3 a.m. Somewhere, most likely the foyer, a hound bayed an aria of melancholia, an unrequited plea to the sterling orb that owned her heart. O, cold, loveless Moon!
Margaret knew the routine. The night music would continue until at least 3:45 a.m. She got up, grateful to briefly escape Tallulah’s permanent scowl, and made her way past the grandfather clock and Persephone’s watchful eye, past Okka’s prehistoric snoring, and into her homey kitchen.
The fridge door, burdened by pickles, eggs, butter, four kinds of mustard and three of hot sauce, including one labeled Beelzebub’s Butthole, hung wide open for all the world to see. In fact, Margaret’s view of the gastronomical porn was only partly obscured by the broad translucent backside of one Gideon Chiswattle Hawley IV of Uxleyshire, Esq.
She’d Googled it on her phone. Around the time an estate called Uxleyshire existed, an “esquire” was ranked just below a knight – shining armor, horse, jousting, and the rest – even though the age of chivalry had already passed. In Atlanta these days, the honorarium was as insubstantial as the late Lord Hawley’s current physicality or his manners. Late also seemed like an odd word, given the current circumstances in her kitchen. Persistent might be a better choice. Persistent and annoying, like the others.
“I am nigh on becoming death’s head on a mop-stick, but a modest repast shall restore me to vim and vigor,” Hawley chortled, poking through the beer and soda six-packs and the leftover baked ziti from Maggiano’s. “Your larder shames the very crowned heads of Europe, madam. No wonder old George hated to see you colonists go. Nasty business that.” He managed to levitate the doggie bag over to the microwave, which he set for three minutes. Margaret deeply regretted having shown him how to operate the appliances, as it had caused her food bill to skyrocket.
The microwave came on with a faint hum, causing her stalwart kitchen sentinel to effervesce and pop like an old TV show. “And that doesn’t hurt you?”
He patted his waistcoat-covered belly. “Fret not, madam. I am touched by a trifling tickle only.” She ignored the “madam,” since Lord Hawley (probably) didn’t consider her to be a street wench. In any case, a bruised ego was a minor issue compared to watching Lord Hawley eat. He preferred to dematerialize “for privacy.” She watched forkfuls of delicious steaming ziti rise and cross the rainbow bridge into his mouth, hanging mid-air for a macabre display of mastication before vanishing altogether. It must be liberating to know one cannot choke to death a second time.
Preternatural bio-physics remained a mystery, and Margaret was content to leave it that way.
After savoring a forbidden Newport 100 on the back porch, Margaret returned to the kitchen to clear up Lord Hawley’s mess. He was worse than Henry, somehow managing to drip marinara over the tabletop, two chairs, the floor, and her new bees-and-berries curtains. Her scullery chores done, she headed back to bed.
She passed the girls’ old room, with its posters of boy bands and stuffed animals herded onto the bed, still waiting for a hug. They weren’t the only ones. She needed to call Lyda and Billie soon. Maybe they’d answer. Old memories hung around like – Yes, they certainly do. The girls had been little fireballs of joy and nonsense. They had grown and blossomed, cooled and darkened, not bothering to let their mother know why. And then they’d left.
Returning to bed, Margaret kicked off her fuzzy orange slippers and got herself halfway under the covers when she felt her face redden. Tallulah’s judgmental glare outshone the July Moon, admonishing her to abandon any thoughts of pleasure. In her day, Tallulah had been an acolyte of Phyllis Schlafly, embracing that Gorgon whose glower petrified any who dared explore attraction outside the bounds of church-sanctioned procreation.
The joke was on Tallulah. In this house, carnal passion is tits up.
To confirm that fact, Margaret reached over to Henry’s silent lump in the bed and petted it. Her bloodshot eyes widened, and then they narrowed. Pillows.
She used her marital radar to trace Henry to the hall bathroom. Trying the knob, she sighed, “Hank, come to bed.” Pressing her forehead against the door, she added, “No more experiments. We’re full to the rafters with ghoulies, shades, and haints. I’ve turned on the ‘No Vacancy’ sign.” She got no answer through the door, though she could hear movement on the other side.
Margaret reached behind her to the hall table, fumbled open the drawer and found a tiny screwdriver, which doubled as a burglar’s tool. As she slipped it into the lock, easily tripping the release, the door opened and Henry brushed past her.
“Nature called,” he said with a glib half-yawn.
She responded bluntly, “Stop drinking beer after dinner. And why didn’t you use our bathroom?” The one four feet from our bed.
“I… I like privacy.”
Privacy again. What could he be doing in there at nearly four in the morning? Could he even still do that? She took a different tact. “You know they can walk through walls, right?”
“Ha. I think this room is off limits.”
There was no logic to his statement, but then again, none of this business made sense to her.
Henry kissed her on the cheek and trudged back to bed, and she followed. Spooning, she reached around and under his elastic waistband. Nope. Out of order.
