Strength, Little One

When the voice first whispers to you, in the shadows of your mind, it says Strength, little one. I am with you. The voice is calm and gentle as it says this, and it feels like lying on the beach as the warm tide washes around you when the voice tells you it's name. It's not the last time the voice will speak to you, but it is the first and so you always remember how it felt.
The next time it comes, you are crying in the dark, quietly so your parents in the next room won't hear and ask you what is wrong. You don't have the words to tell them.
Strength, little one, I am here.
It only make you cry harder because you don't know how to be strong, you are only a soft child unused to the sharp words and deeds of those who share your species.
I will teach you how to be strong, little one.
There is promise in that voice, and so you believe it. That night the voice only whispers the stories your mother read to you when you were much younger, until you fall asleep and dream of floating in a warm, dark sea as you look up at the starry night sky. The lessons come later, the next night as you wait patiently. You will repeat them like a mantra in your head in the coming days, as you become crafty and strong.
Make people laugh, even at your own expense. When someone hurts you, the others will take revenge in your place. No one likes it when their clown is hurt.
Make an inner landscape, know every detail of the rocks and trees. As they laugh at you and say unkind things, retreat to that place where no one can find you. Feel their laughter and words as wind that causes no pain.
Learn the words that will shock them, but use them rarely.
Never let your anger turn inward.
The voice saves your life and continues to do so as you grow.

The Bad Days

Days like today are the worst. Your breath twists in your throat and tears in your lungs and you shift between wanting to scream and lash out or biting your lip to stop from bawling for no reason at all. It's days like today when your skin doesn't fit right over that black sludge you call a soul and you just want to boil and scrub away all of the sins you have ever even thought about committing because everything agitates you. You're not half as careful with your words as you usually are, the nasty razor-edged things cut your lips as they skip free. It's hard, because you know tomorrow will be worse, that itch twisting just out of reach under your skin. The day after that doesn't even bear thinking about. You'll be living in an alcoholic daze until this passes, the manic highs and screamingly angry lows and that goddamn flinch every time you hear a noise. But it always passes, always. All you can do is curl up in a dark corner and hope against hope you don't say something that you can't mend with quick words and an easy, self-deprecating smile.

Short Story

I am eleven years old, sitting on a couch that feels like it's made out of wood and styrofoam. It makes me want to twitch, search for a more comfortable spot. There's a woman sitting across from me in a desk chair, the kind with wheels that one can spin around and around and around on if one were so inclined. She doesn't look like she has ever been so inclined.
"So, how have things been going lately?"
I know she's only asking because that's what she's paid to do, it's her job to sit and listen to people whining about how shitty their lives are and pretend like she cares. Tough shit. She's not going to get anything out of me and I'm wondering how long it will take her to notice. She sealed the fate of our transactions the first time I sat down and she treated me like I was a talking cucumber. I know I am not an adult, but I do not deserve condescension, and if you treat me like an infant that's what you'll get. Stubborn, mule-headed child that I am.
"Fine."
Not really, but I'm not going to tell a condescending stranger that. I'm not going to tell her that I've been up all night at my friend's house, stayed up watching movies with her big brother far past the time she'd gone to bed. I wasn't tired, it wasn't my fault. I'm not going to tell her about the way he'd kissed me and my body had gone limper than a rag doll, refusing to do anything I was screaming at it to do. I'm not going to tell her about the way he shoved his hand down my pants, about the way I'd shaken afterwards. Like I'd been out in a blizzard wearing nothing at all. I'm not going to tell her that an hour ago I was back in my parent's apartment brushing my teeth, throwing up, brushing my teeth again before stepping into water as hot as I could bear and trying to scrub his touch off of me.
"How are things with your mother these days?"
I'm not going to tell her about the way my mother guilts me into doing what she wants. I'm not going to tell her about how guilty I feel that my dad always gets caught in the middle of it. I'm not going to tell her about the screaming matches because my grades are shit and my mom wants me to get into a private high school.
"Fine."
My foot jiggles, and I can see her cataloging it, analyzing it. Boredom, ADD, ADHD? I can see her mentally tacking on labels. It's boredom. I can think of a zillion different things to do with my Saturday afternoon than sit on an uncomfortable couch and lie through my teeth to a woman who seems to view me as slightly more intelligent than the primordial ooze that first sludge it's way out of the ocean.
"How are things at school?"
I'm not going to tell her about the random fits of anger that have a couple people afraid of me. That number includes me. I'm not going to tell her that the guy I have a crush on tells me that I'm stupid, that my writing sucks, that I smell bad, that guys are only ever going to want me for sex because I'm good for nothing else. I'm not going to tell her that I'm starting to believe he's right.
"Fine."
Ten minutes down, twenty more to go. I watch the clock and don't pay attention to whatever else she says. It's not like either of us cares anyway.

