Monday Night Chinese: Part 1

Part 01: String Words Together So They Mean Nothing


Scream. Scream. SCREAM. That’s all Levi wanted to do right at that moment, but he could not. It was his job, after all, to sit and pay attention to the complaints of all the demons that came to his department of the Afterlife, the Chinese Restaurant.

He was a Listener.

“…. They’re all so pretty. I can’t stand it! I just have to cut them up! Slash their faces!” A woman lowly emitted a toxic voice.

The woman sitting in front of Levi and spewing total nonsense referred to herself as the ‘Slit-Mouth Woman’. As sickly as she was in appearance, with her lips ripped open from ear to ear, Levi couldn’t help but notice the natural beauty of her silky black hair and slanted eyes. Even her voice, when she wasn’t sounding so crazed, had a slight melodic twinge. But most of this had been torn away from her in death, when her husband had found her cheating on him and as punishment carved up her face in the manner of a jack-o-lantern. Maybe Levi was a little vain for noticing all of this, but after years of listening, he picked up the habit of noting, among other things, the appearance of everyone or thing that came to his residence.

She was like an over-ripened clementine, Levi imagined- No, that wasn’t right. An onion…? That wasn’t right either. She didn’t resemble either of those things, but sheer irritation and boredom had gotten to him and taken over his mind like an ooze slowly covering his brain. Levi was bored with her and her worldly ramblings of things as shallow and trite as outer beauty and trying to compete with the younger women around her. Apparently that was the only reason she tried cheating on her husband in the first place, to see if she could snag a younger man. The way she spoke, criticizing the younger women, helped evaporate any romantic notions anyone might still have had about her. Levi found it pathetic. She was one of the least fascinating demons he had ever encountered.

Suddenly it seemed her silky black hair was a deep tar color, matted together like it hadn’t been combed in ages. Her voice was hoarse and sounded like an old woman’s. Her slanted eyes had creases from glaring, and that was only when they were visible. Most of the time her head hung low and her face was covered by the tar seeping from her scalp.

He tried coming back to his sense of reality. The Slit-Mouth Woman had calmed down from her ramblings. This was Levi’s chance to finish his job.

Carefully, and in his own right elegantly, the man of twenty and six years in appearance brought his elbow to the table and rested his chin neatly in the palm of his hand. His smile crawled across his face and his eyes softly narrowed. Leaning forward, he fixed the gaze of his vibrant emerald eyes on the woman, who looked a little stunned.

“The way I see it, my dear,” he started, “there was no need for you to compete with the younger women at all. Your husband loved you enough to kill you so that nobody else could have you. Doesn’t that make you happy?”

Black tar whisked away from her face to reveal shocked eyes stretched as far open as they could, straining. In all her ridiculous vanity she believed him. Within seconds her grotesque appearance had been reverted to the one she held when her delicate frame had still been breathing in the mortal world. Levi’s job was done.

A Ferryman named Blue entered the restaurant to take away the slit-mouth woman.

“Hey, Levi. I’m here for the soul thing.” Blue had a twinge of a whistle in his voice; his tone always sounded so musical and cheerful, like a cockatiel. His sheer happiness even once or twice got on Levi’s nerves- but for the most part, he didn’t mind. Levi nodded his head in reply to the Ferryman.

Brushing some of his shaggy blond hair out of his eyes, the young man came forward and gently placed his hand on the spirit’s shoulder, whispering in her ear for her to stand. The spirit stood and Blue escorted her out. Levi finished his General Tso Chicken.




Levi walked briskly outside the doors of the restaurant and into the Afterlife, which largely resembled the inside of a government agency building. The main difference was the lack of black suits; everyone who passed by Levi wore clothing from whatever era they pleased with a nametag attached somewhere on their person. In his own humble opinion, Levi was probably the best dressed person in sight at the moment. And, again, in his own humble opinion he knew he had to be.

The Listener straightened his corduroy blazer and ran his hand through his slicked brown hair. Everything about him was brown in color; his chestnut hair, his blazer, his dark khaki pants and dark brown shirt. Everything except his piercing emerald eyes were intentionally this color, to give him a suave and understanding aura. It was also why he met the demonically transformed souls in a Chinese restaurant- it was comfortable, and just personal and casual enough to get them talking about their troubles. That was what a Listener did after all. They listened to troubles and at the right moment when all of the crippled soul’s worries had been poured out, the Listener reassured them and made them feel better about situations they had been given in life. At the end of the process, the demon would hopefully revert back to a normal human soul. That was, if everything had gone well. This was just one of the many other-worldly jobs available in the Afterlife.

“Hey. Hey, Levi! Stop spacing out already, you’re blocking the hallway.”

The brown clad man was dredged into reality. In front of him stood Alice, a Reaper dressed in 60’s fashion; a yellow flower print summer dress hung over her figure and black spandex could be seen peeking out from underneath the dress. The color greatly contrasted her pig-tailed raven hair, but altogether the look fit nicely for her.

“Oh. Hey.” Levi wasn’t in the mood to talk to his co-worker. This was mainly because he knew the conversation would lead to her teasing him and as an adult more often than not he was above teasing. She was not.

“That’s it?” Alice placed her hands on her hips and puffed out her cheeks. It made her look like a monkey. “So only the ghosts that we bring in to you get a real conversation with you? I’m the third wheel to a spirit. That’s sad.”

Levi shrugged his shoulders. “That’s all we are. Spirits.”

It was the job of the Reapers to catch and bring in the demons so that the Listeners could transform them back. After that the Ferrymen, like Blue, escorted the purified souls to the other side across the river Acheron.

The Listener started to wave Alice away when across the room he spotted Laura, another Reaper who worked with Alice. Had he still had a beating heart it would have pounded like mad, birds would have flown around her figure, Levi would have melted into a puddle of the kind of goo children tend to play and cause sticky messes with. But he was not alive, nor were those parts of reality able to be broken where they were, or really anywhere else at all that Levi knew of.

Laura was Alice’s opposite personality wise (according to Levi). She was cute as a button (according to, once again, Levi), responsible (actual fact), and from what Levi could tell from around the Afterlife, she was nice to everyone and managed to get a lot of work done (which was mostly true). That attitude and work ethic had actually recently gotten her a promotion and she now over saw the activities of a great majority of the Reapers.

Laura’s clothing, as Levi constantly pointed out to Alice, was a lot more practical for a Reaper. Unlike Alice’s sundress, Laura wore capris and a pink shirt- at no point while trying to bring in a demon would she have to keep her dress from blowing everywhere. Of course Levi had also been infatuated with Laura for fourteen years. Unfortunately for him the two had never had a chance to speak. There was always some other Reaper bringing Levi demons. As busy as both of them were, they hardly ever even saw each other, and Levi was sure Laura only knew as much about him as he did her- he also hoped she daydreamed about him the way he would never admit he did about her. He was really, truly in love with the idea of her.

Alice noticed where Levi’s gaze had gone and nudged him in the ribs. She snickered. “Go up and ask her out already, you’re starting to go into creeper territory.”

“I hate you.” With a hopeful smile, Levi nervously brought up his hand and waved at Laura. She didn’t see him.

“You win some you lose some.” Alice paused. “And sometimes you lose a lot. Actually, with you, you just never win.”

“And sometimes your dreams are crushed down into fine sand that’s used in the hourglass that counts down the time until your next dream is shattered.” He rather calmly shot back. Levi fixed his blazer and continued on his way.

Alice shouted after him. “Well I was going to offer you some pudding so you felt better, but if you’re going to be like that I’ll give it to Blue!” Levi chose to ignore her.




When Levi opened the door of the Chinese restaurant a few days later he was greeted by Laura and a two-headed man. It was quite the pleasant surprise for Levi that Laura was there, but he had hoped that if she were to ever come and see him it would have been on a day that he wasn’t late. During his free moments he strolled around other parts of the Afterlife, more specifically the areas that belonged to other Listeners. He was intrigued with how his peers handled their jobs and utilized their own unique areas, but lately the number of demons and foul spirits being brought in had tripled.

Laura turned to go, having fulfilled her part of the job by delivering the demon, but Levi decided this was his chance to speak to her- destiny, fate, whatever had brought her to him, now was his chance. He would finally say something to her, small talk, random fact, joke, he had to think of something quick. He said the first thing that came to mind.

“Did you know that bananas are going extinct?” He regretted it. Was that really the first thing that came to mind? How did he even know that? But Laura turned around and gave Levi a curious expression and a sly smile. Levi went with it. “That’s what I’ve been told, anyway. I was never too fond of them while I was alive, but that’s a whole other story. Anyway, years of breeding them to be seedless have taken its toll and now there’s fewer and fewer trees. Imagine if bananas finally do go extinct, what will they have monkeys holding in their hands in photographs, then? A monkey without a banana is like-”

Heartbeat. There was a heartbeat. A very startling, abrupt, unnatural heartbeat. Levi’s face contorted and would have stayed like that had he not noticed the very attractive Reaper standing in front of him, so he continued.

“What was I saying? I guess it doesn’t matter, soon bananas will be outdated and monkeys will have to fight rabbits for carrots since there isn’t any other tropical fruit as convenient-”

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. That was all Levi could hear, because he was a Listener. He turned his head to look at the two-headed man, the most unnatural thing in the restaurant. One head was female, one male. The female wore a top hat and heavy mascara; the male had dark circles under his eyes. The main body was covered by a red cape and long fingernails were protruding from the cloth like thick porcupine needles. There was another thump. Levi saw something on the demon’s chest. He squinted his eyes to sharpen his focus and leaned forward. THUMP. He saw a black flash, and by the next thump he saw the object: a black heart.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bore you with things like that we both have work we need to do.” Levi’s voice had started to leave him, thoughts began to creep into his mind, and the sense he once had of knowing everything of importance dealing with his job had faded away. He had never encountered something with a black heart before, and he didn’t understand how that could happen. Levi had been around the block. He had seen demon after demon, and listened to them complain, but now he listened to something completely different. The Listener could hear more than just the spoken voice, and that fact had never occurred to him.