In the gloom of the bedroom they’d shared for decades, a bitter presence in tweed moved closer, bringing with it the smell of old lady body powder and shame. It was almost upon them. The spirit hovered inches above the marital bed, taking in the view.
“Fuck off, Tally!” Margaret growled.
A pair of cats-eye glasses fixed the couple with a stare of rhinestone reproach before their owner resumed her post at the foot of the bed.
I bet you died alone.
Ten minutes later, Henry was legitimately snoring, and Tallulah had dimmed a bit. Margaret was tempted to flip her off but was afraid she’d shriek. She did that sometimes.
Was eternity all about going around finding things to be incensed about? Margaret hoped not. Please don’t let me wander the Earth in leopard yoga pants, muttering old grievances for a trillion years. If that’s the game, I’d rather transmigrate into a potted fern.
Margaret slowly extricated herself from under the covers. Barefoot this time, she padded back to the hall bathroom. Henry hadn’t stuffed anything into his waistband, and he wasn’t the type to stick contraband anywhere else on his person. That meant his toy was in the bathroom.
Twice before she’d taken the odd wooden amulet from him. She’d even tried to burn it on the gas stove, but the damned thing wouldn’t light. He’d caught her and grabbed the amulet back. Why, why had he bought that hunk of junk from some old crone at the Shoppe of Wonderments in Little Five Points?
She checked the main compartment of the vanity. It was the obvious spot. Henry was not one for scouting out elaborate hiding places. This was the man who hid gifts on the same upper shelf of his closet, the man who bought her the same combo of chocolates and cheap jewelry every anniversary. She had the waistline and a jewelry box full of gold-plated hoop earrings to prove it.
Her hand ran through the familiar bathroom supplies until it found the hated lump of wood. She turned on the mirror light and took a closer look. The amulet was as she remembered it. There was no charring, just an egg-sized curio vaguely resembling a human face peering out from a bush or pinecone or something. The object was neither hot nor cold, smooth nor rough, light nor hefty. For all its banality, this little splinter was the cause of her headaches.
She put it back where she found it.
She was too tired to plan her next move, so she made her way back to her husband’s side. A few steps from the bedroom door, the air suddenly cooled. Gooseflesh covered Margaret’s arms and breasts. In the darkness and clutter of the hall there appeared a faint green miasma. From this there coalesced a ghastly shape, slowly revealing itself into a massive Great Dane, all bulk and purpose, its eyes alive with an inhuman excitement. The devil dog charged directly at her, leveling its nose like a knight pointing its lance at his opponent. The creature loped with remarkable speed and, faster than she could dodge, it found its vulnerable target.
“Hwoofpth!” Doubled over, Margaret took a moment to recover. She pulled the dog’s nose from her crotch. “Yes, Ollie, I love you too.” He reeked of squirrel and muddy canine merriment. Kissing the foul beast’s head delivered an uncertain sensation of contact. He may not have been her dog in life, but his spirit had won her over with his child-like hijinks – or maybe it was that she missed that kind of rough play.
Sir Oliver Bartholomew Pendragon panted and slapped his tail on the floorboards hard enough to split them asunder. Then, he simply vanished back into the darkness. The house was still and settled, except for two nagging sounds: someone prying open the refrigerator door again and someone else snoring loud enough to fell a mastodon.
From above the grandfather clock, Persephone’s twin flaming emeralds took it all in before she issued forth with a fang-framed yawn. The incorrigible Bengal blinked languidly and curled herself into a sleep ball. No poof! No vanishing act. Persephone was part of this earthly realm – at least as much as any living cat was.
Margaret took her cue and went to bed but got little sleep.
***
Daylight brought some relief. The others were gone. Betty the Bassett had finished her moonlight serenade and dissipated like morning dew, leaving only the lingering scent of dog farts. Tallulah offered a brief and strangely attenuated sermon against “reckless errands of the heart” before she too slid between here and there. The only sign of Lord Hawley was a heap of thoroughly denuded chicken bones on the kitchen tiles.
They would stay gone, she knew, until the twilight called them back. Well, most of them were gone. Not Okka of Spotted Deer Valley. Okka basked in the summer sun in his Barcalounger, his bearskins coordinating nicely with the soft leather. The uncanny rules eluded Margaret. Maybe his persistence of being had something to do with the frost stubbornly clinging to his hair and beard and the bluish cast of his skin. Okka lacked the elocution to relate his life story, but she imagined his physical body was stuck in a glacier somewhere, forever poised between life and death. This allowed his non-corporeal self to remain in daylight. Or so she imagined. Being a block of ice must get boring. Hang on. Global warming is your friend.
In any case, her grimiest guest remained incurious about either this brave new world or the people in it. He looked out the bay window, occasionally grunting at passing cars. He’d lost interest in them after he speared one only to be confronted by a driver who threatened to call the cops. Okka had stomped back inside while Henry paid the man off.
Margaret tried to teach Okka some of the familiar gadgets. The laptop fascinated him at first with its colors and sounds, but he quickly tired of the distraction and instead set to work lacing old chicken bones into necklaces. They went well with cheap gold earrings.