The Painting

The first time I see the painting it’s in a bankrupt gallery and the only part of the building not for sale. It’s not a complicated painting, a naked woman with a riotous tangle of red hair standing against black, the darkness almost seeming to wrap around her, like it’s trying to hide her nakedness. The woman has her hands extended, like she’s inviting the viewer to join her. Or maybe she’s begging the viewer for something. Her mouth is open; chips of silica embedded in the paint so it looks like diamonds are falling from her lips like that old fairy tale. If the viewer looks closer there is something else marring the painting, flecks of red that look like rose petals, but maybe it’s blood. Like the woman is screaming the words that turn to diamonds and the stones cut her throat and mouth with the force of it. You can never get closer to the painting than you are when you first see it. It’s something weird in the perspective, you can have your nose right up to the canvas, smelling acrylic and charcoal, and still feel like your not close enough to see what’s going on.
The artist stands next to the painting like a proud parent, clutching the rosary looped around her wrist and hand so hard her knuckles turn white. Her smile looks strained, stretched, like an open wound on the throat of a corpse. When I get close enough to get a good look at her, her eyes are glazed over, like she’s high or a million miles away. The only time she focuses is to chase away people who get too close. I hear a man ask her where she got her inspiration in a voice that sounds like he’s much more interested in what’s up her skirt. The smile she gives him in response raises the hair on the back of my neck. Apparently it has the same effect on the man, who quickly makes an excuse and half-runs away from that knife-blade grin that’s fading away. Some of my hair has fallen over my eyes, a gust from the door opening tossing it about, and I brush the strands of dark red out of my eyes before bolting.
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The second time I see the painting I’m not expecting it. I took the train into the city early this morning, a birthday present to myself. There’s a vintage vinyl store on the corner of 30th and Main and I’ve been promising myself a new record player and some new albums to play on it. Something’d gone off on my old one and it’s been scratched the hell out of my old Robert Johnson album. I’m buying breakfast in a café that smells like fresh, strong coffee and I look out the window. The woman in the painting stares back. I drink coffee as I stare across the street, head across to the shop when I’ve finished a pastry.
There are very few people in a gallery this early in the morning so I can finally get close to the painting. The artist, H. Belladie according to the tag, had repainted the woman to appear closer to the viewer. The hands remain outstretched, the face still entreating as diamonds and bloody petals fall from it’s lips, the riotous tangle of vibrant red hair still draws the eye first. The darkness surrounding her now seems like dark wings trying to shield her, but maybe that’s just the way it feathers at her sides. The silica chips are more random in their spread, like they were thrown at the canvas in anger. It’s even harder to decide if the red is blood drops or rose petals. They’re painted more clearly, but maybe it’s the anguished expression on the woman’s face that lends itself to make anyone looking think maybe she’s spitting blood as well as diamonds. A shiver racks my spine and I turn to see the artist, H. Belladie herself, staring at me with glassy eyes and a smile that says she’s wondering how best to dissect me.
It takes two blocks for my heart to stop racing after I leave, but it’s not until I’m on the train home with my new record player and records at my feet that I loose the constant compulsion to check over my shoulder to make sure I’m not being followed.
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It takes a few months for the woman to stop appearing in the background of my dreams, and by the time she does H. Belladie puts on an art show two towns away. I’m torn between going and moving out of state for the duration. When I drive to the grocery store one night it scares the hell out of me when I end up driving straight past the store and end up parked outside the gallery. It feels like I’m in a bank of fog as I walk in, everything is only white noise until I see the painting and my heart stops. The woman is closer than ever, so close that her face takes up most of the canvas, her hands braced against what might be a pane of glass. Her hands are balled into fists, bloodied in some places from the cracks the Belladie drew in some places, smudged with blood. The look on her face is no longer ambiguous now, the woman is flat out screaming as crow-dark feathers catch in her hair and rest on what you can see of her body. There is panic in her face, eyes open wide enough that I can see the color of her irises match mine. The fog in my mind swirls around me, turning dark. The hair on the back of my neck raises, a primordial terror turning my blood to ice as I turn to see Belladie smiling that nightmarish, knife-blade grin at me. I turn and pound on the glass, screaming for help as she draws closer. Diamonds cut my throat and my lips, scratching the pane of glass that’s cracked but shows no sign of breaking. I can hear Belladie’s footsteps coming closer, the clicking of rosary beads in a white-knuckled grip. I scream but there is no sound and all I can taste is acrylic paint and charcoal. People stare at me through the window, stare at my anguish, murmuring to themselves before walking away. I scream and pound at the glass until rosary beads brush my back and a cold, claw-like grip tightens on my shoulder.
The paint dries.