Laura shrugged and turned to leave when needles shot past, narrowly missing her slender arm. She turned to face the standing demon looming over her and she decided it was fully appropriate for her leg to meet the female head’s face.

“Wait a min-” Once demons entered a Listener’s area the serene nature of the place would sedate the demons and keep them from attacking. What was currently happening was not possible, and not only was Levi worried about Laura getting hurt; he was also flustered and extremely embarrassed that this was happening in his restaurant the one time Laura had come. He stood but Laura shoved him back in his booth seat. She turned, grabbed a large needle shot at her, and charged the demon. Levi looked on in disbelief, needles sticking to the booths in his restaurant, Laura kicking the demon, and the demon moving so fast it was making Levi dizzy. He almost didn’t notice a stray needle that lodged itself deeply into his chest; he winced and tore the needle out, feeling the tear in his shirt slowly fix itself. He was lucky that he didn’t bleed.

Laura boxed the demon’s two heads together and it collapsed. Levi stood up, looked at Laura to make sure she wouldn’t push him down again, and cautiously made his way to the demon. He knelt down and looked at its chest, directly at the black heart. “Go get some chains.” Laura gave him her rather specific ‘do you want to handle this thing when it wakes up?’ look and Levi felt like an idiot. “Right, I’ll be back in a minute.”




Sometime later, weeks in fact, Blue stopped by Levi’s restaurant. Levi sat frustrated in his booth seat, pinching the bridge of his nose and breathing deeply. Blue imagined that in his head, Levi was thinking of something soothing like running his hand over cool stones on a beach, or the smell of a camp fire. Both of these were things Blue himself liked to imagine at any given moment, and he secretly wanted to be a Listener so he could have his special area be a bonfire on a beach.

Blue noticed the demon on the other side of the table. It was a tall and gangly thing covered in patchwork clothes and random feathers and for a head it had a sack cloth with a torn spot for the mouth, but no eyes. It rustled constantly, sounding like a clichéd ghost each time the chains tying it down rattled. Levi broke from his concentration and saw the shaggy-haired boy. He allowed his hand to temporarily leave his nose and motioned for Blue to enter, but Blue was already ahead of him and was halfway to him by the time Levi had even gotten his hand in the air.

“What’s up?” Blue leaned over the back of Levi’s side of the booth, bringing his head to Levi’s level. Levi started mumbling about something or other but Blue couldn’t understand a thing that he was saying. “Dude, you’ve got to speak up. Don’t forget you’re the one who speaks good and stuff.”

“You mean the one who speaks well- and that doesn’t have anything to do with being a Listener.” Levi raised himself a little from his semi-slouch.

“Didn’t say it was. But this is why you get the big bucks.” Blue pointed to the pumpkin-headed demon chained to his seat. “Is this guy a, you know, like the other ones?”

“A black heart. Through and through.” Levi pointed to a black heart shape on the creature’s chest.

“Cool.” Blue nodded his head continually the way a person normally did when a conversation was going slowly. “So, any luck?”

“What is luck but a fickle temptress rarely smiling on any man. If she worked in the Afterlife I’d be having one stern conversation with her right now. I’d convince her to do this herself.” Levi adjusted himself in his seat and ran his hands through his hair. “I’m not making any progress, Blue. It would help if this thing actually spoke to me like a normal demon would. You know, normally when you give a person a chance to vent they take it. Especially when they’re furious! People love ranting when they’re furious, and Demons are very furious people. But the black hearts are… it’s like they don’t even know what’s wrong with them. How can I tell someone what they need to hear if they don’t even want to talk about it? In the past week and a half I’ve dealt with three black hearts and none of the other Listeners have been able to synch up to their problems. I’m not even sure how I’ve managed to do it.”

“You’re good, Levi. Face it.” Blue’s charm glided through the air, uplifting the atmosphere of the room just a little. It plummeted when something Levi had said didn’t quite make sense to him. “What do you mean synch up to their problems?”

“It’s something Listeners do. A gift, really. We harmonize with the vibrations of a spirit. That’s how we get an idea of how they’re feeling and what to say.”

“That doesn’t… yeah. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It’s like we’re tuning into a radio station then trying to sing along to the songs we recognize. If we do well the passenger doesn’t kill us, and if we sound bad the passenger wants us to shut up.”

“Oh. That makes a lot more sense, I guess. I think.” Blue stared, rather un-politely, at the pumpkin headed spirit. After some silence, and being unsure if Levi was paying attention to him or not, Blue began speaking innocently enough about some of the spirits he had recently taken across Acheron, the dank caverns the river ran through, and the gate he left the spirits at with the guardians. Levi would nod his head occasionally, but Blue was unconvinced he was listening. He poked the side of Levi’s head. “There’s this guy in gray I’ve seen around a few times. Is he a new Listener?”

Levi groaned a little, taking his time to respond even though he put little thought into the question. “It’s possible; there have been a lot of demons lately. I haven’t heard anything though. Maybe he’s a Reaper? Gray doesn’t seem like a color a Listener would wear. It sends off the wrong signal. Brown’s a much better color.”

“I think I saw him around Laura the other day. I’ll have to ask Alice.”

“Ask me what?” Alice had been eavesdropping on him outside the restaurant doors- Levi hated it when she did that.

“Guy in a gray suit. You know him?”

“How long have you been there?” As a Listener Levi’s ability to sense when someone was near him while he was trying to work was exceptionally horrid. Alice could stare at him all day while he worked (which she had done) and he wouldn’t notice (which he didn’t).

“I have finely tuned senses. Everytime my name is mentioned I just kind of show up- poof! Like bubbles- so I can hear the praise. You were going to praise me, right?” Alice batted her lashes and tried to look as cute as she could in her sundress. Her hair in the two braids almost made it work, but the dangerous glint in her dark eyes gave her away.

“Pay attention, Blue asked you about a guy in a gray suit.” The Listener turned his attention back to the black heart in front of him.

“ Oh, right right. Guy in a suit.” Alice dropped her act and pondered, going through her memory bank swiftly, examining each filed memory over the past few days. Strange occurrences, funny things people had said, asking people if they knew who exactly cooked the food for Levi’s restaurant. She vaguely remembered a man in a gray suit. “I might have seen him a few times talking to people.”

“I thought you guys would pay better attention.” Blue stared at the black heart on the demon’s chest, his eyes going over it like a paint brush, each look another stroke completing the image in his brain. Things were getting curioser and curioser to him, but it appeared as if nobody else was noticing or quite as interested in his piece of the puzzle. “You guys are a bit of a letdown.”

“Uh-huh. That’s nice.” Levi waved Blue away with his hand, too focused to notice what he had said.

“Thanks for that, Blue. We try hard to let you down, glad to see it’s working.” Alice smiled proudly and patted Blue on the shoulder a few times. “I feel like there was something I needed to tell you, now that the compliments are done. Maybe it was… oh! Uriel’s done already with the creepy gremlin I brought him. He needs you to Ferry the resulting munchkin child to the gate.”

“Oh sweet, that means I get to play on the merry-go-round! I love Uriel’s area. Later.” Without hesitation Blue raced to the front door, ran into it, opened it and then rushed out. Alice would deny the fact that she closed the door hoping that would happen. After the scrawny youth had vanished, Alice turned her focus to Levi and slid into the booth next to him.

“What’s up?” Levi leaned forward on the table, putting his weight on his elbow which was placed near his untouched food. “Something you didn’t want to mention to Blue?”

“I forget how good you are.”

“Remind me, I could use the confidence boost.”

Alice smiled softly. “You probably haven’t heard yet, but rumor has it we’re missing people, mainly Reapers. Some of them go out on jobs and never come back. The same thing has happened to a Ferryman, and Stacey, the Listener with the park bench, hasn’t been seen all day. Most everyone has been too busy with the influx of souls turning demonic to notice.”

Levi stared at the black heart, breathing deeply. In. Out. In. Out. He slowly blinked. His long lashes that many females in the Afterlife had been jealous of flowing briskly with the movements of his lids. Alice, growing a little impatient opened her mouth to say something but Levi, after taking that time, spoke first.

“How many are missing?” He spoke slowly, pronouncing each word with great diction, and with a hint of worry.

“With Victoria, five. Three Reapers, a Ferryman, and a Listener.”

“Keep your ear to the ground and come back tomorrow. I’ll be done with this by then.”

Alice pursed her lips. “You think you’ll be done with this thing that soon?”

“I’ll be done with him and the two others waiting for me. I’ll work through my breaks.” His conviction was so evident that it finely glossed his confident words.

“I’ll take you up on that bet, then.” Alice the Reaper got up to leave when she felt an anchor prevent her from moving. It was Levi’s hand grasped tightly around her wrist.

“Keep an eye on Blue.” Levi turned his head. His intense emerald eyes focused heavily on Alice. “I don’t want him to be next.”

“I will. I’ll make sure to go with him across Acheron if I have to.”

Levi stared into Alice’s eyes a moment longer and let her go.

Clay Tuesday: Inevitable Indecencies

The Case of the Shadow People


“Why me? Why does this have to happen to me?”

Adam, bitter and disheveled, sat on the cold, grungy ground of a dilapidated wood chapel. He sat with one leg extended, a blood-stained bone jutting out of the limb. Sprawled on the ground was the corpse of a black-haired young woman, pale and sickly with her head in Adam’s lap. He stroked her coarse hair absentmindedly, his breathing uneasy but every exhale chillingly visible.

A coal colored crow flew into a shattered stain-glassed window, perching on the sill. Its eyes, deep and endless, pierced Adam’s fragile state of mind. Candidly it spoke, cawing, “It’s happenstance.”

Adam’s eyes shot open, waking from his dream. His breathing was weighted, as though he had just been fighting off a horrid monster bent on devouring his sanity and had barely escaped by mere luck.

