The single, old window offered a patch of bruised sky I stared at; finally hypnotized into a slumber until revived by a luminescence that filled the room with a holy glow. “Laurel?” I whispered, but did not wait for a flicker of acknowledgment; instead, I turned away, curled into the reassuring crook of my elbow. For some, hope is an annihilation; a greater loss than the loss from which it is born.
I don’t know how long I slept, but when I awoke the attic was consumed by darkness, there was an uncomfortable crick in my neck and my knees ached as I carefully unwound myself. I bumped my shin on my way across the room, maneuvered carefully down the stairs, suspecting the Strangos were long gone; if I fell and hit my head I would likely die and be decomposed before anyone even noticed I was missing.
What a mess the Strangos made! The house was in chaos; furniture moved, lamps unplugged, cupboards left open. What, I wondered, did the Strangos think I had shrunk myself small as a pin—the refrigerator drawers drawn full to reveal a pale head of lettuce, carrots and eggs thrown to the floor—before I accepted they had not been guests, but invaders. I closed the drawers, tidied up as one does, returned each thing that could be returned to its rightful place and tossed what was ruined; when my eyes fell to an errant orange, an orb of brilliance I plucked from its shadowed corner and peeled, getting skin beneath my nails as the bright spiral fell against the white porcelain. I wiped my tears with orange scented fingertips, finally understanding the answer I had been given: the sweet taste, the holy glow, the great loss and widening absence; to be robbed day-after-day, month-after- month, year-after-year; left to fall deeper into the void, find an orange there, and destroy it.
Swift to Chase
Laird Barron
In medias res part II:
After a hard chase and all-too brief struggle, the Bird Woman of the Adirondacks loomed over me; demonic silhouette, blackest outspread wings tipped in iron; gore-crested and flint-beaked. Her thumbnail-talon poised to spike me through the left eye.
“To know itself, the universe must drink the blood of its children.” Her voice cracked like an ice shelf collapsing; it roared across an improbable expanse of inches.
The talon pressed against my iris. It went in and in.
Rewind and power dive from the clouds. Join the story, in medias res, part I:
Where in the world is Jessica Mace? That scene when the superlative secret agent gets captured inside the master villain’s lair is where. Instead of a secret agent, here’s little old me doing my best impression. Rather than a rocket station beneath a dormant volcano, I’d gotten trapped on an estate (1960s Philip K. Dick-esque) nestled among the peaks of the Adirondacks. Cue jazzy intro music; cue rhinestone heels and a dress slit to here. My nemesis, billionaire avian enthusiast and casual murderer of humans, Averna Spencer, wasn’t playing. Except she was playing.
First clue of my imminent demise (more like the fifth or sixth clue, but just go with it): a leather-bound copy of The Most Dangerous Game parked on the nightstand of my quarters. Second clue? The woman herself said over the intercom, “Fly, my swift, my sweet. When I catch you, I’m giving you a blood eagle.”
Viking history isn’t my specialty, but I know enough to not want one.
There I sat, dressed to kill or be killed. The loaner evening gown was a trap. Spencer had set it when she laid the fancy box across the sheets of the poster bed, and I sprang it as I slipped the dress on. Bird-of-paradise-crimson, gilded with streaks of gold and blue, a bronze torc to cover the scar on my neck (so thoughtful of my hostess), and four-inch rhinestone heels amounted to a costume worth more than I’d make in a lifetime unless that lifetime included a winning lotto ticket or sucking millionaire cock on the daily.
The ensemble transcended mere decoration; it reorganized my cells and worked outward like magma rushing through igneous channels. I’d stared at myself in the mirror and come face to face with a starlet. A tad hard-bitten. Close, though. Action heroine on the precipice of unfuckability by Hollywood’s standard. Regardless, the illusion of fabulous me radiated heat—live-wire alive.
Yep, slipping into the dress had been to stick my head right through a dangling snare. Call it the price of admission. Too late to change a damned thing that was coming. I grinned like a prizefighter to keep my gorge down. I’d been here before and survived. Double-edged blade, the notion of past as prologue, and so forth. Resilience in prey excited Averna and made her want me that much more.
A girl on the run in a dress and high heels wouldn’t run far is what Spencer bet, and why not? She owned the house. The house always wins.
The isolated mountain house of a high-toned serial killer isn’t the kind of joint you accidentally wander into. I’d been recruited, seduced, and deployed. Dr. Ryoko and Dr. Campbell (more on my patrons—and their sexy, sexy bodyguard, Beasley—in due course), possessed a special interest in Averna Spencer’s activities. My mission was to infiltrate her estate and conduct hostile actions on their behalf.
A few words about our mutual foe:
Averna craved the chase. She wasn’t a slasher of (hapless) womenfolk or a sniper of unsuspecting coyotes. She didn’t howl at the moon; hadn’t been born under a bad sign or suffered childhood trauma. A hunter, nonetheless. Pure predator evolved to the job at hand. Sixty-three kills, if the cobbled-together records told it true. Sixty-three on U.S. soil; only INTERPOL could speak for the body count in Europe where she frequently traveled.
The manifest of persons missing and presumed dead since 1988, included loggers, hikers, ex-military, a baker’s dozen hardened criminals, and a former Olympic decathlete. These folks vanished across the U.S.; law enforcement records established the deeds, but the authorities hadn’t officially put it together. Unofficially, there were rumors. A retired FBI agent in Houston, a discredited private investigator in Wisconsin, and other assorted kooks, rocked the boat now and again. It came to nothing, as these situations usually do.
The track and field star haunted me. Strapping lad. Last known photograph taken at sunset, ice cream cone in hand (an athlete’s notion of decadence), a tall, dark-haired chick hanging on his arm. Track and field dude—let’s call him Rocky since he looked a hell of a lot like a Rocky I knew in high school—dressed nicely, smiled nicely. Only missed snagging the bronze medal by hundredths of a second. I imagined how he must’ve been later, after the kidnapping—alone, lost in a trackless forest. Pressed flat against the trunk of a pine, head cocked, every cord in his neck straining. Then, slice.
Rocky the Olympian’s tragic story ended the same as the rest. Worm food.
Fast, strong, tough. Hadn’t mattered, had it? Can’t fight what you don’t see coming, can’t fight if you’re prey. Dharma 101, friends and neighbors. The rabbit runs and the hawk dives.
Where do I fit into the grand scheme? I muck around in the rising tide of cosmic night. I’m hell on wheels. My totem animal is the coyote, the mongoose, my blazon a bloodied Ka-Bar in a clenched fist against a field of black.
Lest I join the dearly departed in their unmarked graves, the moment had come to make myself scarce. The original extraction plan struck me as sketchy at best—on the bright side of the equation, Spencer’s houseguests normally returned to the world unharmed. The data led Campbell and Ryoko to theorize that those whom she kidnapped (and I qualified) were subsequently hunted across her estate grounds. Should the operation go pear-shaped, I was to flee Averna Spencer’s home and rendezvous at a hunting cabin a mile past the estate’s southeast boundary. My patrons had assured me they’d done the math forward and back—it wouldn’t come to such an extreme. Bastards.