From a Bar Stool

I'm swiveling around on a bar stool when I see her. I've seen her around before, always on the arm of a guy, never the same one twice. Tonight's the first night I've ever seen her alone. She's sitting in the corner booth, the one by the window, a half glass of something in front of her. Smoke from the half-finished cigarette in her hand curls through the air like a sun-drunk cat. The look on her face seems out of place, it's normally seen in malls and grocery stores on mothers with two or three screaming kids in tow. It's the look that says the person wearing it can see time slipping away, can feel the weight of years piling up on their shoulders. I take a last drag on my own cigarette, holding the smoke in my lungs as I stub out the remains, and I watch as she takes a drink of whatever's in the glass in front of her. Part of me wonders if she even registered what she was drinking, part of me knows that she's too far in the past to do anything but operate of auto-pilot. The lights are on but no one's home. I open the door, the influx of chilled air making the cigarette smoke trapped by the ceiling swirl like fog when someone passes through it. I look back at her one more time and see the look in her faraway look in her eyes. She's so far back in the past I wonder if she'll ever be able to see the present again.

The Coldest Sin

She doesn’t tell him her name the first time they meet; she says it is so he can swear under oath that they have never met. Her eyes are dead when she says it, and the little half smile is so sad it puts a needle in his heart. He calls her the Woman in his mind and does what she asks of him. He doesn’t charge her extra because her dead eyes match his and he figures someone that has seen as much as him needs a break here and there.
The first time she comes to see him he calls himself Chris Anderson, an alias that matches the ID he is currently carrying. She has tanned skin, long black hair, and eyes that are two different colors, ice blue and hazel. She curves in all the right places, and the jeans and tank top she has on flaunt it. She is carrying a motorcycle jacket and the thought of her zipping down the highway, straddling a bike, gives him a hard on. It luckily doesn’t show as he shakes her hand and notices her smile.
She gives him a photo and background information and asks him his price. He tells her and she gives it to him without batting an eye. They sit and talk about inane things that neither of them give half a hump about. Then he gets up and goes to work. She stays at the table, a waiter gives her the gin and tonic that she ordered when she first sat down. He wonders what a woman like her could have seen to make her eyes so dead and shakes the thought out of his head. He thinks about the photo in his bag and thinks he knows.
_____________
Four weeks after he carries out the woman’s hit, another job comes in. He looks at the woman smiling at him from the photograph in his hand. Her eyes are full of laughter and her smile makes his heart ache. He looks at the background information, and finally learns her name. He takes the job.
It takes a week and a half to find her, mainly because he drags his feet about it. She comes home to find him on her sofa. She doesn’t scream, or cry, or beg. She just looks at him with those dead, mismatched eyes and tells him, “I thought I’d be seeing you sooner.” He doesn’t know how to respond, she is so different from anyone he has ever met. He tells her he is sorry and she doesn’t say anything. She just stands there, beautiful even with her dead eyes. They sit there in silence for a while. “If you’re here to kill me can we go outside?” she asks. He nods and a few seconds later they are standing in the grass.
Crickets are singing to the stars and lightning bugs dance around them. She looks at the stars, so glowingly white against the pitch-black sky and says, “I’m so tired.”
He is reminded from a scene in a movie he once saw, a black and white one based off a comic book. He can’t remember the name of it, but he remembers that in the scene the woman had brilliant crimson lipstick. The woman he is looking at isn’t wearing lipstick. He hugs her and tells her it will be okay soon. He will make it okay. He pulls the gun as he kisses her. She kisses him back, softly. A whispered thank you in his ear as she pulls away. Her eyes seem less dead as she smiles at him. He aims the gun and pulls the trigger.