Henry was out most days. She knew – because she had checked his location on her phone – that he kept returning to the Shoppe of Wonderments. They were retired. They should be traveling or visiting the grandkids, pretending their parents wanted them there. Instead, Henry had become fixated on this glorified head shop.
She couldn’t figure him out anymore. What rattled around inside the skull of a seventy-year-old man?
“Hank, it’s almost sundown. Were you planning to leave me alone with your guests?” she cried as he walked in the door. Her tone surprised even her. When had she become so shrill? She sounded like The Wicked Witch of the West. I’ll get you, my hubby. And yer little ghost dogs, too! Ahahahaaa.
He put his keys on the sideboard and looked at his feet. “I needed to ask the lady” the crone “some questions.”
“You’ve been back there almost every day since this whole mess started. What is it you’re asking? I told you last night, you are NOT to use that stupid piece of wood to call any more spirits back to our side of the Great Divide. Do you understand me? Don’t make me go down there myself and give that old bat a piece of my mind. Did you even ask her how to send this bunch back?”
He looked wilted, damaged, crushed, old. Where was the young man she’d met on vacation in Hilton Head? Where was the man with the gorgeous sad eyes, the nervous laugh, and the adorable beer belly? Where was the giddy spontaneity? Who traded that fun for this shadow existence? It wasn’t me. I’m not the one who got old and cranky and dissatisfied with life.
The difference between dusk and night is an imperceptible note to humans, who have long since ceased to use their fine senses. Bugs, birds, and beasts all sensed the moment of nightfall. Persephone took up her post on the ramparts of Aunt Nedda’s China cabinet as the air began to cool and shimmer.
“I am famished,” announced the suddenly semi-solid Lord Hawley, beaming a greasy smile and consoling his robust paunch. The pewter buttons strained against the fly of his breeches, threatening to fire off at lethal velocity, and his calves betrayed a taut warning of gout.
The smokey shape of Oliver hauled tail through the living room, followed closely by Betty who was up for rough play.
Okka grunted a greeting, proudly holding up a newly-completed necklace.
Tallulah flitted between dimensions in shades of gray that matched the bleakness of her spirit. “There is sin in this house,” she lamented in tone both soft and humorless.
“Don’t talk to me about sin, Missy. You and Lord Hawley woke me up twice between four a.m. and dawn. I found cracks in my ceiling plaster. Do I want to go inspect the attic for a discarded girdle?”
Obviously flummoxed, Tallulah turned white as a sheet.
Lord Hawley rocked on his heels. “A mere dalliance.”
“Twice!” Margaret insisted.
Tallulah popped out.
“Indeed. Two dalliances. The flesh – urm, as it were – is weak, madam.”
“Is that everyone?” Margaret asked her husband through lips pressed white.
All at once, a pipe organ heaved a gothic blast. It wasn’t coming from anywhere but rather from everywhere. The walls themselves had come to life. The melody emanating from amidst the home’s studs, nails, dust, rat turds, and plaster boards was not actually Bach’s Toccata in D minor. For all its penetrating bombast, however, it might damn well have been. The hurricane lanterns on the mantle rattled, and Persephone leaped from Aunt Nedda’s cabinet. All anyone saw was a furpedo shooting under the sofa.
Okka bobbed his wooly head in time with the music.
Margaret had had enough. Simply. Plainly. Utterly. She had had her fill.
“Tollie, get your prissy ectoplasmic ass back here now!”
Tallulah half-materialized in the room, standing close to a white patch of wall hoping to blend in.
“Listen up. 3780 Kill Beaver Hill is my home, not some… Supernatural Super 8. Let me be clear. You are not welcome to stay forever.”
Tallulah hissed, “Then… he should not have summoned us.” Looking over the tops of her cats-eye glasses, she aimed a bony J’accuse finger at Henry, who stood like an adolescent boy caught with a dirty magazine.
“Peggie, you don’t understand,” Henry tried.
“No excuses. I want them gone… now!” The invisible organist pressed his fingers hard on his keyboard. “That includes the Phantom of the Opera… and the dogs too.” She kind of wanted Oliver to stay but decided not to split her resolve. Gone meant gone.
“My fair maid, I fear you labor under a misapprehension. We cannot leave. We are all of us constrained to this dwelling. Should we wander more than a few steps from your threshold, we would be snapped back inside by forces infernal or angelic, I know not which, but irresistible I assure you.”
Margaret felt the heat behind her eyes. She would not hear excuses. It had been weeks since she’d had a good night’s rest and she was tired of losing out on her favorite leftovers from Maggiano’s. She composed herself, took a deep breath, and pronounced her will. “If you do not depart forevermore, I will call a priest and –”
“No!” Henry interrupted.
“Show compassion for this wretched spirit who stands before you,” Lord Hawley pleaded. “Exorcism won’t work. I’m strictly Church of England, so you’d need permission from a bishop. Paperwork. Confounded paperwork.”
