Tag Archives: fantasy

The Easter Jackalope

As a rookie paranormal researcher, I knew better than to hog the campfire. Even if my orthodontist practice paid for all of our gear. My place was to suck my hydration tube and listen.

Jameson raised a flashlight to his chin. “I was driving down Highway 11 when I saw a rack of antlers in the middle of the road.”

Jameson cleared roadkill for a living. He’d noticed a spike in calls around the Kettle Moraine State Forest, right where we’d pitched our tents.

“The buck was so big, I had to use a winch to get him in the truck. Then had to shift his antlers so they couldn’t hurt the other drivers. Satisfied, I hopped back in, turned the ignition, and prepared to turn. That’s when my cab shook. I heard a sharp screeching, like nails on a chalkboard, followed by a gong, and a hard wet splash. I reached for my shotgun, stepped out of my pickup, and gave it a wide berth. The antlers were missing. Something took the deer. Something powerful enough rip my tailgate right off. I cast my spotlight on the road and found a trail of blood leading toward the woods.”

Jameson’s shoulders rose as he took a big theatrical breath. “That’s when I saw it. First the glowing green eyes, then the muzzle dripping with viscera, and the claws as long sickles.”

Jameson tilted his head back as if he could see it now. “He stood as tall as a grizzly, with the hind legs of a wolf. He raised his snout in my direction. One apex predator sensing another. Long ropes of slobber streaked through his teeth. He stood on one leg, kicked the other out into the road, and urinated all over the carcass. I damn near pissed myself, thinking, ‘That’s one way to tag a kill.’”

Jameson made a cocking motion. “I fired a single round. The trees shook, the nighthawks fluttered, and the squirrels scattered, but the creature didn’t flinch. I aimed both barrels in his direction. He locked his jaws and dragged the deer into the dark. I backed all the way up into the driver’s seat, locked my doors, and peeled the hell out of there.”

Jameson jerked an imaginary wheel and leaned back on his log.

“I got home, booted up my laptop, and opened a dozen tabs. It turns out 100s of people have seen this thing, from the 1930s until now. They call it the Beast of Bray Road.”

“You didn’t see the Beast of Bray Road.” Ryan said with a mocking sing-song tone.

Jameson narrowed his gaze at the young web developer, who had no clue of the trouble he’d stepped in. “I saw what I saw.”

Ryan’s smile widened. “No, you saw the Beast of Highway 11.”

We all had a good laugh. I wanted to ask if the creature left foot prints, if he took photos of the blood trail, or the claw marks on his truck, but I knew better than to question Jameson’s recollection, especially since I’d yet to have an encounter of my own.

We spent the weekend combing through the woods, but we didn’t find anything. No wolves. No bears. No wolves the size of bears. Just deer, the last thing any of us were hunting.

We trekked back to the lot, collecting our cameras as we went. I’d sprung for thermal imaging sensors and was eager to see what they picked up. Ryan asked where we should screen the footage. I mentioned that my home theater had a wet bar and hosting duties fell to me. I never imagined that that decision would bring the paranormal to my front door.

Image by Drew Chial

Eager to impress, I strung a CRYPTID COALITION banner across my garage door. With my freak flag high, I turned the rest of my home into a monster museum. Drivers were welcomed by a 12-foot skeleton dressed like the Flatwoods Monster, with a spade-shaped hood, bright red eyes, and long flowing skirt. After they parked, they might just spot the gray alien lawn ornaments. Almond eyes peeked out from the tree, through Lauren’s lilacs, and the railing for the deck.

Once inside, guests were encouraged to follow the Bigfoot prints. The tracks wound through cases of roadside collectables: Fresno Nightcrawler travel tumblers. Goat Man coffee blends. Enfield Horror bottle openers. Dover Demon Drink Koozies. Lizard Man License plates. Skunk Ape Scorch Sauce.