Or was it happenstance?

Slowly, Adam turned his stiff neck to the window where sunlight was peeking through. He was surprised to see Kristjan, in a black sweater and jeans despite the current heat wave, sitting in a chair with his hands folded across is lap. His eyes were thoughtfully closed, imitating sleep but Adam knew better. Kristjan didn’t need to sleep, not since his accident.

“You must like watching me sleep, you creeper. I thought hospitals gave you the wiggins,” Adam said in a half groan mixed with his southern accent, making him extremely difficult to understand.

“Sorry mon cher, I’m afraid you’re going to have to speak up. I didn’t quite catch that,” Kristjan replied playfully. Though his eyes were still locked shut, his smile opened up wide on his long, handsome face.

Adam cleared his throat, attempting to sit up. “Don’t say that,” he said scornfully. P. Darwin Yeates was the last thing he wanted to be reminded of.

“Sorry.” The tall blond man leaned forward, hands still clasped together. His green eyes looked Adam over from head to foot, lingering on the cast that wrapped the younger man’s right leg. Kristjan’s smile twitched for a split second, but Adam caught the faltering expression. Kristjan was actually worried about him. “I’ve been in here a while. Don’t you have a girlfriend? I haven’t seen-”

“How long did it take you two to get here?” Adam wanted to change the subject as quickly as possible, visibly wincing at the mention of his Lorelei, the girl that he once believed would always have his heart.

“The house brought us here right before Rachel got the call. She’s at the university right now seeing if she can set up a few guest lectures, that way we can stay as long as we need to.” Kristjan’s smile had become half of what it was at the start and Adam groaned at this news. He had tried so hard to escape from the house and his life only to be brought back into it; he knew that with his leg injury he would lose his football scholarship, he didn’t have a job, and with what Rachel made there was no way he could afford to stay at school. In one moment all his dreams went away, gobbled up, for once, by a monster that he couldn’t fight. Fate.

Kristjan snapped his fingers, getting Adam’s attention. “Before you go getting any crazy ideas, this wasn’t fate, or destiny. It was-”

“If you say happenstance I’m going to kick you in the diaphragm,” Adam spat out quickly. He didn’t want to feel like he was trapped in that life like Kristjan was.

“No, I was going to say hitsuzen.” Kristjan slumped back in the chair in a huff, shaking his head. He wasn’t terribly pleased with the way Adam was acting at the moment. Adam narrowed his gaze, waiting for Kristjan to look over and see that he didn’t understand the word he had used. When Kristjan finally did look back over at Adam, after a brief but stunningly awkward silence, he gave a frustrated shake of his head. “The inevitable. Your actions led you here.”

Adam clutched the sheets on his hospital bed to tight he tore them a little. His father used to say something like that to him and Rachel. Before he had died, in fact, he had said it was inevitable. His own actions led him to the gates of the afterlife. “I know guys aren’t big on comforting each other, but wow, Kristjan, you especially suck at this.” Kristjan propelled himself out of his chair, taking approximately two seconds in an otherwise five second trip to get to the door of the room. Adam continued shouting as Kristjan walked out, “and tell Rachel not to bother doing a lecture! I want to get the hell out of here!”

The room was quickly engulfed by a silence that left Adam feeling dreadfully empty and hopeless. Warm tears left trails down his cheeks and dotted the sheets on his bed. Morosely, he flung his body down and curled up in a ball.




One week earlier, on a dark and dingy Tuesday evening that looked as though it should have been made out of clay, Adam stood apprehensively outside of apartment door four where his girlfriend Lorelei resided. The weather, due to the town’s location on a small island in the eastern United States, was warm and humid. Adam had changed into a light pair of sweats and a white undershirt roughly five minutes ago, and he could already feel sweat causing his shirt to cling to his skin in the back. He uncomfortably clutched a grocery sack with chips, chocolate and avocadoes, wondering how the night would turn out; Lorelei, being a good girlfriend, had invited Adam to a girl’s night at her place so he wouldn’t have to spend his Friday night by himself watching badly dubbed foreign movies. Adam had a slightly difficult time enjoying himself around his roommates as he thought they were all videogame addicted idiots.

Gathering himself, Adam tapped on the door. It opened immediately, and Adam stared right into the golden eyes of Lorelei. She was about as tall as he was, and her hair fell in wavy brown strands around her face. She met her boyfriend with a toothy smile and a big peck on his lips. He could have melted on the spot, but refrained from doing so.

“You’re late, but I’ll forgive you because you remembered how much I love grocery bags. You know just how to woo me.” She tugged on Adam’s shirt, bringing him in to the air-conditioned room. On the couch sat four of Lorelei’s close friends, giggling about something or other, probably the fact that Adam was there. Lorelei took the bag from Adam and trifled through the contents. “Hey, you’re making- Girls, Adam’s going to be making guacamole for us!” This news was met with a few hoots and hollers. Lorelei continued, “What’s the chocolate for?”

“In case I piss one of you off.”

Lorelei gave Adam one of those ‘you’re weird which is why I love you’ looks and patted his stomach lightly with the back of her hand before setting the bag on the table. “Sit! Talk to the girls for a second and I’ll get what you need to make the guac.” Adam tried to insist on helping but Lorelei just shooed him towards the couch. He obliged begrudgingly.

Adam sat down in the middle of an extremely important conversation about which color of nail polish Ann should use, and Stacey was trying to steer her towards a nauseating pink that made Adam’s droopy eyes hurt.

“You know you want the pink. It’s called Flaming Pickle Pink, and it has green glitter! You cannot tell me that’s not awesome,” Stacey’s voice came across in such a way that nobody could tell if she was joking or serious. More than likely she was serious but trying to act like she was kidding unless anybody agreed with her, in which case she would have been totally serious the entire time. Bad memories flooded Adam’s mind, and as per usual he forgot to put up his filter before he spoke.

“That’s a stupid choice,” he said in a sharp tone. He had not meant for the comment to sound the way it had come out, but already Stacey was giving him the evil eye and Sasha was guffawing. Adam wanted to get up and grab the chocolate, something he didn’t think he’d need to use so soon, but he quickly thought of another way to diffuse what had happened. He grabbed another bottle of nail polish that was a teal color and held it up. “Teal Justice works better with what you’re wearing. And it matches your eyes. And stuff.”

The girls found this to be a perfectly acceptable response and by the time Lorelei had returned with the utensils and other such things Adam needed to make properly delicious guacamole, he was dispensing all sorts of advice to the girls such as which shoes to purchase, how to find good sales, telling Shannon that black eyeliner made her eyes look small, and insisting that Stacey start wearing slouch boots and long necklaces so she looked thinner. Lorelei started giggling, which was small at first, but it snowballed into a much larger fit which caught everyone’s attention.

“Who are you?” She teased, simultaneously trying to get air into her lungs. Adam’s face turned bright rouge.

“M-my sister Rachel…” He started, slipping into his southern accent. His girlfriend set the things she was carrying down and walked over to Adam so she could give him a hug.

“I wish you’d speak in your accent more. It’s cute.” She kissed him on mouth again and all the girls started hitting them with pillows and cushions. “Quit it!” Lorelei grabbed a pillow and started hitting back to defend herself while Adam went to take cover.




Long after Adam’s guacamole had been devoured and not so long after a game of truth or dare, the girls had started to run low on steam. Adam was considering leaving as it was a quarter to eleven and he hated staying up, but the sudden subject change made him stay put.

“Have you guys heard about shadow people?” Elena, a Hispanic girl Lorelei had apparently gone to high school with, said in a hushed tone. Everyone looked at her and about half the girls got wide grins on their faces.

“Elena likes telling spooky stories and urban legends. It’s fun, but it gets kind of creepy sometimes,” Lorelei whispered in Adam’s ear. Adam chewed on his lower lip; it probably got creepy because the longer anyone talked about the supernatural, the more they were opening themselves up for ghostly experiences and Adam knew that. He couldn’t very well come out and say that to everyone without sounding like a nutter, though. He had never told Lorelei what Rachel did for a living and lied about Kristjan, saying he was a family friend who was staying with them temporarily while he worked on some sort of project.

“The shadow people are always in the corner of your eye, you know? There’s the hooded figures and the hat men,” Elena continued. Sasha started making ‘ooh’ sounds and the girls laughed.

“How about the black eyed children?” Sasha said. Even Adam raised an eyebrow at this; he had never heard of them before. “They’re these kids with black eyes who knock on your doors and give you these terrible feelings. They ask if they can come in, but in the back of your mind you know that’s a bad idea.”

“What happens if someone invites them in?” Lorelei sounded intrigued, which caused Adam to mentally groan.

“Nobody knows.” Sasha replied.

“Boring. How about the gloomies? You guys heard about them?” Stacey seemed really excited to talk about yet another supernatural entity Adam didn’t know, and he was feeling like he was with Rachel and Kristjan again. The stories went on, and quickly Adam could feel the atmosphere changing; it was small at first but the escalation left him with chills. He wanted to get up and leave, however Lorelei kept a tight grip around his waist. He wasn’t sure if the girls were noticing the darkness as much as he was, and they probably weren’t since he was more sensitive to those types of things than they were, but he had to change the subject.

“I have to pee.” Adam mentally pounded his forehead against something sharp. He knew he was a little socially awkward with the things he said, but really? He had to pee? The only thing that saved him was Stacey talking right over him so nobody heard what he had said. She produced a Ouija board from her backpack.

“Ladies, are you in for some spirit communication?” Stacey sounded almost like a telemarketer in her pitch. All the girls readily agreed, and when Adam tried to speak out he found he couldn’t; a dark figure caught his attention from the corner of his eye. He turned his head to get a better look, but it was gone. When he turned his head back to the girls they had already set the board up and started asking questions.

