneath. I am only interested in the atmosphere. The stains left by the dead. The scars of life.
Life and death. A tired cycle I have no place in. This world is not my own. Aware of this, I instantly feel exhausted.
“What now?” I implore Sil. Now that we’ve gotten here, what does she intend to do? Surely she has some deeper purpose.
No such luck. She takes up a handful of leaves. “Dunno.”
Again?!
“Not amusing.”
She bats the leaves around like some sort of cat. “What’s not amusing?”
Everything. The girl. The world. So why not make it a little more amusing? I will use her. The day’s been a bore. I need distraction.
“Sil?” I will make her my toy.
She suspects nothing. She continues to play with the leaves. “What?” she says.
“Siiiil,” I draw her name out this time. If I try hard enough, I can taste it. Fresh and minty, the word travels over my tongue and pushes into the crisp air.
“What the fruck to do you want, demon boy?”
“Fruck?” An uncommon word used only by Sil and her minion, what’s-his-face. “Grow up, Sil,” I say. With a languid tread, I approach the pile where she sits, skimming my hand along the tops of the tombstones as I go. “Siiiil.”
“What?” Her voice is cynical. “Why are you saying my name like that?”
How shall I play with her? I cannot harm her; I can only toy. But by what means?
Ah. It comes to me. As I near her refuge, she stiffens and backs ever so slightly against the front of the grave. It’s nearly unnoticeable but . . . her nervousness is key. It’s the only thing I have to go on.
Rooting my feet into the uneven ground, I grip the top of her tombstone for support and lower myself into a squat just before her shying body.
“What are you doing?”
“Tasting you, Siiiil. Smelling you. Ingesting you.”
“H-hah!?”
I bring my nose to the side of her cheek and slide it into position near her temple. From there, I blow a small puff of cool air into her ear. Sil goes rigid.
The sight of it is wonderful.
I coo, “Siiiil.” To which she emits a series of asinine babbles.
There we go. Amusing. It’s amusing. And now for the biggest amusement of all. With wicked intent, I open my mouth and bite down on the bottom of her unpierced lobe. Just a little nibble, but it’s enough to set her off. She punches me. Squarely in the jaw. With all the power of her toned athlete’s bicep. “Hoooo-ya!”
The punch is enough to make me lose balance and, though I’m ashamed to admit, topple over.
“Egad, Sil!”
“What was that, demon boy?” she asks. “You just BIT me?”
“Uh –” Of course I had. But the way she’s looking at me – like I’m an insane lecher – makes me want to deny the undeniable. We can’t have her becoming derisive, now can we? Using any skills of detachment I possess, I force myself to remain cool and unaffected.
“What of it?” I croon, regaining controlled stature.
“Why’d you go and do that? I thought you were gonna ask me to try again or something, and then . . . KAPOW! Seduction mode to the extreme!”
Seduction? That’s what she thought it was? “I wasn’t seducing you, Sil,” I amend while brushing a few clinging leaves from my sleeve. “I was playing with you.”
Birdbrained, she inquires, “Oh. Was it any fun?”
“Ur, it . . . was. Until you socked me.”
“Reflex. Sorry,” she tells me.
Hmph. Her smirk begs to differ. Evil girl.
She dusts her hands and slinks to her feet, then begins to wind across the rutted terrain. “More importantly, can you really smell me?” She pulls at her collar and shoves her nose into her shirt. “Is it bad?”
Tch. Always so concerned with her scent. “Just awful,” I lie. “Downright dreadful.”
“Oops. Sorry ‘bout that.” She fans her shirt. It does nothing but send a delightful wave at me.
If she only knew.
The aromatic little thing continues to weave through stone and statue until she reaches the far side of the cemetery. It isn’t necessarily getting late, but it’s getting long. This outing is stretching on. It’s time to go.
However, when I am about to mention such to Sil, she cuts me off with a startled yelp. “D-demon! Come here! Lookie what I found!”
“Nope. Won’t do it, Sil. Not until you call me by my proper name. Throw a ‘Prince’ in there, and you’ll earn a few brownie points.”
“Shh! That’s not important, just get over here, demon boy! For reals!”
“Ugh.” What can I do? She’s as excited as a banshee and as noisy as one too. I strut to where she stands between a miniature mausoleum and a decrepit gate.
“What do you want? Find a witty tombstone?”
“Not exactly.”