“I’m Jewish,” Tallulah chimed in. “I don’t think the dogs or the musician are Catholic either. Okka, I dunno, strikes me as Unitarian.”
“Even if you did find some spell to cast them out, they’d wander forever,” Henry added with a tinge of both horror and an odd sadness that caught Margaret off her guard.
“Do not fate us in such grim manner, I beseech you, dear madam. This was not any of our doing. It was Henry. He should have been more careful in his seekings. The damsel is a wily one and uncommonly strong. She thumped me soundly. Your husband bore down on us with his blinding tunnel of light again and again. In her stead, she tossed each of us, one after the other, into Henry’s embrace.”
Margaret blinked twice. Then again. “She?” Margaret looked around at each of her guests and thought back. The dogs had appeared on the first night. Henry had explained that he’d found a portal between worlds, and when he opened it, Ollie had trundled through with Betty on his heels.
A few nights later, he admitted that the amulet was the key to this portal. He promised never to use it again, but sure enough, Lord Gideon Hawley IV of Uxleyshire, Esq. popped into their home larger than life.
Okka was next, followed not many nights after by the appallingly bland and judgmental Tallulah Cockburn.
Now an unseen organist. And she hated organ music.
“She?” Margaret repeated. “Who is she?”
“I don’t really know her. We barely exchange names over there,” Tallulah explained.
“And her name is?”
“Polly,” Tallulah answered.
Lord Hawley concurred, “Polly.”
As best he could push it past his large Cro-Magnon teeth, Okka echoed, “Bah-yee.”
Somewhere, two organ notes vaguely described the name, while twin aw-ee’s floated in from another room along with a wisp of canine flatus.
Lord Hawley looked past Margaret to Henry. “Sorry, old fellow, but as the kids say, the jig is up. You gave it your best go, but the lady has moved on.”
Margaret closed her eyes and collected herself once more. She counted to ten. Then twenty. She would not get angry. Would not be shrill. She would be the very essence of patience and open-mindedness. “Hank, who is Polly? Or… who was Polly?”
She turned to her husband but found their front door open to reveal the deepening purple outside.
***
Via stilted texts, Margaret and Henry agreed to a brief cooling off period. It was Saturday evening when he returned to the house.
“I’m sorry.”
It didn’t matter which of them said it. The words hung there, a masterwork of minimalist contrition.
“It’s almost dark,” he said, looking around the living room expectantly but finding only Persephone, curled up in the Barcalounger.
“No matter. They’re not coming tonight or any night.”
Margaret related her actions of the past few days, how she’d gone to Little Five Points and tracked down the crone. The lady was not nearly as awful as the image Margaret had pictured. She was, in fact, a bit younger than Margaret’s sixty-two years. And she was reasonable. Margaret presented Henry’s amulet and explained the situation as best she understood things, though parts of the netherworld remained as clouded and obscured to her as her husband’s past.
The afternoon was one part mysticism to which they added three parts Chardonnay to provide buoyancy for the girl talk. Men were skunks. They did things for reasons they themselves could never explain. They cherished memories, nursing them along through the decades until all truth and substance had drained out of them.
And so, on that last Saturday in July, Henry and Margaret sat in their empty home on Kill Beaver Hill.
“How much?”
“Fifty. She came over and got it done in like half-an-hour. She adopted the dogs and promised I could visit. She sent the others back from whence they came. Lord Hawley protested, but Birgit gave him the rest of your beer and a pizza from the freezer and he left smiling.”
“The lady’s name is Birgit?”
“Hank, you’re an idiot.”
He was, but there was no need to press the matter. Margaret’s heart, calloused by emptiness and abandonment, accepted its role in all this. She’d allowed them to drift apart and sent Henry on a desperate flight towards a phantom planet of old hopes. Her rival Polly was not some proverbial truck stop waitress but the persistent ghost of a ghost. Henry had loved this woman in life but lost her long ago – probably just before meeting Margaret. Oh, my sad-eyed Henry. In any case, Polly had never wanted her corner in this eternal triangle. Life and afterlife both liked their cruel jokes.
Margaret looked at the man who’d been her world for four decades and saw him as if for the first time. She let the noise in her head dim and cease, then raised her clear blue eyes to the emerging stars beyond the bay window and sent out a thought:
Be at peace, Polly.
Margaret and Henry sat in their splendidly empty, wonderfully silent home on Kill Beaver Hill and held hands. They said nothing, for nothing further needed saying. They did not try to conjure up love. They simply waited to see what would materialize.
###
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I learned a great deal about dolphins while researching Come the Eventide, my first novel. I learned that there is no doubt that dolphins are intelligent. They have language, complex social orders (Granny's in charge!) and more. Now, research suggests dolphins are among the Earth's most empathetic creatures. It's all in the gaze...
https://www.amazon.com/Come-Eventide-Chris-Riker/dp/1631834525
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He was a man of contradictions. Brilliant but mercurial, a finely educated man who loved his wine and lived to battle any and all opponents. Alexander the Great will forever be an enigma, but we do know something about the world he lived in. Take a look:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/alexander-the-great-greek-tombs-museum-aigai
If you'd like a more in-depth look inside the mind of Alexander, check out my new novel:
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I’m Kaitlyn Gelb, the first human to understand people. If you’re writing a history book, that’s not Caitlin with a c. It’s Kaitlyn, k-a-i-t-l-y-n.