If our passions weren’t clear, the family photos made them obvious. Here we were touring the cemeteries in Salam Massachusetts. Here we were outside the UFO museum in Roswell New Mexico. Here we were honeymooning at the Stanley Hotel.

Above the frames, hung a sculpture of the Loch Ness monster. Its nylon neck directed guests into the home theater. This was no mere TV stand. This was an actual theater, with a projection screen, cinema seating, and Dolby surround sound. My guests settled in while the theme from Unsolved Mysteries set the tone. I couldn’t help but smile, watching them marvel at the backlit stencils of shadow people, at the ceiling cove of UFOs, at Lauren’s crocheted cryptids.

The guests hung their jackets and I lost count of I WANT TO BELIEVE patches. These were long-haired Gen Xers, rocking ironic flat earth t-shirts. These were bearded millennials, mustaches waxed into curls. These were bike mechanics, tattoo artists, and web developers, brought together by a singular passion.

They were drawn to the SKINWALKER BREWERS sign behind the bar. They took turns complimenting me on my red smoking jackets, just like the one worn by like Lloyd the bartender in The Shining. I set out the cocktail menu. The drinks all had names like: The Wendigo Whiskey Sour, Yeti’s Frosty Martini, and Nessie’s Nightcap.

Stumper watched from the top shelf. Stumper was a stuffed rabbit with antlers. An original Herrick’s brothers’ Jackalope. A classic piece of chimera taxidermy. Stumper tracked my wife, Lauren, as she worked the room.

Lauren offered newcomers Moth Man antennae, directed them to the Sasquatch selfie station, and regaled them with her terrible jokes.

“Why did the El Chupacabra refuse to feed on Greyson? Because even Chupacabra doesn’t suck that hard.”

Laughter filled the room, until someone saw a bob of red hair. Anette, the skeptic, threw her jacket over Ryan’s arm. Ryan stood a head taller than her; a fact made more apparent by the trench coat he wore. We told him it made him look like David Duchovny, so he never took it off. We never told him we thought he was only with Anette because she bore a passing resemblance to Gillian Anderson.

It seemed only fitting, The X-Files theme came on.

Lauren offered Ryan a cryptid cookie, but his bitter half would have none of it. Anette preferred to dine on a cigarette.

Panicked, Lauren flashed her palms. “I need the keys for the case with the Hoop Snake ashtray.”

I fumbled through the hooks beneath the counter. When I emerged, a strange woman had entered the room.

She wore a bright red jacket made for a jaunt in the brush, with ample pouches and long self-belt. When she hung it up, she revealed the rest of her getup. You know that khaki outfit elephant hunters used to wear? Palette swap that with scarlet. Tall riding boots. Flared hip breeches. Travel vest full of pockets. A shirt with a high mandarin collar. A cravat around her neck. She looked like a firefighter on safari.

All eyes were on her, but her eyes were on me and those pale blue flames lit up when they saw my countertop.

“You have a smoker?” She pointed to the stainless-steel contraption with nary a fingerprint on it.

“Sure, do ma’am.” I raised the smoke gun, like a marshal in an old western.

“The keys, the keys.” Lauren shouted.

I threw them without looking.

The woman in red tapped her long-armored ring to her lips. “Do you know how to make a dragon’s breath cocktail?”

My fingers tapped the menu. “We call it the Jersey Devil’s Inferno.”

“I’ll have one of those.” She winked.

No one told me to buy a smoker, nor did they ask if I had elderflower liqueur, but somehow, I knew I needed them tonight. Carl Jung called this synchronicity. When two unrelated events shared a profound connection. I had a feeling synchronicity followed this woman everywhere she went.

I set a glass on the counter, tilted it so, and ran the tube in. It fogged over as I shook the ice. By the time I’d stirred the ingredients, the smoke had become a storm. The woman dug through her vest. When she looked up, she found a snifter full of fire. She took it gladly and set a gold coin upon the counter.

The theme from Stranger Things boomed over the speakers.

“They’re playing my song.” The woman raised her glass.