Introductions (Short Story)

The first time he sees her, resting in the shade of a store awning and dipping a paintbrush into the teacup on the sidewalk beside her, he thinks she's homeless. She certainly looks the part; about twenty-five with the torn, raggedy clothing, her skin darkened by dirt and sun, and the backpack at her dirt-blackened bare feet. Every so often her eyes, hazel and happy, flash away from the notebook on her lap and take in her surroundings. The second time he sees her, he has his own drawing pad and sits down to draw her. There's a flicker of a smile, but other than that she gives no indication that she notices him. She's working with charcoal today, fingertips and hands streaked with the dust. There's a smear of black along one cheekbone, where she'd brushed some sun-streaked auburn hair away from her eyes. He only has time for a rough sketch before she's slung her backpack over her shoulders and heads off down the street.

It's a game of tag after that, and if she's there he'll sit down and draw beside her. He learns that if she's not working in charcoals, she painting with overbrewed tea. She pulls delicate colors from the leaves, pale blue-lavenders, reds that start pale and eventually turn blood-red, and ambers. He spends most of the summer viewing the world she creates in the colors of tea.

Summer is long gone and it's snowing and icy cold, cold enough that his eyes won't stop watering. The shimmery wrapping paper covering the sketchbook doesn't look nearly as festive as it had when he'd left his small apartment. His heart sinks when he reaches the sidewalk, mentally kicking himself for thinking she'd be here in this kinda of weather. He's turning to go back to his depressing apartment when movement in a coffee shop window catches his eye, he sees her rummaging through her bedraggled backpack, earning glares from the staff because it looks like it went three rounds with a compost heap and it's on the table that they will have to clean later, thank you very much. The heat when he opens the door brings him halfway to thaw, and by the time he sits down across from her the feeling is starting to return to his fingers. They've continued their game of drawing tag, moving it indoors. He'd found her in the local library mid-fall when he'd been looking for a book for a research assignment and from then on she hadn't been on the sidewalk. They never talked, didn't know each other's names, they just drew and painted and wondered at the other's view of the world set down to paper.

He slid the dampened sketchbook across the table at the same time she produced a brightly wrapped box festooned with ribbons. The backpack disappeared from the table (the sigh of relief from the waitstaff almost palpable) and he looked up to see her hand extended across the table. When he took it she smiled and said, "My name's Kaylee."

"Good to meet you Kaylee, I'm Simon."

The Bad Places (Short Story 2)