A chill like a winter gale cut right through Adam’s soul, sending him into a shivering fit. Lorelei hugged Adam close to her. “Cold? Or are you just all shook up over me?” Adam tried to smile. He whispered to Lorelei that he had to go. “To the bathroom,” she responded, “because you really don’t need to tell me. I’d actually prefer it if you didn’t.” Adam rolled his eyes.

“Home. It’s late.”

“Right, I forget that you have a hard time staying up past nine. Stay safe and don’t talk to strangers.” She smoothed back Adam’s hair, giving him a slightly disappointed smile. Adam could tell Lorelei wished he would stay.

“I don’t even like talking to the people I know.” It took everything Lorelei had not to laugh at that comment.




Adam was back in his room quicker than he would have liked; he enjoyed being outside and watching the bugs in the late summer air, looking at the flowers, and swimming. He loved the island he went to college on, and to him it felt like the perfect place to study botany and ultimately live a supernatural free life. Adam had never been as skilled as his sister, but once his father had passed away being around everything he loved was painful to Adam. His father had never made Adam feel excluded in the work and he was a deeply passionate man. Rachel was passionate as well, but it wasn’t the same. She wasn’t dad. And Adam was too old now to want someone to teach and protect him, he had to make his own way in the world and he chose the normal, the mundane.

Lacklusterly, Adam turned on his back, pushing the white sheets off his bed. He stared at the blinking smoke detector in his room, wondering just what exactly he was doing with his life; was it really what he wanted? What his father would have wanted? The air around him felt heavier and he felt it getting more difficult to breath. He tried to think of happier things, but it didn’t help; the weight he felt grew heavier and darker.

There was pressure on his bed. Adam lifted himself up to see if one of his roommates had tried getting on, but all he saw was his empty room. Nothing visible was causing the indentation at the foot of his bed. Sweat trickled down his forehead. His breathing staggered. Did he have time to grab his little book of spells? Adam reached for his nightstand but instead got pinned to his bed by his upper arms. A hooded shadow figure slowly became visible, tiny little white eyes and a jagged-toothed smile pressing itself closer to Adam’s worried face. A sulfuric smell spewed from the shadow person’s opening mouth. Adam wanted to vomit, the smell was so strong, but he held on.

“I’m going to eat you,” it whispered hoarsely in his ear, “and my brother is going to eat your girl.”

Adam lifted up his head as far as he could to whisper back, “Not if I eat you first.” He grabbed the shadow with his hand instantaneously causing forget-me-nots to sprout all along its frame. Before it could make a noise, before it could move, the shadow was consumed, leaving behind only petals of the flowers that fed on its life.

With a little bit of a groan, Adam forced himself out of bed and ran out his bedroom door, flying past his roommates and out of his apartment, down the street, past flickering streetlamps and past who knew what else. He was just focused on getting to Lorelei.

He reached her front door and threw it open. Lorelei, sitting on the couch alone and watching the television, nearly jumped out of her skin.

“The hell, Adam? When I dreamt this the apartment was on fire and you were a fireman. Right now I don’t see a suit or a flame, so what’s going on?”

Adam knelt down in front of Lorelei, grabbing her by the shoulders. His breathing was hard, which worried Lorelei. He looked around the apartment.

“Did you run all the way here? What are you looking for?”

The resident of the creepy little house looked Lorelei head on. “Have you seen anything out of the corner of your eye? Like a shadow you didn’t recognize?”

“Maybe? I don’t know. Are you talking about those stories we were telling before you left?” Lorelei stroked Adam’s cheek gently. “Honey, Adam, they were just urban legends. What’s really bothering you?”

“The fact that I can’t see it.”

“What?” Lorelei could feel a heavy presence on the couch next to her. Slowly she and Adam looked at the indented cushion; something was obviously there, but they couldn’t see it. Lorelei repeated her question, “What?”

“I’m going to eat you.” Two beady white eyes and an opening mouth filled with sharp teeth quickly appeared, a sulfuric smell seeping out of the oral cavity. Adam grabbed Lorelei, tossing her over his shoulder and went straight for the front door, which slammed shut, the lock clicking into place. The walls began to shake and lights flickered incessantly. Adam turned around and avoided the eyes and mouth that lunged at him, ignoring Lorelei’s screams. He went for the next closest door; the bathroom. He slammed the door shut, locking it even though he knew that would do nothing to protect them. The door shook violently, Lorelei backed up against the tub, and Adam tried to think of what to tell his girlfriend.

“Adam, what-”

“Nightmare.”

“What?”

“Pretend it’s a nightmare.” Adam pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to recall a sutra but it was no use. Even though he had only been in college for two month he had already done more than enough to push out any of the sutras or mantras, or any other spell he had taken the time to memorize.

Lorelei pinched herself. “Adam, this isn’t a nightmare. What’s going on? Why is a shadow person trying to eat me? Why does it exist?”

“You used a Ouija board.”

“And?”

“You opened up your house by talking about them then using a Ouija board to try and talk with the dead. It didn’t help that I was here, either.” Adam stood up and walked towards the door. It had stopped shaking rather abruptly.

“What does that mean?” Lorelei asked slowly, inching forward. She was still very much afraid, but the encounter with the supernatural awed her, it drew her in.

“I’ve… I’ve dealt with this stuff. A lot. Now it’s like I’m a magnet or something, you know what let’s change the subject. I’m going to buy you a lot of chocolate after this.” Adam, with a steady hand, touched the doorknob. “Lore, I’m going to chase the demons out of town.”

“I’m going to eat you.”

“Do you trust me, Lorelei? I mean it. Don’t feel alone. I’ll get rid of it.”

“I’m going to eat you.”

“I’m opening the door. After this, you can’t deny… you won’t be… things’ll be different, okay?”

“I’M GOING TO EAT YOU.”

“Dammit, I sound like Kristjan.”

Adam threw open the door. Behind it a hooded figure stood hunched over, bent at odd angles and taking up much of the space in the hallway in front of the bathroom. It moved forward with jaws opened wide ready to eat Adam, but he grabbed the shadow person’s face and held on tight. Forget-me-nots popped up on the shadow’s face, trailing down its body. It didn’t go as fast as the first. Excruciatingly long minutes rolled by while flowers blossomed and fed. Lorelei witnessed it all, every tiny flower growing then dying, petals dropping to the ground but vanishing before they could hit the rug. When the last flower fell, the shadow was gone.

Adam turned to look at the cowering Lorelei. He knelt down beside her and tried hugging her, but she pushed him away. Adam grabbed her by the shoulders. “Lorelei, I-”

“I can’t do this, Adam. I can’t… I can’t handle…”

She didn’t need to finish. Adam, hurt, looked at her for the last time, let go of her shoulders, and left. Adam knew words were powerful, but sometimes they just couldn’t penetrate. It didn’t help that he never knew what to say. Ever.




“So that’s it? How did you end up in the hospital?” Sebastian set down his cup of coffee and scrunched up his face.

“Why do you keep asking all of these personal questions? Creeper.” Adam nonchalantly finished off his own drink, tea with lemon, and ignored Sebastian’s frustrated gaze.

“You suck at telling stories. Why do I put up with you?”

“You crave attention.” Adam took a chocolate bar out of his coat and tossed it to Sebastian. It had become something of an inside joke between the two of them since their first meeting six months beforehand. Any time Adam caused Sebastian any sort of grief, he would offer to get him chocolate.


Sebastian let out a single, light laugh and accepted the treat, placing it in the inside of his suit jacket. Since their first meeting Sebastian had cleaned up some; his hair was no longer shaggy and was instead well groomed and parted on the left. He always wore a three-piece suit, like the navy blue one he had on right then, and he had gotten a promotion or two in The Horrorscope.

Somehow, Sebastian managed to do well in befriending Adam, which surprised both Rachel and Kristjan. Since the encounter between Sebastian and Adam they had kept in regular contact through email and phone calls, often meeting up as Sebastian’s new articles took him places the house took Kristjan, Adam and Rachel.


“The next day I had a football game and I tore a ligament.” Adam reached over and grabbed Sebastian’s coffee, smelled it, looked slightly disgusted, took a sip, and set it back down. “How’s the Horrorscope thing going? Did you bring me a copy?”

“Hot off the press.” Sebastian opened a briefcase he had by his feet and tossed Adam a thin newsmagazine with a picture of a creepy tree on front with an old creaky swing hanging from it. Sebastian loosened his black skinny tie and took off his jacket. “I’m really enjoying my time there. After we met I couldn’t get enough of this stuff… I have to admit, I was surprised when your house vanished, though.”

“It does that.”

Sebastian laughed. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing a tattoo of a magic circle. “I still have the medallion you bought me, and I tattooed a magic circle on my arm after doing some research. I’ve had some close calls and Francis de Sales can only do so much.”

“He probably doesn’t consider you a journalist anymore,” Adam muttered while flipping through the pages of the magazine. “Half the time I don’t even understand how the magic works. Like why do all the ghosts speak French?”

Adam stopped on page fourteen where in bold letters he saw written THE GLOOMIES, and next to that a picture of the college he had gone to over a year ago.

Clay Tuesday: No Faith, No Voice, No Blues

The Case of the Silent Angel

It was very common for students who attended any of Rachel’s classes or lectures to come to her with other-worldly problems, so it shouldn’t have been a surprise when one of her brightest students from that semester, Akahana Mizu, approached Rachel one afternoon after class. What did surprise Rachel was the problem. Outside Aka’s family store stood a prize machine with a mechanical parrot perched inside. According to Aka, the mechanical parrot had recently started freaking people out with glowing red eyes and would scream out incomprehensibly. So, not having taken a case recently and wanting to avoid grading assignments, Rachel graciously decided to help her student. Regretfully the blonde professor stood confusedly in front of the robotic bird.

“It… looks like it’s very well built. Is it from China? Most things these days are,” Rachel shrugged. “Honestly it looks fine to me Aka.”

“Sorry, professor. I swear it usually acts out when people are around. It’s why we moved it over here near the alley where only creepers like to go.” Aka tucked her bobbed hair back behind her ear. “Please believe me.”