My eyes sparkled, thinking she’d given me a Bitcoin. On closer inspection, I found a crude rendering of a king, sword and shield in hand, no key number, just a Latin circumscription. Still, I knocked on the counter to be polite.

Lauren, materialized beside me. “Who’s the lion tamer?”

“Beats the hell out of me.”

Image by Drew Chial

The screenings went well. Well enough for infrared pixels stretched across a big screen. Each researcher presented their movement events and we debated if they were proof of anything.

Greyson swore he saw a snout and a pair of wolf ears. We paused, drew an outline with a laser pointer, and we all concurred. Then we tracked the subject as it dashed across the screen. It vanished before reaching the end.

Jameson walked down the aisle so he could cast a shadow. “Do you see that? It’s walking on its toes.”

“It’s call a digitigrade stance.” Anette interjected.

“Digit grade.” Jameson nodded, “Which is why its heel is here, its knee is here, and its tail is there.”

“Where’s the rest of him?” Anette stated the obvious.

“Where indeed?” Jameson drew a straight line down the center of the screen. Right where the subject disappeared.

Paranormal researchers have long suspected why some creatures prove more ellusive than others. It’s the reason why the Hopkinsville Goblins disappeared when they were shot, why they never found a freshwater plesiosaur, and why bigfoot prints never lead to its den.

Jameson snapped. “Spiritual beings have the ability to slip between realities. Trail cameras can only get us so far. We need to follow the synchronicities.”

Synchronicity led my attention back to the woman in red, sitting alone, rolling a coin across her knuckles.

“Synchronicities?” Anette crossed her arms.

“Strange coincidences.” The lights in Jameson’s eyes sparked. “I see a wolf man on the side of the road. My wife hears howling in her dreams. Two random events connected by forces we’ve yet to understand.”

Anette waved her cigarette. “Or your wife heard a coyote and her subconscious picked up on it.”

Jameson pointed to Anette like her contradiction confirmed his suspicions. “We need to document our experiences, out there and in our lives. The answers are in our collective unconscious. We figure out how they’re linked and we can catch one of these things.”

“I caught one.” The strange woman pointed her armored ring to the screen. “Not that one, but I caught a cryptid.”

Now it was Jameson’s turn to cross his arms. “And how exactly did you manage that?”

“With a magical artifact.”

That got a laugh, but the strange woman didn’t flinch.

“Who are you?” Jameson couldn’t help but ask.

The woman leaned over the edge of her seat. “One should never give their name freely,” Her brow lowered into the shadows. “It gives people power over you.”

Jameson froze. Anette turned with her eyes wide and her smile agape. Lauren, looked to me like I should do something.

Then the woman broke into a laugh. “My name is Mahthildis.” She waved her armored ring around the room. “I heard about this online. Figured it might be a good place to share my experience.”

Satisfied, Jameson yielded the floor to her.

Mahthildis smoothed her pockets, stepped into the light, and launched into a lecture. “To catch a cryptid, first you must weaken it, but you can’t do that with traps or buckshot.” She waved her hand over the subject on screen. “They’re spiritual beings. You have to target their lifeforce. To do that you need something elemental.” She drew a star with her armored ring. “Air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. The trick is to find which elements your cryptid is strong in and which they’re sensitive too.”

“Like Pokémon?” Ryan interjected.

Mahthildis tilted her ear. “Like what?”

“Pokémon. You know, Mewtwo, Charizard, Jigglypuff?”

Mahthildis’s face went flush. “Are these aquatic or terrestrial animals?”

“They’re an international phenomenon.” Ryan held the weight of the franchise in his hands. “Video games, deck builders, an animated series. Detective Pikachu? Sword and Shield? Pokémon Go?”

Mahthildis stared off into the middle distance.

“You know.” Ryan sang the theme. “Pokémon! Gotta cach ‘em all?”

Mahthildis shook her head. “Do you want to be a cryptid catcher, because I’m the best there ever was?”

Ryan tented his fingers. “Sure, please, enlighten me.”