Rumor goes that something bad happened in those woods, and if enough bad things happen in a place, if enough blood gets spilled, or a bad enough thing happens in a place, they say the land itself gets a taste for it. Animals won't go near the place, and nothing can grow in such a blood-thirsty place. You find a patch of forest where there ain't nothing but sand, you get the hell outta there and you don't take no souvenirs. Kids on dares go into the woods, desperate to prove themselves; prove their bravery. Most of them come out the next morning; a bit shook up, sure, but still breathing. Still untouched and alive. But there are always a few, I'd guess about one in fifteen, that go into those woods and find that place where the bad things happened and they never come out again. Cops go into their sniffer-dogs each time a distressed parents call them, but they never find hide nor hair of them missin' kids. Most of those cops are the kids who got out of those woods, and them that didn't go on to be law-folk went on the be preacher-men, or nuns.
Me? Oh, I was one of them kids, right enough. I never did get a shiny badge or fancy hat though; couldn't stand all those rules to be a deputy and I sure as hell couldn't stand all the hypocrisy in the churches. No, I'm one of the odd ones out. There are a few of those kids that go into those woods, they don't go missin', but they never really come outta those woods. They live right up next to it; some of the wilder ones even live within its borders. We warn away the tourists that come to see out woods that folk never get come out of; and when the damn fools still want to press on, we lead them around the forest's edges, far away from the Bad Place. We help the cops look for the kids, though both parties know they have a snowball's chance in hell of finding them.
I've heard them in the town, you know. They've started talk about building a monument in the cemetery, a monument to the Lost Ones, all them little kids that went into those woods and never got a chance at havin' a real go at life. That is beside the point, though. You're not here to hear about a monument, though, you're here to learn about the Lost Ones. You're hear to chronicle their stories, the story of our forest; you're here to learn their stories, aren't you Mr. Riddell? Yes, I know about you and your books. There ain't much to do but read out here in the boonies. But it's getting late, and I'm getting old, so I'd best start telling you this story.
The folk that were here before us, the Native Americans, told stories of a creature called a 'wendigo'. The Wendigo was an evil creature that used to be human, before starvation drove it to cannibalism. Now, no matter how much flesh it consumes, it is always hungry, always looking for more food to quench that all-consuming fire in its gut. They say that children give it the most reprieve for that pain, because life has not robbed them of the joy of life, their imaginations, which give their little bodies more life. I've heard a better explanation somewhere, I can't remember where, but it goes that the energy of unspent days is higher in them, and the younger the child, the higher the energy. The higher the energy, the longer the fires of hell burning in their stomachs are banked.
The preacher-men tell us different, as they usually do when faced with pagan worship. They tell us of wingless angels; mean, ugly bastards who can sing sweeter than anything you'd ever heard, who sided on the wrong side of Heaven's war and got tossed down with the Lightbringer. They tell us that if you make and break a deal with the Devil, it'll be them wingless angels that come tear you limb from limb and drag your soul to hell. Most folk stop believing in those tales when they stop believin' in Santa and the Tooth Fairy. Their mistake. There's some things in this world that can't be explained by anything except those old tales.
When I took that dare, I was about thirteen years old, just moved into town with my folks and desperate to find friends. I fell in with a couple of girls who liked to party, even then; their names were Lula and Kadie. Lula grew up fast and moved to the city even faster; Kadie settled down with a husband and a couple of ankle biters soon as she graduate high school. They invited me along to a few of their parties when I first got in, and I went along. A couple of guys at a party I tagged along to, must've been the fourth or fifth one, thought it'd be some fun to spook the new girl. They got me pretty buzzed off some 'shine and took me to the forest. Told me there was a big patch of weed growin' somewhere beyond the treeline, told me to run in and grab some. I didn't want to go in, the forest was wicked dark, the trees all grown in close together so no light from the full moon overhead got through, not to mention Lula and Kadie had thought it hilarious to tell me some of the forest's tales before getting here. I'd grown past all the folktales and fairytales and myths I'd lived off of before we'd come here, but those deep, dark woods made me feel like that small child again, curled up in a corner reading away all of her day's problems. Those guys kept goadin', laughin' at how I was too afraid to go in, laughin' at the stupid little city girl. Anger burned away fear and I walked into the forest. Stupid little kid.
I walked straight, straight as anyone could in almost complete darkness. Anything leafy that brushed against me I felt for the distinct shape of the marijuana leaf so I could get the hell outta there.
It felt like an eternity before I saw light. I figured I'd walked out the other side of the forest. I almost tripped in the sand, almost cracked my head open on a gnarled, twisted tree. The moon was bright overhead, everything washed monochrome. White sand, black trees, black shadows. I didn't know where the hell I was, a lost and terrified little girl. I almost screamed when something moved. A black shape rose from the blacker shadows, it's eyes glinting white in the moonlight. Twice as tall as me, arms that hung past its knees, it was covered in short, shaggy fur that obscured its painfully thin frame. Its mouth was too wide, looking like the Joker's scarred mouth, like the Cheshire Cat's grin, stretching from ear to ear, with far too many needle-like teeth crammed in. It moved towards me and I was petrified with fear, as able to move as the redwood trees in California.
It was almost on me when I regained my voice and started to sing, as I did in nightmares. I started with 'Somewhere I Belong', which turned into 'Spanish Ladies', which turned into '21st Century Cure'. Through all these songs it stood there, watching me, listening to me, with moonlight glinting in its eyes and from its finger-long fangs, giving the shaggy fur silver highlights. It was when I started in on 'My Ain' True Love' that it began to sing with me. It tilted it's face to the sky, closed it's moon-silvered eyes, and it began to sing, with it's fangs glinting like diamonds with each silvery note. My voice faded as its voice eclipsed mine. It sounded like everything good and bad in life; love, sunshine on your face, funeral bells, the sound of a knife grating on bone and squelching in blood, rain on your windows as you curl up under a quilt, pages turning in a good book. Moonlight was turning the tears on both our faces into quicksilver when I finally regained control of my limbs and ran away as quickly as I could, breaking free of the spell of it's voice.
I got outta that forest quicker than anyone woulda thought, almost brained myself on a few of them trees, that creature's haunting melody following me the whole way. Took years before I could forget that sound. Now I live here, helpin' the others look for the Lost Ones. Sometimes I'll catch a fragment of song coming from the Bad Place, the place where nothing grows but black trees and blacker shadows, where the ground hasn't known anything but white sand and crimson blood and quicksilver tears for many decades. I've had to stop myself many times; each time I catch that fragment of song, or when the moon is full overhead and the night is somehow darker than a witch's bra. I haven't gone back to that circle of white sand and twisted black trees. It ain't in the cards just yet, but I know I'll sing with it once more before I die. Just like the others.
((A/N: Mr. Riddell is based off of Christie Riddell, a character from some of Charles de Lint's stories. I would highly suggest reading some of them.))