“I believe you, Aka. There’s no question about that. I just don’t have time to stick around. My brother’s making dinner tonight.” Rachel apologized and waved goodbye to Aka. As she started to walk away, a little dissatisfied with the fact she did not in fact get to deal with a possessed robot, she became overwhelmed by a violent screech that drew her back in. Turning, she saw Aka looking around trying to figure out what exactly she should do about the parrot. Rachel ran back and grabbed the glass encasing of the machine, looking with curious and confused eyes at the parrot’s rash, rabid red ones, looking as she could to find something. Sparks flew inside the cage. Lights in and around the store flicked rapidly on and off.

“Professor Moomaw, what’s going on?” Aka looked as though she would have a seizure from the rapidly blinking lights.

“Ghosts mess with electrical currents,” Rachel shouted urgently, trying hard to make herself heard over the probably demonically possessed bird. Searching her head for the best possible solution to the problem, Rachel settled on an exorcism spell in Latin then began to chant. The lights settled down and the parrot began to choke on its own words, thrashing its head to and fro. As the spell took effect, a grimy mist ejected itself from the machine’s mouth, covering the inside of the glass encasing. The smog slowly cleared out leaving behind blinking red eyes. Before the light in the parrot’s eyes went out, it said one word: Ballieu. Little luminous lights floated away from the machine.

Rachel sighed in relief. The darned thing had given her a monstrous headache. She tried convincing herself some of Adam’s homemade rolls would cure the pain if she could only get home in time to prevent Kristjan from eating them all. When she turned she saw a pale Aka, clutching her chest and hyperventilating.

“Professor,” she said softly, “what was that?”



The professor took her student for a walk around the block, delicately explaining with the little detail she could afford how she, Adam and Kristjan dealt with those sorts of things. The shock of knowing that the boogymen stories her older cousins from Japan told her as a girl were possibly real caused the girl to rub her temples and let out a pathetic moan. Pitying her student, Rachel found a bench in a park for the two to sit on near a statue of an angel grasping at its throat. The statue didn’t sit well with Rachel, nor did the incense at the statue’s base, or the ornaments decorating it. Rachel tried casually breaking the silence she had given Aka in order process the information.

“Aka, you know a little about the local folklore. What can you tell me about that angel?” Rachel rubbed her hands on her black leggings and skirt to try and bring warmth back to her fingers, for it had suddenly gotten chilly. Aka, whose breathing had finally been regulated, stared dismally at the statue.

“You don’t know about it? I thought you came here to study local legends.” Aka didn’t sound like she particularly wanted to talk any more about anything, let alone frightening things. “It’s well known in the state.”

“Honey, I don’t know everything, I only just got here. Assuming I’d already know is like me assuming because you’re Japanese you know all about karate.” Rachel responded gently like a mother talking to her child. Aka gave her teacher a pathetic look.

“It’s the silent angel; it’s a symbol for people who can’t speak up for themselves. People pray to it for miracles, and from what I hear sometimes it works. People leave loaves of bread in front of it as an offering, and some crazies sacrifice squirrels,” Aka explained in a half mope. Rachel folded her arms. It had gotten even chillier in the passing minutes. Glancing around, she noticed that they were the only ones there. “Wow, I can’t believe how cold it is, I should’ve brought a jacket. But it’s August…”

Rachel had a pretty decent idea of why it was cold; something supernatural was too close for comfort. Before she could grab Aka and leave to avoid an encounter, everything around them went black. Everything but the statue. This of course didn’t help with Aka’s current anxiety.

“Why…”

“Are these things happening to you?” Rachel said, trying to complete the trailing thought.

“No. Why aren’t you offering me extra credit for this?”

Rachel withheld a snort. Aka said she wasn’t kidding. Rachel let out her snort. “We’ll see.”

The darkness was everywhere, all consuming. Rachel could feel a desperate hunger emanating from it. She clutched her chest trying to feel for the charm necklace she brought to class that day for lecture, realizing in a daze that she had left it at the school.

“Are you scared?”

All focus shifted to the statue. Sitting cross-legged in front of it was a living representation of the angel, but rather than clawing at its throat it held a goat’s skull in his hands. His sharp features and dark hair struck Rachel. She placed a hand on Aka’s shoulder.

“I’ll ask you again. Are you scared?” His voice crisply penetrated Aka’s core and entranced her. All she wanted to do was stare at him. To Rachel, though, his voice was one with the darkness.

“I’ll have to think about that. Feel free to ask me again after you tell me who you are,” came Rachel’s response. She hoped her voice would serve as an contra to the angel’s and grasp Aka’s attention. “I don’t think I’ve meet something quite like you yet.”

The angel’s neutral face shifted into a smiling one, a change that frightened both women.

“Ballieu, the silent one. I am a spiritual being.”

“And how long have you been here?” Rachel patted Aka’s back, keeping her calm. “I’m assuming you represent those who can’t speak for themselves, but have you been around as long as the statue? For twenty, thirty years?”

“Seventy-seven this past March,” Aka interjected. Good, Rachel thought. She wasn’t completely overcome by shock or the darkness.

“I suppose… I suppose since March. I have been able to keep a solid, consistent form since then. But I first remember being conscious in the thirty-third year, when I heard a prayer uttered to me. I ripped out a man’s vocal chords as an answer to the victim’s plea.” Ballieu caressed the skull with his large hands, his fingers going over the grooves of a pentagram carved into the skull’s forehead.

“So it’s fair to assume you’ve been able to gradually keep conscious longer and longer the more you were prayed to?” Rachel’s hand made its way slowly to her bag where a little book of spells was kept.

“Yes, that is a splendid assumption. Now may I ask what you’re doing?” Rachel’s hand froze. In his hand Ballieu held up her little book, scanning through the pages. He began mouthing a few of the words, obviously having a hard time understanding them. “Magic… that is why I was drawn to you.”

The angel made a cutting motion in the air then held open his palm to show a little flame. Rachel felt her throat and tried making noises, but nothing came out. Without her voice she could not use any of her spells, which made protecting Aka that much more difficult.

“Your voice will allow me to read and understand your spells… I can better answer prayers this way, better punish the oppressors.” Ballieu’s smile was so sincere in what he believed. It horrified Rachel. “Perhaps I can permanently reside in your world then.”

“No.” Aka sounded breathy and nervous. It shocked Rachel that Aka was able to speak at all.

Ballieu stared at Aka, the girl who clutched her skirt so tightly her knuckles went white.

“Child, I’m afraid there’s nothing you can do to prevent me from doing so,” came his reply.

“She did nothing wrong. People produce prayers all the time directed at you, the saint of the oppressed, to avenge them. But taking her voice is punishment and she hasn’t done a thing, this is abuse!”

The angel clutched the horn of the skull in his lap. Darkness crept around the park bench and up the legs of both girls, devouring them, something that gave Ballieu’s face a frightening, joyous look. With that look he brought the voice to his lips, preparing himself to feast on the knowledge of magic speech it would bring him. Yet, as he opened his mouth, little blue lights surrounded the voice in his hand, preventing him from reaching his end goal. He tried scooching them away but every touch brought a searing pain to his senses. He dropped the voice and the lights carried it away; the darkness was being eaten by dozens of the little lights, the encasing of black releasing Rachel and Aka. The lights carried Rachel’s voice to her, and she gladly accepted the offering, placing the flame in her mouth and swallowing. She cleared her throat and straightened herself. The lights, Rachel’s fireflies, surrounded the fallen angel.

“You asked me if I was scared,” The woman sternly started, “well, allow me to answer. I’ve witnessed dreamers willingly sell their souls to the boogyman and turn into hollow shells known only as Empties. I saw a man eat a human soul to fulfill his own selfish needs. My whole life could be compared to the stuff nightmares are made of, but that’s how I grew up. So when you ask me if I’m scared of a hypocrite who was created by the misplaced faith of people looking for help, then the answer is no. No, I am not scared. I am infuriated. And hell hath no fury like a woman.”

The fireflies engrossed Ballieu, and he combusted into rich flames, catching the blackness that held the very area together on fire as well. Rachel watched the edges of the black burn up to show the outside and park where they sat originally. Ballieu flailed but made no noise- the fireflies had first gone for his throat, turning it to smoldering ash before anything else. Once the manmade entity left life behind, the women were able to see nothing but the natural world including the statue- a statue that had lost a meaning to Aka that maybe hadn’t have even been there to start; her indifference became disgust.

Aka hung a charm, something she had meant to show Rachel, on the statue that she had brought to class, but forgotten to do. She hoped it would help prevent negative energy from entering the statue again.

“As a woman scorned.” Aka said softly as they left. Rachel gave her a curious ‘huh’. “You didn’t say it properly. It’s hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. And you owe me extra credit.”

A laugh left Rachel’s luscious lips. Aka was so strangely serious that she couldn’t help but laugh at the student’s attempts to make the entire event worth it. “You’re still asking about that? Well, I don’t see why not.” As an afterthought she added, “Don’t tell the other students. They might get jealous.”



Kristjan looked over the couch when he heard the front door of the creepy house creak open then slam closed.

“Rachel, that you?” He called out, trying to see if he could at least spot her shadow in the door frame. “Adam’s in the kitchen. How was your day?”

“I met a spirit created by the combined faith and worship of seventy seven years’ worth of people while one of my students was with me. Oh, and I also dealt with a possessed parrot that tried warning me about the spirit beforehand.”

“A real one?”

“A robotic one. Less exciting, I know.”

“That’s debatable.” Kristjan slumped back down and continued reading from his picture book of exotic birds from around the world. “Parrots are creepy enough as is. They give me the wiggins.”

This coming from the man with crows that came out of his body, Rachel pondered, moving out of the doorway. She went to go see if there was any food left for her, knowing that her own faith wasn’t misplaced. She was rewarded with a quaint stack of biscuits and a plate of other such homemade delights.