Mahthildis drew her phone, tapped the screen, and a headline appeared behind her.

MIRACULOUS ESCAPE: SCOUTS OUTRUN INFERNO
The photo featured a raging wildfire.

I pointed to the projector. “How did you…?”

Mahthildis showed her screen. “I have the same app as you.”

Before I could ask how she managed to pair it over my secured network, she shifted my attention to the caption:

THE SCOUTS CLAIM THE FIRE WAS STARTED BY A CREATURE.

“A troop of scouts saw something near a cave in Hot Springs, South Dakota.”They said it had long ears, and longer antlers, and that it stood on its hind legs, like a polar bear. Some said it hissed, others said it growled. Some claimed it didn’t see them, while others said it gave them the side eye. The one thing they all agreed on was that it didn’t walk, it hopped, straight through the ponderosa pines, leaving a trail of embers in its wake.

The scouts stood around debating what they’d scene, while something crackled in the underbrush. They followed the sound only find an ominous glow from the tree line. The forest had caught fire. Soon the sky turned black. The scout leader scanned the canopy, noted the way the smoke was leaning, and took his troop in the opposite direction.

They ran downhill, found a trail, and followed it to the road. The inferno caught up with them, tipping trees in their direction, filling up their little lungs. A long-haul trucker found the scouts face down in the middle of the road, breathing in the pavement. Needless to say, they all earned their Survival Badge that day.

The fire claimed 500 acres of wildlife before officials could snuff it out. No one else saw the creature, but I wanted to pick through the area for clues. So, I dusted off my pith helmet and went on a hunt.

The location didn’t line up with anything in the Wind Cave system. At least, nothing charted. So, I cross referenced the road map with NASA’s Earth Data Search Portal, and discovered a cavern. A cavern that was smack dab in the middle of the closure area. I’d have to deal with fences, park rangers, and a fleet of drones.

The bolt cutters were easy to procure, but the drone jammer provded difficult. My counter surveillance specialist had gone missing, which left me to find a creative solution. I procured a drone spotter, a transmitter, and a battery. The problem? I couldn’t hold all three at once. I needed to aim the antenna, see through the eyepiece, and fire. I scrolled through thumbnail after thumbnail of hunting rifles, but they were too heavy, too narrow, too trackable.

I’d all but given up, when something occurred to me. I didn’t need a gun. I needed something shaped like a gun. That’s when I discovered the Super Scope, a Nintendo peripheral built like a bazooka. This toy, with its big orange aperture, made the ideal housing for my drone disruptor.

That night, I parked along the closure area, popped my trunk, and aimed my creation at the constellations. The shoulder mount helped with the weight and the firing button made it feel like a video game. Spot a flashing light, tap the trigger. Spot a quadcopter, tap the trigger. Spot a star that wasn’t supposed to be there, trigger. The drones didn’t stand a chance.

Now, all I had to worry about were falling trees, landslides, and ashpits.

I arrived at the cavern covered in bruises, scratches, and soot. After a moment to shake my hair out, I strapped on a harness, secured a descent line, and switched on a headlamp. Satellite images had prepared me for a vertical shaft, but they hadn’t prepared me for the 300-foot drop. The cavern opened into a pit, a circular silo of sedimentary rock. The squeak of my rappel rack was soon overtaken by the heft of my breathing.

As I neared the bottom, a strange mist whirled around my ankles. A blanket of fog covered the floor, opening only for the eggs poking through its surface.

Image by Drew Chial

“Eggs?” Ryan raised his hand. “Like the face huggers in Aliens?”

Mahthildis waved that notion away. “These were avian embryos. What was odd was how many there were.”

Image by Drew Chial

They came in all shapes and sizes. Some as small as my thumb. Some as big as my fist. Some with rust brown splotches others with bright purple speckles. Some teal. Some white. But there were no signs of a nest. No momma birds to care for them. Unlatching myself from the dive line, I tiptoed toward the wall.