Anyway, everybody knew the people, as they called themselves, didn’t come here to take over. Gah! They had traveled impossible distances instantly using their sparkly amethyst circles. They could have easily popped in and conquered us. Like before lunch. They could have ground us up and served us over chips drizzled in queso. Yummy us! But that’s not what these aliens were about – anyway, they’re vegans.
The people came by the thousands. They swarmed all over London and Tokyo and New York and Dildo, Canada and Condom, France and – you get the idea. They hit Atlanta too. I don’t think it was for our club scene or fried okra. They wanted to hang with humans. That was pretty obvious.
What no one understood was the true nature of these off-worlders or what they were looking for. They never revealed their home planet or dimension or website. The United Frikkin Nations formed a commission – seven old White dudes and one old Black lady with thirty PhDs between them – to study the people, but they didn’t figure out much.
The people tended to pair off into teams, poke around in humans’ business, then pop back to wherever they came from. Scientists could find no specific reasons for their comings or goings.
Within a few years, the people had started to lose interest in us humans. Earth was no longer a go-to destination. A few hundred still popped in annually, but the novelty had clearly worn off. Our phones were primitive. Our cars and planes were clunky. We bored them. And that worked both ways. When Pinkie attached herself to me, I barely got a bump in followers. Your bestie is a big pink thing from another world? Yawn. I’ve got royals to stalk. Later.
When I say Pinkie attached herself to me, I don’t mean attached as in leeches. The people aren’t that kind of alien either. I mean, one day she was there, with me wherever I went. No explanation. I’d wake up and she’d be in the corner of my bedroom. Private time in the bathroom? There she was. Suddenly I had a second mother, always in my business.
My height, she was fuchsia and ivory with a musky-smelling coat, soft like velour. Her eye ring, twenty or so, ran all the way around her head, if the pinto bean shape on top of her blobby body was a head. Her limbs came and went. They were dexterous pods of a sort, able to grip and even work a keypad. They were there, then the people just sucked em back in.
I called her she. I tried “they,” but Pinkie insisted, “I am not plural. Not singular.” Pinkie didn’t protest my use of “she,” but I got the sense I was off target.
In any case, Pinkie got bored with my daily routine pretty fast as well.
“Fun,” she would say in her precise and oddly accent-free voice. More a command than a question. “You need fun. I want to watch.”
Fine. I invited Darby and Janiyah to my apartment for some Gummies. They worshipped flannel and denim and were totally into each other. Not me. We were just buds. Anyway, we indulged and talked about the deeper meanings to be found in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. It was a trippy, farty night.
None of this fazed Pinkie at all. It was nice to have someone who didn’t judge. But their company didn’t satisfy her either.
“Fun,” she repeated a few nights later. Did I mention, the people don’t say much. There’s a lot of silent fuzzy blob time.
Fine. I was so bored, I pulled out a toy and showed her. “This what you want to see?”
“Yes, Kaitlyn with k y.” I would swear one red-in-red eye winked at me. Did people have a sense of humor?
So… I mean, in the name of intergalactic enlightenment and all, I gave her what she asked for. I thought we put in a fine performance, me and King Dong. Everything went swimmingly for a minute or two. Pinkie stared at me blankly with about half-a-dozen of her red-in-red eyes. Then, she slumped. I could read her a little by that point. It was her way of saying “Meh!”
***
Friday came. I returned home from my shit job at the GameStop (so much for a liberal arts degree) to find Pinkie waiting. She’d visited the store a few times, tried some of the games, but found them super easy. So, she stopped following me to work.
Anyway, it was nice to have someone to come home to. It had been a while. Pinkie was my huge cat with too many eyes.
“Fun,” she said.
I was out of tricks.
“What?”
Pinkie reached into my purse and pulled out my phone. An extra digit extended from a pod and she punched up a list of lipstick night spots south of the airport.
“We’ve been out before. You’ve met my friends. You got bored. What are you look—”
“Meet someone,” she said.
Pinkie phoned an Uber – an action that was both exotic and banal at the same time – and we were on our way.
The place she chose looked like a rat hole, and I didn’t want to get out of the car. “Be brave for one minute, then you will be all right.” A long sentence for Pinkie, the words soothed my nerves. We stepped into The Rainbow Connection.
What a difference inside. Atmospheric lighting, red tablecloths, burnished mirrors everywhere. Some gay guy was playing plinky-plunk piano music. He was the only bio-male in the room. The customers looked past fifty and wealthy, wearing enough jewelry to make Tom Shane cum in his shorts. I’ve always had a thing for older ladies. Rich older ladies. Meheheheh. Gah! Down, girl!