Clay Tuesday: Roots in the Grave

Roots in the Grave (The Case of the Canopy of Flaming Hands)

A Clay Tuesday Short

It was a drastically dull evening with the clouds eating up all traces of star- or moonlight, a travesty that struck deep in the chords of Rachel’s nature-loving soul. The evening air was warm and dry, filled with the taste of a prolonged death. Being around ghosts as often as she was, she felt comfortable assuming she knew what death tasted like in the air.

Rachel was in the process of making her way back to the creepy little house on the creepy little hill, only she was infuriatingly lost and in need of a great deal of guidance. The house had brought them to the outskirts of a little town in Colorado three days prior, and for the entirety of those three days she and Kristjan had been getting lost trying to find the supernatural disturbance that required their attention. Nobody in the sleepy little town of Rent that either of them had talked to knew a thing about any local legend, any strange disappearances, or any odd people that had recently moved to town. Instead Rachel received a few cat calls and a local priest, who was oddly youthful in appearance, told her that women shouldn’t wear pants on a Sunday to which Rachel replied that it was in fact a Tuesday. He then re-introduced himself and made the exact same comment. His short term memory must have been awful. Three hours later, when she passed by his church a second time, he told her she was going to hell for showing so much skin and then called her ‘Delilah.’ Whether he was comparing her to the biblical figure or not, she had no clue, but she would make sure to avoid Samson.

            Some days Rachel wondered if introducing herself as Dr. Moomaw would get her more respect from people, but in a town like Rent, Colorado adding a fancy title to one’s name was no way to get that respect. Respect had to be earned, and Rachel knew that from the little town she and Adam grew up in. Their father had only a high school education, but he earned the trust and respect of everyone he came in contact with by being a hard worker. Rachel was starting to think that at the rate they were going, she would be in Rent long enough to earn that kind of respect.

            Then she thought about Adam, her little brother. He hated the family work and had declared his plans to go to college in one of the Carolinas—Rachel couldn’t remember which one. She didn’t care. Adam was already gone, leaving her behind with Kristjan. She was without family.

            Frustrated, the woman with the sweet southern voice shoved aside dead tree branch after dead tree branch, searching for her way back home. The further along the path she went the more melancholy the trees looked. Instead of bursting with florid leaves and a speckling of blossoms Adam would fawn over, the trees were bare and void of any significant life. She hadn’t even heard the familiar buzzing of insects so common to that time of year. Rachel paused on the path, moonlight breaking from the clouds catching her eye—the fragile beam of white light shone briefly on one glowing red spot not more than 200 yards away.

            She sprinted to where the light pointed, branches scraping against her skin leaving long ruby marks on her arms. She was desperate to find the red glow, to see what needed to be fixed. She came to a halt when she arrived in a clearing, in the middle of which was a very old and very large tree. It was majestic looking, whimsical even, and was the only thing blooming with bright blossoms. But what caught Rachel’s fancy were the small objects dangling loosely down from the branches. As she drew nearer her eyes began to better focus thanks to the low glow emanating from the objects in question. She could make out the shapes clearly.

            They were hands. Hands were hanging from the tree.

            Rachel reached up to touch one of the hands but withdrew her finger millimeters from the glowing red appendage. After a brief hesitation she held the hand. The life of a little boy, who professionally played piano, a prodigy, flashed before her eyes. His birth, the first song he played by ear, his first concert, his last; all leading to a premature death from consumption. She let go and grasped another hand and the full life of an old man who once had plans to leave Rent but had stayed for the woman he adored momentarily replaced her vision. The woman, a blonde who looked vaguely similar to Rachel in the fact that she was blonde and also a woman, was a vixen named Delilah. She did this several more times until she felt she could no longer handle channeling the memories; the older the hand she held, the fuzzier the memories were as though the soul trapped in it was fading into nothingness. It dawned on Rachel that that was exactly what was going on. Souls were trapped inside the hands, being fed on by either the tree or by something else entirely.

            The sole female resident of the creepy little house on a hill tried to walk quickly to the trunk of the eerie tree, but everything felt slowed down. She walked step, by step. By step. By step… By painful step. Her breathing reverberated in her skull. The hands twitched in an achingly slow motion, and even ones with newer souls that grasped at her for help were moving at a fourth the speed they had been moving at before she walked towards the trunk.

Rachel imagined that anyone who had ever died in Rent, Colorado had their soul trapped right there in one of the thousands of dangling hands, helpless, in need of rescue.

Finally, in what took hours in her mind but was actually only a minute, she made it to the trunk, where time felt more or less normal than it had been arriving there. She paced around it, brushing the gnarled tree as she went along. The more time she spent going around the circumference, the more she saw that it was not one tree originally, but multiple trees grown together. How had she not seen this monstrous plant from town?

            Rachel stopped several yards away from a rouge light on the opposite end of the tree. She stepped slowly, inching her way until she could make out what it was. The source of the rough glow was the priest from earlier, who was melded into the large trunk of the tree. Rachel lowered her eyebrows and daintily brought the fingers of her hand to her lips to form her common thinking posture. It made sense, somehow. The priest was oddly youthful in appearance, yes, but had the attitude of an old, nearly senile man. Rachel’s father had once told her a story about magicians like these who were able to keep themselves young by slowly feeding on souls. However, while their bodies remained young their minds were still susceptible and aged. The priest was greedy, Rachel decided, living much longer than he should have, afraid of death. She couldn’t save Yeates from Wallace, but she could save the souls trapped in the hands hanging from the tree. While the priest was attached to the tree he was feeding he was vulnerable.

            Little blue lights flashed into existence, slowly at first. They were soft little fireflies that belonged to Rachel, were a part of her, protected her, did her bidding. They latched on to the tree, setting it ablaze in flames of reds and yellows that danced and licked the dank sky. The priest’s eyes shot awake and his distorted voice shrieked blasphemes at Rachel, but he couldn’t free himself from the tree, hard as he tried.

The strings holding the hands singed into nothingness. The hands vanished as the souls were set free. And Rachel stood there in front of the blazing tree and burning man, remorseless. Before long there was silence—the only thing that remained by Rachel’s side were her fireflies flickering fearlessly in the moonlight breaking through the gray clouds and the ash that dusted the ground.

What The Snowman Learned About Love

Far and away in an unspecified frozen tundra at an unspecified time (for you see time did not matter much here), a snowman sat un-frightened yet alone in the middle of it all. To his left was a pile of downy white flakes, then to his right a pile of slightly less white but just as lovely white flakes. In front of him lay an endless, dreamy view of white, and behind him—well, he wasn’t sure what was behind him as he had never been able to fully turn around, but he assumed it wasn’t nearly as impressive as what he could see hence his not being blessed with the mobility to view it.

The snowman himself was painfully average, almost mediocre with his two stick arms and charcoal face. His one defining characteristic, the one thing he was most proud of, was his heart of ice. You see, his frosty little heart was indeed tiny but it sparkled ever so magnificently in the tundra’s blinding sun and then glittered so softly underneath the ever waning moon. The snowman had the utmost regard for this heart and the love he knew it held, careful not to just share it with any snowflake or beam of light that could possibly catch his fancy. No, as unique as each snowflake was they were everywhere and did not deserve the secret love he held. And the beams of sun, while warm, threatened to melt the snowman on a daily basis. How could he love something that would kill him? For it was common knowledge the sunbeam could not help but be what it was, unable to change for anything—even love. The snowman was saving his love for the bipolar polar bear.

The bipolar polar bear, BP to most, though most really only meant some since most did not survive encounters with BP, wandered past the snowman every day in a search for something. BP was never sure exactly what she was looking for, for she would constantly and rather violently switch moods and lose track of what she had been doing to begin with. The snowman, of course, knew none of this and was merely attracted to the strong physical appearance of the creature.

BP shone a blinding white, matching the snow exquisitely. But unlike the snow or the snowman, she was free to move in a large hypnotizing mass. Similar the snowman’s lone beautiful heart, BP too had one characteristic that made her stand out. Her eyes were two very different, very brilliant colors. The right was a strawberry red while the left a deep blackberry purple. The snowman felt it was quite queer to call it a blackberry when it was in reality not black, but nevertheless that was the shade of purple the eye reminded him of. Together they were striking, unsettling, unnerving- they would have left him breathless had he been able to breathe. They were easy to pick out in the blanket of snow and every time they drew near the snowman pleaded the beautiful creature would take notice of him.

On one confusing excursion undertaken by BP the snowman finally got his wish, for his glittering heart caught the attention of the bear. She drew closer to the snowman she had never once noticed before that point. The snowman stared into those curious eyes he was so drawn to, contemplating what to say to the bear once she arrived.

He saw her breath rising in puffs from her nose. He felt it on his face, which caused it to melt little by little. His eyes slid down roughly an inch each and his black smile, the second thing he was most proud of (which would have been the green scarf he once owned had a gust of wind not blown it away), became malformed as well, forming a blank expression. Wasn’t this what it would have been like had he given his love to the sunbeam?

The snowman saw BP’s eyes turn from curious, to puzzled, to ferocious; she had forgotten once again what she had been doing. She stood up on her hind legs, rearing back her arm and swiping the glittering heart from the snowman’s chest and forcing him to crumple down into a worthless pile. BP sniffed the heart as curiously as she had come, gnawed on it lightly, then plopped it in the freshly demolished heap the heart had come from before moving on.

The snowman’s smushed head rolled and rolled, then rolled some more before it finally settled down surprisingly not that far from his deconstructed body. He now had a full view of what had laid behind him and he was more than a smidgen surprised. There, only inches behind him, was the destroyed body of a lady snowman with a heart glittering just like his, the snowman’s missing scarf hanging from her outstretched stick arm that jutted out from the downy pile that once was her body. And, right next to his head, was hers. They now stared at each other, uninterested in anything else that happened to be near for the snowman had finally found what he had been searching for.