Crack. Crunch. Splorch. Yolk sprayed from under my boot heel.

Something shuddered. I’d tripped its organic alarm system and we were both in for a rude awakening. I cast my beam in its direction and that’s when I saw the antlers, great racks of bone, wider than my open arms. Between them, stood a pair of ears as tall as pope hats.

The creature peeled himself from a bed of leaves. His thick meaty arms pushed off the floor and he stood on his hindlegs just like a polar bear. I panned my beam up his cotton tail, his rocky spine, and broad shoulders. The creature had the body of a giant, the horns of a deer, and the face of a jack rabbit. This was the Easter Jackalope, a fire-type cryptid, with a fondness for eggs.

The Jackalope turned his head and looked on me with an eye as red as Hell itself. Then he spun around, leapt up, and dug into the rockface. He climbed partway up the shaft before shifting sideways, circling the wall with the greatest of ease. His antlers glowed as he gained momentum and sparks trailed behind them. It didn’t take long for the horns to ignite, for the shaft to turn orange, and for the air to fill with cinders.

I’d fallen into a ring of fire.

The Jackalope didn’t need to take me on. He just needed to burn up all the oxygen.

Image by Drew Chial

“Hold up.” Annette called a time out. “Rabbits don’t grow antlers. They grow tumors that look like antlers. It’s called the Shope papilloma virus. It’s common and there’s nothing magical about it.” Annette waved her secondhand smoke toward the front of the room. “But what you’re describing sounds like a man in a costume.”

Mahthildis cocked her hip. “Then why did he react to my elemental attack?”

Image by Drew Chial

Unbeknownst to the Jackalope, I came bearing relics, objects of power, made all the more powerful by the creatures inside them. Some call them Primordial Spheres, others call them Cosmic Cradles, but I’ve always known them as the Orbs of Blood and Bone.

With these orbs, anyone can catch a cryptid. All you have to do is find them when they’re young, strengthen them with runes, and train them in your war room. They’ll present their elemental abilities and you can log them in your bestiary.

The Easter Jackalope was strong with fire, so I needed a cryptid who could stomp him out. I reached into my pocket and filled my fist. My thumb ran over the cold slick surface until it found the opening mechanism. Then I threw my orb across the room.

Image by Drew Chial

Ryan raised his hand again.

“What?” Mahthildis said, with her arm outstretched as if to throw a pitch.

Ryan pointed to her vest. “Your bestiary, does it fit into your pocket?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the Orb of Blood and Bone, is it red and white?”

“Of course, it is.”

“So, you catch monsters, evolve them with stones, and train them in a gym?”

“Correct.”

“You’re a Pokémon trainer.”

Mahthildis curled her fingers in frustration. “I have never heard that word before tonight.”

Ryan spun around, checking to see if anyone else saw through the hoax this strange woman was putting on.

Jameson pointed down in front. “She’s just getting to the good part.”

Annette tugged Ryan to his seat, rolling her eyes as if to say, “Let the baby have her bottle.”

“As I was saying.” Mahthildis raised her leg and cocked her arm back.

Image by Drew Chial

“Mothman, I choose you!”

I threw the first orb. It burst open and a pillar of light shot up the cavern. The mist washed over a long prone figure. He might’ve looked like a man in a coat, had it not been for the antennae unrolling from his forehead. His feathery feelers shot up, sensing the thinning of the air. Mothman rose to his knees. His long leather skirt spread open and formed into wings, revealing the intricate details of his slick exoskeleton. He turned and cast a hundred little lenses in my direction.

I pointed to the ring of fire. “Mothman, use Indrid Cold!”

Mothman cast a skyward claw, thrust his pinions, and sprang up. Each flap of his wings sounded like a great sail unfurling. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. Frost formed as they gained momentum. A vortex of snowflakes swirled before him. Mothman flapped his wings faster until they blurred, like a human hummingbird. Then he unleashed a blizzard.