I could feel the heat. These chicks might be all kinds of proper in public, but they came here to get freaky. I did not fit the scene, a tatted twenty-something with a nose ring, black nail polish, and a Brandi Carlile t-shirt hiding Wookie pits. And yet… if eyes were tongues, these ladies were tasting the forbidden fruit. I was dripping.
Pinkie led me past table after thirsty table. Some of the women stared while their dates shot me hot death with their eye-guns. It felt kinda cool. I was getting more attention here than I ever did in Little Five Points. We stopped at a corner booth with one lady sitting next to – my heart jumped – a person. This one was shades of Hyacinthe and teal. She (?) sat there, scoping out the rest of the room with her midnight blue-in-blue eyes.
Meanwhile, the woman was smoking a weird black-and-gold cigarette. Her lighter was slender and made of solid gold. She left it out where anyone could snatch it and run. She was an older lady, a few extra pounds and wrinkles, nice hair, totally bangable in a sicko Pornhub mommy-thing kinda way. I was staring. She was grinning.
“Sobranie Black Russians. Want one?” She held up the box and shook a cigarette out at me. I took it, not sure what else to do, so I bent down closer to that gold lighter. “I can’t reach that far. Either have a seat or suck the Black Russian raw.” Ooh! How that sent shocks through my undies. Nice.
I sat down and slid next to her, setting down the unlit cigarette and hoping she wouldn’t notice. I hated cigarettes. Pinkie took the outside of the booth, but kept her eyes on her purple comrade. Once, I thought I caught them doing something. Pinkie’s fuzz began to stand on end, and so did Purple’s.
I had other concerns. “Kaitlyn,” I began. “That’s with a k and –”
“Of course it is, dear. You can call me Maddie as long as you call my private number, and only after six.” Well, that was an interesting flex. The people must have thought so too, since both of them quivered.
The conversation went on for a bit. I asked about her person.
“Mine’s a scientist. I think yours is just a tourist.”
“How can you tell?”
“Something in the way they look at you.” I hadn’t noticed anything in Pinkie to suggest this.
“Fine. Let’s see. Do you have a pen?”
She reached into her clutch and pulled one out. “Montblanc Meisterstuck Solitaire Blue Hour,” she announced as if I knew what that meant. It was a pen.
I took a napkin and jotted down: N = R∗ × fp × ne × fl × fi × fc × L. The napkin tore a little, but it was readable. Hurray for nerds!
Maddie eyed it and glibly said, “You finished your homework. Gold star.”
Not wanting to show off, I didn’t tell her it was Drake’s Equation. That’s the one where you try to figure out how many intelligent species exist in the Milky Way. Pinkie and Hyacinthe had already blown away Fermi, who paradoxically whined that Goku, Dr. Zoidberg, and the Vogons were ghosting us, but scientists had been unable to get the people to comment on exactly how many sentient races populated our galaxy.
I looked at Hyacinthe. “Can you solve this?”
The two people in our booth looked at one another and at us. Finally, Hyacinthe said, “At least two.”
Gah! Thanks!
Over the next half hour, I got little useful info from anyone at our table. I did learn that Maddie was wearing Malmaison Bubinga Wood Glasses by Cartier and a Vera Wong evening dress, along with all the prices, including the lighter, which turned out to be Van Cleef & Arpels. I acted suitably impressed. “Very nice, holy shit” and that kind of thing. The glasses looked silly, out of date, but that lighter was cool. As for the dress, it suited a younger figure. I pictured it on the floor of Maddie’s boudoir.
I didn’t know if the people could read my mind, but horny old ladies could. “Want to get out of here?” Maddie asked. It was an old, long-cracked code, and I was glad to hear it. She wasn’t my usual prey, but it had been way too long, so my appetite was flexible. “We could go back to my place.”
I remembered our chaperones. “With an audience?”
“Morticia and Elvira watching? Could be fun.” I liked her names for our people buddies better than the ones I’d picked.
Her place turned out to be a five-bedroom, seven-figure home on East Morningside. She won it in the divorce after sleeping with her ex-husband’s law partner who tore him to pieces in court.
“So, which to you prefer?”
With a wry smile, she answered, “One’s needle points where it will. Sometimes, I like to give mine a spin. Oh, Barry’s not bad. Better than the ex, but not nearly as giving as a good woman.” Maddie was a woman of powerful appetites herself.
That first night together was fireworks and rose petals. No, I’m lying. It was sweaty, tumbly, spankin’ good fun.
The following week, we enjoyed a romantic candlelit dinner left there by the cook, who apparently set the table and jumped out the window before I had a chance to meet him. The meal was superb, apart from the meat, which I don’t eat. The salad was superb. So was the sex.
We watched old movies together. I enjoyed “Silkwood,” at least up to where I nodded off. She gave me some of her blouses, which I wore to please her. And I shared my stash, which was fun cause I got her seriously messed up. Ha.