Clay Tuesday: Bad Standard

Bad Standard (The Case of the Death Chair)

A Clay Tuesday Short

            And so the story went, continuing on to the next resident of the creepy little house: Adam. Adam Moomaw rarely took on cases by himself. In fact, he rather hated leaving the house altogether but once in a while he was forced to inspect something due to Rachel’s absence and Kristjan’s working on something else. This was one such occasion.

            The legend of the death chair was one of those stories well known in only one area, though it had plenty of evidence to back up its reality, and thus remained an obscure tale. The real tales of its horrors from ‘back in the day’ had been told so many times through unintentional games of telephone that the actual facts had become so muddled and altered that all believability soon became lost. The chair, originating from the late 19^th century, now resided in a museum as part of a set piece for something or other. Adam had quit paying attention by that point when researching the chair before coming. That was about as far as Sebastian Doegh got as well.

            Sebastian worked for what would be considered one of those ridiculous supernatural magazines, though how ridiculous it truly was, was debatable. Often times Sebastian had witnessed and written about supernatural events and ghostly encounters, and his experiences had made him into a believer.

They, they being The Horrorscope, the magazine that employed Sebastian, assigned him to travel around the eastern coast of the States and report on local legends. He had first covered the Jersey Devil, blue hole, Mothman, and finally he came to the death chair, the least exciting, he thought, of them all. He wasn’t particularly thrilled, hating all of the travel. Money was money, though, and so he dealt with it.

            Brushing his shaggy black hair out of his way, Sebastian stared unenthusiastically at the chair wondering whether or not he should snap a picture of it with the Polaroid camera that dangled around his neck (he had learned using Polaroid snapshots made the photos look that much scarier for the articles). Next to him stood Adam, who was slightly shorter than the slightly taller than average Sebastian. Adam had no need to brush his close cropped dirty blond hair out of his face nor was he curious if he should snap a photo to see if he could catch a ghost in the shot or not, something his sister Rachel and their father had been known to do. He was actually very hungry and wondered what kind of groceries he should pick up for the next few days to feed Kristjan and himself while Rachel was off giving lectures. Kristjan was a surprisingly picky eater with refined, code for expensive, tastes. Adam was convinced Kristjan didn’t even need to eat but he had to put up with it anyway, because he always got stuck with cleaning the house and preparing the meals. Aside from thoughts of groceries, Adam did wonder if he should touch the chair or not- if the chair really was haunted, it would be the quickest way to end the case.

            “Have you heard the story of the chair right there?” Sebastian inquired of Adam, trying to make polite conversation. Adam responded with a ‘huh.’ Sebastian was starved enough for attention that he ignored Adam’s ‘I don’t care’ remark and continued anyway. “Apparently whoever sits on that chair dies within a few days. I personally don’t believe it, but I get paid to write about crap like this.”

            There was the briefest moment of silence before Adam responded with the gem “Are you hitting on me?”

            “What?”

            “Not interested.”

            Sebastian, for the first time since the tenth grade when his then girlfriend had broken up with him, was at a loss for words. He resorted to taking action, snapping a quick picture of the chair, shoving his camera into Adam’s chest, and crossing the rope to sit in the chair. “Take my picture.”

            “What? You idiot, why would you- if you’ve heard the legends, then- are you- did you get a lobotomy?” Adam’s southern accent, something he tried very desperately to hide, slipped out with his shock and anger. He ran towards the chair but froze with his hand inches from Sebastian’s. His eyes were frozen, blue eyes dilated. His gaze was caught above the chair.

            “Just take the picture before a worker comes back. What’re you even staring at?”

A dingy skeleton floated above Sebastian like an aged buzzard draped in ragged clothing, looming, its hands reaching for the reporter’s head. Adam yanked Sebastian out of the chair then grabbed it with both hands. The skeleton vanished. Adam would have smiled had he not discovered that his touch had no effect on the chair. Nothing was growing on it; the skeleton had no reason to vanish. So why had it, if Adam didn’t cause it to? “What was that?”

            Adam looked back at the bewildered Sebastian, a Sebastian that looked like he was about to be sick all over the floor. Adam responded, “The reason you shouldn’t have sat in the chair. Now shut up.”

After checking the chair for magical symbols, Adam found one. This was satisfactory enough as it gave him something to work with, but disappointing because Sebastian wanted to know everything about it and Adam, forcing an introduction out of him. For the first time in ten years Adam spoke with his natural accent for more than three sentences.

“I’ll buy you chocolate or whatever if you’ll be quiet and leave me alone.” Adam walked out of the museum, Sebastian tailing closely behind.

“Why would I want chocolate?” Sebastian followed Adam through quick turns; he was obviously bad at losing people in crowds. So instead Adam decided to stop at a shop and finish some errands praying that this would bore Sebastian so badly he would leave of his own free will.

“I don’t freaking know, just take it.” Adam thoughtlessly thanked the thinning cashier, a charming old woman, for her compliment of his southern drawl. She called it adorable and Adam blushed, taking the items he purchased and tossing two of them, a catholic medallion and a chocolate bar, at Sebastian. “Put on the medallion.”

“Um, thanks. Now explain to me what’s going on.”

“You’re cursed and I need to break it before you die.”

“Thank you?” Sebastian tried asking more questions. Adam tried ignoring him. Neither plan worked very well. Both were a little miserable and Sebastian only spoke again when they started ascending a creepy little hill towards a creepy little house. In front of that creepy little house was a creepy little tree with a creaky little swing. “How long has this place been here?”

“Two days.” Adam opened the front door, entering with Sebastian.

Multiple aged books lay open on the floor in front of Adam as his research for the magical circle he found on the chair. Sebastian was having a hay-day examining all the old texts that covered the house.

“You have… thirty three grimoires at least, and I haven’t even heard of half of them. Like this one, the Lunar Grimoire. How did you find these things?”

“Stop touching them, that’s not polite. Especially the lunar one, Wellington might need that one again.” Adam was referring to a young man and his friends Adam and the other house residents had helped half a year prior when the house had taken them elsewhere in the country. Adam ground his teeth while flipping through pages, about the only two things he was good at doing at the same time. “They belong to my sister, Rachel.”

Sebastian made the connection in his head. Rachel. Rachel Moomaw, Ph.D, had degrees in folklore studies, ancient mythology and the like, and was often a guest speaker or teacher at universities. Other reporters from the website had interviewed and consulted her for stories as well. Before Sebastian could ask yet another question, Adam spoke in his sweet southern tongue.

“The magic circle bound the maker’s soul to the chair. The reason me touching the chair didn’t do anything is because when somebody sits in the chair the soul attaches itself to the person and haunts them until they die. Show me your chest, I’ll prove it.”

“Excuse you?” Sebastian was taken aback. Adam got up and forcefully lifted up Sebastian’s shirt. A magic circle was burned into his chest.

“Yeah, cursed.”

Sebastian could only make strange noises in response, freaking out even more when Adam touched the burn. Small blossoms started popping up, covering the mark then dying and falling off just as quickly as they had appeared. The mark was still there. Sebastian managed to mutter a “What?”

“Green thumb. The magic circle on your chest’s a curse. It transferred the ghost from the chair to you. It’s too powerful for me to get rid of myself.”

“So what you’re telling me is I’m haunted.”

Adam answered quickly and sharply, “Yes, I already said that!”

“How haunted?” Sebastian was starting to feel a little awkward.

“More haunted than an abandoned mansion and less haunted than the state of Florida.”

“Oh, you don’t say? Now would you mind letting go of my shirt?” Sebastian gave Adam a tight lipped smile. Adam, shrugging, let go. “What’s the next step?”

“Wait for it to try and kill you.” There was silence, then Sebastian let Adam know he was not okay with the plan. Adam heaved a sigh, slipping once again into his southern accent. “Listen, it’s a basic ghost- okay, maybe more of a poltergeist since it’ll probably move things to try and kill you- but it’s still simple enough. I either need to touch it or bind it with some sutras.”

“Sutras?” Sebastian was massaging his temples out of frustration. Adam was doing the same.

“Chants. They’re ancient… and stuff. My sister says they’re words that hold things together like the world. Words are important, you know. That’s why you should never tell somebody your full name. It gives them power over you.” Sebastian then pointed out he knew Adam’s full name because of the forced introduction earlier. Adam waved him away with his hand. “That’s not the point, you were being flippant. Hush and follow me.” Sebastian, before leaving, grabbed one of the books Adam had been looking at and brought it along.

Not so far and away, down in a perky playground Sebastian sat somewhat frightened on top of a jungle gym, playing with his dark skinny tie. Adam was hiding inside of a slide. Sebastian decided right then and there during his moping that if he died he would haunt Adam.

The plan was to wait for the ghost to find the perfect opportunity to kill Sebastian. Sebastian had no idea why Adam chose a playground for this to happen, but it was. At first, nothing happened, and Sebastian began getting annoyed. He glanced up, seeing the raggedy clothed, dingy skeleton. It reached out a thin, darkened hand, a gust of wind pushing Sebastian off the jungle gym and the hand caught him mid-air by his tie, choking Sebastian to death.

From the slide emerged one Adam Moomaw, leaping up to the rescue. In a booming voice he began chanting. Glowing Sanskrit letters faded into existence around the ghastly apparition, binding it in place. Its hold on Sebastian was broken, and he crashed to the ground, getting the wind knocked out of him. He hacked and coughed, trying to get back his breath and reaching for the book that had fallen out of his hands when the ghost appeared. Adam’s focused gaze did not break. The ghost could only move its jaw. A smog oozed out of the skeleton’s open mouth, dripping down its chin. It coughed like Sebastian, then gurgled, trying to make a noise. The sounds at first were incomprehensible, but quickly they began making sense. “A… dam…,” it started, “Adam… James… Moomaw.”

Adam’s name was followed by a long slur of unintelligible words, a spell. As long as the skeleton ghost had been around it must have picked up something or created its own sort of magical spell because the letters floating around the skeleton shattered in a magnificent burst of fluorescent, breaking the spell simply by the call of Adam’s true name. He was now for a short time unable to use any magic spell, his energy being repressed by the skeleton.