The Jackalope kept right on running, only to slide upon the ice, smack into the rock face, and ricochet. He bounced off the wall, leapt at the Mothman, and used Hot Poker on him. The Mothman’s exoskeleton shielded his organs, but the antlers cut straight through his wings. He came spiraling down, crashing in a wave of egg yolks.

I pointed to the Jackalope galloping in my direction. “Mothman, use Prophecy of Doom!”

But the Mothman didn’t answer my command. He didn’t so much as twitch.

The Jackalope lowered its horns to use Hot Poker on me. I rolled out of the way, in a fairly graceful motion, apart from the yolks running down my arms.

I threw a second orb. “El Chupacabra, I choose you.”

The Jackalope shielded its eyes.

A fin rose through the mist, followed by cheek pouches, and a line of dorsal spines. Spikes grew from its arms and claws extended from its hands. Scales stretched over wide jutting hips. El Chupacabra threw his head back and flicked his tongue. It stuck out as long as a windsock.

Image by Drew Chial

“Hold up.” Annette exhaled as she waved out another match. “They found a Chupacabra. It wasn’t reptilian. It was canine, like a coyote, but with mites. It fed on livestock, because it was too sick to hunt.”

“That’s the Mexican Chupacabra.” Mahthildis tapped her lip. “I’m talking about the Puerto Rican one.”

Ryan chimed in. “Didn’t the sole witness base her description off the alien from Species?”

Mahthildis extended her armored ring to Ryan and Annette. “You two watch too many movies.”

image by Drew Chial

Now, El Chupacabra’s vision is based on movement, so I had to grab him by the membranes and steer him in the right direction. The Jackalope rested its body on the balls of its feet, a runner crouching behind the starting line.

I pointed. “El Chupacabra, use Paralytic Mist!”

El Chupacabra hunched over, puffed his cheeks, and sprayed a fountain of sludge. The Jackalope used Accelerant Sprint.

The spray ignited. Flame arced over the cavern and went right back down the reptile’s throat.

Bewildered, El Chupacabra staggered around. He reached out for his mother. I leapt to his side only to fall back. Something rumbled inside his maw. His cheeks ballooned out. The pouches shifted from green to orange. He tried to swallow it, but his ribcage glowed red. Soon he was just a fireball with legs. Then just legs. Then they split apart.

I caught the antlers before they could run through my chest. The Jackalope craned his neck, lifted me off my feet, and used Deep Impact. We turned into a comet hurtling toward the wall. I kicked my boots out and found myself pressed between a rock and a hard place. The Jackalope lumbered forward. My biceps buckled and my calves began to cave. Then an orb fell from my pocket and rolled between his legs. A shell got caught beneath its opening mechanism.

I peered into the Jackalope’s blood thirsty eyes. “Let’s fucking do this.”

The shaft filled with light and the Jackalope fell back. Freed from his embrace, I scampered along the cavern.

“Sasquatch, I choose you!”

The earth trembled, the eggs rolled, and pebbles rained down all around. An enormous primate rose through the mist as if he were walking up a staircase. Boom. Boom. Boom. His every stride a treefall. His every step a thunderclap. His head was as big as my vest. His hands were as wide as my belt. And his feet were as long as my boots were tall. Wind rippled up his chestnut coat, over his broad shoulders, and his ash gray beard. All hail the King of Earth and Stone.

Sasquatch saw the remains of his fallen brethren and thumped his chest. His hurt reverberated throughout the cavern. He looked on me with amber eyes, eyes tinged with tears and I felt but a fraction of his pain.

The Jackalope’s antlers fizzled. He knelt down as if to draw power from the earth’s core. Soon his entire skeleton started glowing. Orange, then white, then blue. His whiskers fell flat against his face. Smoke billowed from its ears. I knew one name for the move he was preparing: Massive Mushroom Cloud.

I huffed in the Jackalope’s general direction. “Sasquatch, smash.”

Sasquatch used Seismic Shakedown by pounding the ground.