By romp date number five, though, things were leveling off. Maddie suggested spicing it up a little. She’d outfitted one basement room as a suburban dungeon – fur-lined cuffs, oils, candles, a whip (the people seemed to enjoy that trick), and power toys that put mine to shame. “Because the kicks just keep gettin’ harder to find,” she sang. It was something from eons ago that I didn’t recognize.
When she called me the next time, I decided to bring a cheap bottle of wine and a few personal questions.
Maddie sent an Uber for Morticia and me. I won’t lie. I felt a twinge of something at the thought that my Kia could not be seen passing through the giant wrought iron gates of her mansion. “What would the neighbors think?” That you ordered carpet cleaning. Trust me, they know.
I let it pass. I was letting a lot of things pass. Until…
“Yes, that’s right. Right now, as we speak. She’s good. Better than you, loser. She knows how to find my—”
I looked up. “Gah! Who are you talking to?”
In the glow of her phone, Maddie was grinning ear to ear. “Barry. He loves this shit.” She pressed my head back down. “I didn’t tell you to stop.” Suddenly, I was a clown performing at the old folks home. From the phone came the unmistakable groan of a man climaxing. Odd. I’d imagined my first threesome would be more fun.
When I got home that night, I asked Morticia, “Am I her doormat? Am I letting her use me?”
“Yes.”
Morticia’s bluntness struck me as unexpectedly honest… and hurtful, but in a necessary way.
“Fine. What do you suggest?”
“Kaitlyn must stand up for Kaitlyn. Be strong.”
***
The following week, I got my chance. When we got to her place, we gathered in the parlor and, right there in front of the Renoir, I invited Maddie DuBois to march with me in the Atlanta Pride Parade and rally at Piedmont Park.
“No thank you, dear.” Just that. No hesitation. No reason. Just ‘no thank you.’ ‘Dear.’ Dear, like what you say to a child while petting her head.
“What? You could an inspiration to others.” Nothing. That is, Maddie did not respond. Morticia and Elvira were swaying back and forth. I felt my anger rise. I proudly declared, “I’m LGBTQIA+.”
“Good to meet you. I’m Maddie.” A snappy comeback. That’s what our relationship was to her, a stupid sit-com? I shrugged. She went on. “Be who you are, dear. You kids always want to identify yourself by what happens in bed. There’s so much more to you.”
I wanted to say, Like six-thousand-dollar glasses. Instead, I went with “I turned left at ‘you kids.’”
Morticia and Elvira were leaning in and… vibrating? Shivering? Something.
“I’m not trying to be your mommy here.”
“You’re not trying to be anything.” Tears were welling up. Gah! Stupid tear ducts!
She didn’t have to ask “What’s that supposed to mean?” She asked it anyway, and with a strong, clear tone that was the real message: you’re bouncing off my shields.
“Why don’t we – you and I – ever get together in daylight? You always drive me here in your car, and then after ten o’clock at night. Then you send me home in an Uber.”
Tears don’t go anywhere without snot, so there was plenty of that now too. I was worked up and getting in Maddie’s face. She moved back a step, and as she did, I noticed that Morticia and Elvira had drawn close to each other. Like get-a-room close.
“I use Uber for your convenience,” Maddie said. “I don’t know what you’re complaining about. I’m paying.” She was fully composed. It really hurt to see that. Was she enjoying this? “It’s a long walk back to your shabby little apartment.”
“Shabby?” How dare she call my shabby apartment shabby! Now I was pissed. I was either going to punch Maddie or tear her clothes off. Or both. Both could be good.
The battle continued. F-bombs flew freely. Maddie even lobbed a c-grenade my way, but I caught it and threw it right back in her face where it exploded. Take that, nazi ho!
Mid-insult, she stopped. “Wait. What is that smell?”
Maddie wasn’t kidding. Her oh-so-tastefully appointed front parlor suddenly stank like the gorilla enclosure at Zoo Atlanta. It was the people in the room. They’d turned their natural musk up to eleven. And they were budding. That’s the only word I could think of. Some new form of pods were bursting randomly from their bodies. These were tendrils ending in clusters of dewy pink blossoms. They were using them to probe one another, each pink tip finding a willing hole that also seemed to appear at random. They penetrated each other with a thmf-eej-thmff sound. So much sticky, wet penetrating!
“I think they’re fucking,” I ventured timidly.
“Yes, dear,” Maddie said casually. “They’re definitely fucking.”
Elvira was the more aggressive of the two, eliciting sharp trills from Morticia that may have been cries of pain, but she in no way showed signs of wanting to stop. I mean, as far as I could tell. It was kinda gross, but wicked hot. The flurf came flying off both of them in a pink and purple lint storm. You go, girls! Gah!
Maddie and I sat on the Louis XV loveseat, smoked a joint, and watched. I mean, it’s not something that comes your way every day. The people had serious stamina. We humans eventually picked up our rather loud discussion, which encouraged a second round of hanky-panky between the people in the room. They went at it with a gusto that was… well, unearthly.