The specter descended to Sebastian’s level, reaching out its dusty hand. Sebastian, who had regained some breath, held open the book and shouted a phrase. A Sanskrit letter blocked the ghost’s hand but the ghost pushed through the floating symbol, shattering it like the other ones, and for the first time directly touched Sebastian. It would be the first thing the ghost would regret touching. A crackling energy surged through the spirit, pushing it back into the second thing it would regret touching- Adam’s hands. Vines grew across the ghost’s body and those vines grew silky, scarlet spider lilies. Once those lilies bloomed, other flowers emerged, engulfing the ghost skeleton. This was Adam’s natural ability, not a spell; it was the one thing that could not be broken by reciting his name with a spell.

 Energy wafted up like steam and vanished seconds later. The flowers fell down, shriveled and dead, the ghost having fed them until it vanished and they could feed no more. What looked like a few fireflies flew away.

Sebastian took out the still glowing medallion from underneath his shirt and watched it twirl round and round on its chain, mesmerized by the effect it had had on the cursed spirit that haunted him. The glow grew softer and softer before fading altogether.

“Francis de Sales, patron saint of Journalists. Now lift up your shirt.” Adam tried forcing up Sebastian’s shirt but he smacked away Adam’s hand, lifting up his shirt himself. The curse mark was gone. “Good, let’s keep it that way.”

“What were those things that showed up a second ago?” Sebastian asked, letting the medallion plop softly against the cloth of his tie.

“Those firefly things guide lost souls to the afterlife once they let go of this world, either willingly for forcefully.”

“Forcefully?”

“There’re other spirits that come and take demonized human souls like that one to the afterlife sometimes.” Adam plopped down on the cool grains of sand, sifting his hand through them. He held his breath and drank in the moment; the setting sun, the finished case and someone new sitting beside him. Pins and needles went down his spine and involuntarily he shivered. He hadn’t felt this good since the case with Wallace Moorcroft and P. Darwin Yeates two years earlier. Who knew, he thought. Maybe one day he would get used to Sebastian like he had Kristjan and even consider him a friend.

Sebastian walked Adam to the front steps of the creepy little house. He glanced down at the dying grass, browning like the death chair, a half smile crawling across his face. “We should do this again sometime.” Sebastian said, handing the book back to Adam. Adam received the book, his handsome face as dull, drowsy and dreary as always. Adam shrugged, knowing the house probably wouldn’t be there in the morning. “Just stop trying to undress me, alright?”

“Cool.” Adam, unsure of what to do, nodded, glanced around and did a half turn. Sebastian did something similar and held out his hand. Neither one could agree on a handshake, fist bump or man hug so Adam ended the awkwardness by walking into the house and shutting the door on the journalist. Sebastian laughed and descended the creepy little hill, passing by the creepy tree and creaky old swing while on the other side of the door Adam allowed himself to smile.

Clay Tuesday: I Believe

The Case of the Doppelganger


Everyone at school knew that if you saw the glowing green-eyed doppelganger in the old mirror it meant you would die. The other self would crawl out of the mirror like in horror movies and eat your eyes, then toy with you, leaving you unsure of when or if it would finally kill you. This raced through Jack’s mind as he nervously ruffled his rust-colored hair and checked out his face in the mirror.

Maybe it was the idea of death that had drawn Jack to the old mirror hung and hidden in the woods behind the school, or maybe it was the constant dare from teammates that brought him there. Jack scanned his features in the mirror; square jaw, lean body, easy on the eyes. Basically a good looking guy who was a little bit of a prick but okay with it. What spirit wouldn’t want to take his shape, he thought.

Jack gazed at his hazel eyes in the mirror. There was no green-eyed doppelganger. Disappointed, he scoffed and shook his head at the thought of anyone believing the old tale. Of course nothing had happened. Green eyes would have clashed with his hair anyway, that’s what Jack’s gay older brother George had said once before their parents had kicked him out. At this thought Jack started grinding his teeth. He thought about how his parents so easily saw fit to discard their own son. He looked back up at the mirror. A blond-haired man was behind him.

“The hell?” Jack spun on his foot to face the man. “Who are you and why are you creeping on me?”

“Kristjan. Oh, don’t run- I’m going to need you to stay and help me for a second. I can’t do this on my own.” Kristjan’s words ran from his thin lips so effortlessly as he walked closer to Jack, passing him. Kristjan stopped in front of the mirror and gazed at it from a plethora of odd angles. His index finger gently grazed the dusty glance; he was entranced by something he saw in it.

Jack gave the back of Kristjan’s head the most confused look he could muster which involved, but was not limited to, furrowed brows, a slightly open mouth and a tilt of his head. The man was obviously messing with him. Or one of those crazies from the mental ward. “Yeah, tall gangly guy, not gonna happen. I’m just going to-”

“I’m not gangly, I’m lean. Just because I’m over six foot people assume I’m all skin and bone this and skin and bone that. I eat! I exercise! Genetics plays a huge part in this too, even though my aunt Cecilia on my mother’s side- not my father’s, she lives in Winnipeg and nobody talks to her- always told me to eat more and called me a scarecrow. But the point of the story is that I’m not gangly. And now I’ve lost my concentration.” Kristjan drew back his finger from the glass, grimacing at the dust on his finger. “Look in the mirror again, you… what’s your name?”

“Jack.”

“Right. Look in the mirror, would you, Jack? You’ll understand the world differently once you do. It’s exciting. Kids your age love exciting.” Kristjan stepped away from the mirror so Jack could see what he came to see, and indeed he did see it. He brought his hazel speckled eyes up to meet his reflection’s in the mirror, but instead saw a vicious, vain, vile and unhealthy glooming green gaze coming from a face exactly like his own. Fight or flight kicked in, and his body, to protect itself, moved back and away from the reflection. The reflection matched his movement and went forward.

“Legends, folktales and myths like this are very often grounded in fact, not fiction. They, like you or me, are a type of reality that exists in this world either created alongside us, from us or by us spreading tales. Our repeating of a story gives it life.” To Jack, Kristjan’s monologue was surreal, a serenade accompanying a seemingly fictitious supernatural encounter. The doppelganger’s hand reached through the mirror, fingers slowly cringing and twitching like a man struck with palsy. Kristjan continued. “The thrill of wanting to encounter the supernatural vanishes once the meeting takes place, when the entity feeds on your fear. You look for a cheap scare and find something very real. Something just as alive as you.”

Jack’s gaze lingered in the green depths of his doppelganger’s eyes, freezing him in place. Piece by piece, little by little, the copy of Jack slinked forward out of the old mirror. Jack could feel the fingers emanating sharpness like a knife, coming closer to his enlarged pupils. He was grotesquely fascinated by the idea of a true urban legend, of meeting, most importantly-

“Death.”

The word sifted out of Jack’s parted lips and covered the area like thick smog.

“Death is an entryway to a new life, Jackson Douglas Rae.”

A white crow landed on the doppelganger’s out-stretched arm. With a haunting caw it flapped its wings causing the doppelganger to explode into a mass of feathers. Jack snapped back into his senses, sweat pouring down his frame. Kristjan shoved Jack to the side. “Move!” he shouted, the false Jack re-appearing and jabbing a fist where the real Jack was moments earlier. Dust and grass soared through air, and with a swift kick Kristjan forced the doppelganger backwards. The crow flapped furiously, turning the double back into feathers.

“Jack, come here!” Kristjan pulled Jack over into the edge of a magic circle. The fake Jack appeared once more, lunging forward with sharp fingers, fingers which stopped inches short of Jack’s face. The magic circle was glowing a furious yellow and preventing the fake to move at all. The doppelganger was trapped, and the white crow landed on Kristjan’s shoulder, sinking into the black fabric of his sweater and vanishing as mysteriously as it had appeared.

Jack was unsure of what to say, but that didn’t stop him from speaking. “That- What –Me- Who are you?”

“That’s not important. You were fantastic bait by the way,” Kristjan said cooly, bringing out a small notebook from his pocket. He started chanting in a language largely unknown to Jack- French- and little by little, as Kristjan read, pieces of the doppelganger shone brightly then cracked like glass. Pieces fell off and hit the ground, shattering and vanishing. When Kristjan finished and closed the notebook, the monster had ceased to exist.

“What the hell did you say to in French that you couldn’t say in English to kill it?” Jack said, breaking the silence left by the monster. Kristjan’s response was a smile. “Why couldn’t you just let it take your shape?”

“I read a passage from a grimoire.” Kristjan stuck his hands in his pockets and shrugged. Jack waited for more of an answer. “Oh, the French. English is a horrible language to do spells in, there’s borrowed words from other languages everywhere in it. French is purer, more concrete and precise.”

“Okay, still not sure what a grimoire is.” Jack stopped and realized something else important. “And how did you know my full name?”

“It’s a spell book. Different spell books for different occasions, different cultures dealt with these things differently. And I took your wallet while you weren’t looking and saw your license,” Kristjan tossed the increasingly confused Jack his wallet.

“Why didn’t it look like you?”

“Because I’m already a doppelganger of myself,” Kristjan began to walk off after his answer, despite protests from a very confused and unsatisfied Jack.

“That doesn’t make sense!” He shouted after Kristjan’s fading figure.

“It doesn’t make sense to me either. Go home and do your homework or something.”

“Just like that?” Frustrated, Jack tried chasing after Kristjan, who looked as though he were doing more fading away than walking.

“People experience the otherworldly every day. Accept it and move on.” Kristjan was gone before Jack could catch up. He took some deep breaths, trying to remember what Kristjan even looked like. Kristjan’s image hurriedly faded from Jack’s mind, no matter how hard he tried to conjure it up. Ultimately, he took the blond man’s advice. He accepted what had happened to him and more importantly to his brother, and moved on.