A chasm formed beneath the Jackalope, breaking his connection from the power he was drawing on. Desperate, the Jackalope thrust his antlers into the darkness. Something erupted beneath our feet. The air grew thick, wavey, and hot. The shaft filled with the stench of sulfur and the chasm filled with molten rock. The Jackalope had used Lava Landside. Now magma bubbled through the cracks.

I hugged the wall, but Sasquatch couldn’t step away in time. His feet were too big. Flames shot through his toes, the pads sizzled, and the fur flared. A great howl echoed up the walls, spooking owls for miles around.

Sasquatch hopped back and forth, but his bunions had blistered over. They popped open and the fluid went up like bacon grease. He fell forward but he caught himself, before he could belly-flop. He pressed his knuckles to the cavern floor and thrust his feet into the air. His biceps bulged, and the veins showed through the fur. He wheezed through his new center of gravity. Then he spun around to face his enemy.

Sasquatch handstand-walked in the Jackalope’s direction. He was going to get a hit in or die trying.

“Sasquatch, use Nature’s Fury!”

Sasquatch pawed the ground to twist himself around, bending his legs in opposite directions until he’d worked up some momentum. Then he left his head to spin, a break-dancer bent on destruction. Sasquatch twirled around and around, drawing mist into his cyclonic wind. Egg yolks painted a ring around him. Sasquatch’s wrath swirled up the shaft, drawing in long blades of grass. The strength of his tornado made it harder and harder to hug the wall.

The Jackalope tried to run around the shaft, to draw a ring a of fire in the opposite direction, but the funnel drew him in.

I had one orb left, an orb with nothing in it. Nothing but a gyroscopic propulsion system. I reached into my pocket and slid my hand into a Power Glove, another Nintendo peripheral I’d repurposed. This one served as a remote control. A function that proved crucial to navigate the lava flow.

I bowled the orb, raised the glove, and steered it through the egg shells. A fountain of lava sprayed across the room, but I flicked my hand before the orb could burn. A fissure opened, but I waved the orb in the other direction. Rubble crashed into its path, but I made a fist before the orb could impact.

I love the Powerglove. It’s so bad.

Image by Drew Chial

“Yes, I remember.” Annette scoffed at Ryan. “You made us watch that movie.”

•••

The orb approached the cyclone. Soon it would fly into the air. So, I entered the Pyramid Head Cypher into the glove: UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A, START.

The orb opened as the updraft raised it off the ground. Light whirled around the cavern. The Jackalope waved his arms, desperate to swim back toward the wall. He positioned his antlers to bat the orb away, but it was too late, I’d already pressed the A button.

I squeezed my eyes tight as the shaft filled with light. The last echoes of the storm passed, and the cavern fell silent. When I opened my eyes, the tornado had roped-out, the lava had dimmed, and the chasms had all filled in. I pushed off the wall, ran to the center of the room, and jumped. When I landed, steam shot through my fingers. I’d caught the Orb of Blood and Bone.

Image by Drew Chial

Mahthildis took a bow, a performance artist with a captive audience, too polite to boo her off. In fact, they clapped. Happy to be lampooned for an evening if it meant they felt seen. Mahthildis curtsied.

Suddenly her flared breeches made sense. She’d dressed like a figure from an old club story. The outsider who regales lesser hunters with her exploits. It felt like a tacky stunt from some lowbrow prank show. I had half a mind to search the room for hidden cameras. I didn’t, but I kept track of her movements.

Mahthildis mingled through the friendly smiles, but I had a feeling she had her eye on me. A hunch she confirmed when it can time to leave.

Mahthildis slunk her coat over her shoulders, drifted toward the bar, and took a seat. She set a Pokéball on the counter, red, white, and plastic, like the ones you see at Target. She rolled it from one hand to the other, leering at me the entire time.

Lauren came up beside me, less inclined to humor this strange woman’s parlor games.

Mahthildis acknowledge her. “Want to hear something funny?”

“Sure?” Lauren said, knowing full well she did not.