It was then that I grasped their true nature. The people were not he, she, or they. She would do in the short-term, since the people were clearly female-dominant but tapping male components as needed. All that was only the reproductive component, however. There was more to them. Damn you, Maddie! In truth, each of the people was a wandering piece of some greater whole. They weren’t broken, just incomplete. The correct nomenclature, therefore, was “one needing one.” Morticia celebrated her being, only became fully alive, by joining with another, in this case Elvira. They had come to Earth to spice things up a bit. Like other people who paired off before them, they sought stimulation, a catalyst perhaps, to seal the deal. It was their version of an aphrodisiac. Some paired people must have gotten their jollies watching human sex. For others, work, or even art did it. These two had found the road to Nastyville by watching Maddie and me fight. You’re welcome.
Around one a.m., the people concluded their coitus celestial.
Elvira said nothing. Morticia looked at me, cooed, and said, “You are stronger than you know.”
I couldn’t remember Morticia ever showing that much warmth towards me. “Thank you,” I said. “Any other advice?”
“Go back to school and get a business degree, something practical.”
Ma!
The two people (somehow) called up one of their amethyst transit rings. As they stepped through, back to wherever it was they came from, Morticia made a sound, something between wind chimes and a baby duck snoring.
“She’s giggling,” Maddie observed wryly, “at us.”
“I guess they got what they wanted,” I said.
“Indeed,” Maddie agreed, lighting one of her black-and-gold cigarettes. “They better give us five stars.” She blew out an elegant stream of cancer. I really hated the stink of those things.
After I had calmed down, I took stock of the situation. Science be damned, we’d learned what the UN’s smarty-pants commission couldn’t: people got their space rocks off watching us have fun. Loud, hurtful fun. The kind that left permanent scars. The kind everyone wore.
Maddie and I looked at each other sheepishly. We tried to laugh, but it didn’t happen. We talked a little, but kept getting angry all over again. Finally, I punched up an Uber and went home.
My apartment stood empty. Shabby and empty.
***
It has become obvious Maddie and I are never going to be a couple. These days, we get together once in a while for playtime. I don’t like her, but I want her… know what I mean? Just to keep myself grounded, I snatched her gold lighter and stuck it in my purse. I could return it, but I won’t.
So, that’s where things are now. A new world every day. Gah!
Very smart people have argued for nearly a century about how many intelligent races might be out there in the stars. Is it thousands or just a few? No one knows. Do humans even count?
I know this: I have met a race from another world. They call themselves people, and I’m the only one who knows who the people really are. They’re the same as us. They’re jerks.
###
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21 years ago this month, I cradle-robbed a 30-something beauty and dragged her to the courthouse. It wasn't exactly the wedding ceremony a woman dreams of. As we waited in the corridor, bailiffs led guys past us in shackles. The judge was late, and half in the bag. Well, we got the marrying done, but I promised Ping I'd get her to a real church for a real ceremony, which I did the following April. It's been a few years since then, so it's really about time I wrote her a love song, don't you think?
PING
The new book, it didn’t sell.
The car’s transmission is shot to hell.
The check bounced ten miles high!
And your mama wishes… you’d picked that lawyer guy.
Our son lives at home. He’s twenty-two.
What’s this weary man to do
with fading dreams and a pile of debt?
Haven’t hit the Lotto yet.
And while we’re waitin’ for some day…
Your love feels warm here inside.
And if it takes us a lifetime
Girl, here’s one thing for sure: I’m in love with my bride.
The years advance, my hair retreats.
Here’s one more snack for my fat old seat.
Makes no sense. It’s such a crime.
I just get older, but you look fine.
It all goes on.
One day, and then two.
The tears and the laughs flow easy
When I share ‘em with you.
And while we’re waitin’ for some day…
Your love feels warm here inside.
And if it takes us a lifetime
Girl, here’s one thing for sure: I’m in love with my bride.
Babe, I’ve stopped waitin’ for some day…
Your love feels warm here inside.
I thank God for this lifetime
Cause girl, one thing is for sure: I’m in love with my bride.
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In case you're wondering, Ping is the inspiration for the long-suffering Jing in Zebulon Angell and the Shadow Army.
https://www.amazon.com/Zebulon-Angell-Shadow-Chris-Riker/dp/1637107056
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I began my debut novel, Come the Eventide thinking it was a short story. Well, the dolphins and octopodes told me I had more work to do. A lot more. Got it done, but I've never forgotten the exciting feeling of being told off by dolphins. Seems like I'm not the only one. BTW, this satire is NSFW, unless you work in an aquarium where the dolphins are cussin' up a storm about the humans.
Wanna know what the dolphins are really up to? I just happen to have the perfect book for you. Come the Eventide. There's a FREE sample on this webpage. You can even get this sucker FREE on Kindle, or get it in paperback:
https://www.amazon.com/Come-Eventide-Chris-Riker/dp/1631834525/
Muriel is laughing at me in this picture:
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