She steps aside to reveal her findings. A tombstone sits, sure enough, but before the stone is not uneven ground sprinkled with leaves. Before the stone is . . .
“A hole?”
Sil nods. “Someone dug up the grave.”
Because I don’t know if this is normal practice for mortals, I ask, “For what purpose?”
Sil shrugs. “Beats me. Probably some creepy ritual. I should be asking you. Aren’t creepy rituals sort of your thing?”
Hm. She has a point. “I wouldn’t call them creepy so much as . . . mesonoxian,” I tell her.
“Midnightish? How are they midnightish?” she says.
Damn. Hadn’t expected her to know what it meant. “Never mind, Sil. So, are you to tell me that someone dug up a body, but there isn’t a reason for doing so as far as you know, besides an act unconsecrated?”
“Uh . . . yup! That’s basically what I’m saying!” She crouches over the hole. “Weird. Must’ve been recent. The hole doesn’t even have that many leaves inside.”
“Did they leave any parts?” I ask. “Of a bodily nature, I mean.”
“I don’t think so . . . Here, let me check.”
And without an ounce of hesitation, Sil pops into the grave and begins digging through the small layer of yellowed leaves. I stand awkwardly near the edge of the hole.
“Don’t see any limbs or bones or anything,” she says after a moment of investigation, “but . . .”
“But?”
The wood around us rustles forebodingly. Or perhaps it is nothing but my imagination.
“There IS this!” She pushes an arm from the hole and holds within her peeling-nailpolished fingers a mass of black.
“What is . . .?” But as my eyes adjust, I realize it isn’t a mass of black, so much as a grouping of black feathers attached to a small figure.
It’s a dead bird.
“Disgusting, Sil! That is highly unsanitary!”
“Oh, psh. You sound like my Aunt Tish.”
I shake my head and respire a groan.
Sil is, without a doubt, the least ladylike female I’ve ever met.
“Drop it, Sil. Just drop it.”
At my prodding, she releases the bird and wipes her hands on the thighs of her pants. At least she has the decency to clean them off somewhat. I extend a hand to help her from the hole. She pulls herself up, but doesn’t release me. Instead, she yelps again and begins to tug me towards the church.
“Look! Something else!” she says excitedly.
“Something else? What now?”
“There!”
I follow her gesture to the backdoor of the church, which has been removed.
“So the door’s gone,” I observe. “Big deal.”
“Not that, demon boy! Lo
ok beyond.”
Beyond the door is a room I can’t see clearly from out here, but that isn’t the thing that’s gotten Sil so excited. It’s the ground. At the base of where the door should have been, over the threshold, a symbol’s been drawn in bright white paint. Fresh. New. The symbol is a heptagon with a bit of illegible cursive painted through the middle.
“What’s it mean?” I ask Sil.
“No clue,” she says.
She still has my hand. She’s loosened her grip now that the excitement of discovering the symbol has worn off, but my hand remains in hers. This is wrong. Aren’t I supposed to be the one holding hers? This won’t do. It isn’t princely and it isn’t manly.
I maneuver my hand so that it is on the outside.
Sil shivers and looks at me suspiciously. “What are you doing?” she demands.
“Making it right.”
“Making what right?” She tries to shake me off, but I have no intention of releasing her.
“You need to calm down and succumb,” I instruct.
“To what?”
“To the way things should be.”
“I don’t get it.”
Of course she doesn’t.
She studies our hands. “Huh. Okay,” she says after a bit. Just like that, she agrees. What a scatterhead. She returns to examining the mark on the doorway floor. “Seven points and a scribble. Ooh! I bet it IS part of some creepy, midnightly ritual!” She pokes her head into the church. “Doesn’t look like they left the bones here, though.”
“How do you even know that the two are related?”
“I don’t. But wouldn’t it be cool if they were?”
“You’re such an imbecile.”
But Sil isn’t listening to me. Her thoughts are elsewhere. “I gotta show Keek,” she tells herself. “We should come back and investigate tomorrow.”
Yes. Sil simply must show her squishy minion. I, however, won’t be along for the ride. I’ll make it known:
“I shall pass.”
Sil sticks out her bottom lip. “But why? We’ll need a demon expert while investigating cultish rituals.”
“That is precisely why I won’t offer assistance. Because you assume things like that. Let you and your minion figure it out. It doesn’t interest me at all, so –”