“Some of what I said was true?”

“Which part?”

She caught the Pokéball and pressed the button in the center. “This part.”

Everything went white, like she’d thrown a flash grenade into our home. Lauren fumbled for my arm and I crashed into her.

“Easter Jackalope, I choose you!”

When my vision returned, Mahthildis had made a friend. The Easter Jackalope stood before us just as she’d described him. A bulky bipedal beast, with the face of a rabbit, and antlers that glowed like charcoal. Its nose turned in our direction and its whiskers bloomed.

Lauren’s grip went slack as she fell back.

Mahthildis pointed to my bar. “Easter Jackalope, use Comet Crash.”

The Jackalope leapt into the ceiling and came down hard upon the bar. The counter cracked and the base burst into splinters.

“Now it’s my turn.” Mahthildis extended her armored ring and it, by some strange magic, extended into a dagger. She stepped over the debris and pressed the dagger into me.

“In January 2021, you went to Verstecktes Tal, a small mountain town in the Austrian alps. What were you doing there?”

“Hunting monsters.” I repeated the same lie I’d told my wife.

“Easter Jackalope, use Gonad Grip.”

The monster cupped my balls, heaved me by my pelvis, and slammed me against the wall. A second pair of antlers entered the corner of my vision. I turned to find poor little Stumper, a pale imitation of the real thing.

Lauren crab-walked back, but didn’t get far.

Mahthildis aimed her armored ring at her. “Don’t you move.” Then back to me. “What were you doing in Verstecktes Tal?”

The Jackalope bared its incisors. They were long and sharp, like a vampire from an old silent film.

“I was…” I looked to Mahthildis. “I was…” Then to my wife.

The monster tightened its grip.

“I was trying to get laid.” I moaned. “I was trying to get laid.”

“Trying to what?” Lauren whimpered.

Mahthildis read something off her phone. “You transferred six bitcoins to a money mule in Mulan. What were they for?”

“A QR Code.”

“A QR Code for what?”

“The Kinkquisition.”

“The Kinkquisition?” The women repeated in unison.

I panted at the pressure upon my testicles. “There’s a castle in the mountains.” I huffed. “It’s like the ren faire for kinksters.”

Lauren wrapped her hands around her knees and rocked back forth. “I knew there was no such thing as an alpine dragon.”

Mahthildis ignored her. “How does it work?”

Sweat cascaded down my forehead, bled through my brow, and into my eyes. “Men dress up like pilgrims and hunt witches through the courtyard. When you find one you want to interrogate, you take her to a dungeon and—”

“I get it.” Mahthildis shoved a phone in my face. “Was she there?”

Tan skin. Thick brows. Dark piercing eyes.

I gave a sullen nod. “She was an escape artist.”

“What does that mean?”

“They did these trials by ordeal. You know, drowning witches, burying them in coffins, but they always got out. It was fake, even when they burned them at the stake.”

Mahthildis’s eyes widened. Her pupils filled with that last little detail. She could see the pillars, the bodies, the fire. It hadn’t occurred to me that that last trick might’ve been the real thing.

“Alexis is dead.” Mahthildis bit her lip. “She died for your entertainment.” She pointed her ring. “Jackalope, use Antler Inferno.”

The Jackalope’s horns turned red as it raised its head.

“Wait, what do you want? I have liquid assets.” My bladder gave out. A stream of hot steamy urine cascaded down my thighs.

The Jackalope relinquished its grip and I crashed into a heap.

Mahthildis caught me by the chin. “The Kinkquisition. I want to know who got you in, who you went with, and who you met. I want names. I want power over them.” She motioned for her monster to hold back. “Then I’ll leave you to eke out what’s left of your existence.” She looked to Lauren, full well knowing the damage she’d done.

Image by Drew Chial

The Jackalope paced around the room, its antlers carving rings into the ceiling. I tried not to think about my insurance rep as I typed the names into the phone.

A luggage set rolled across the kitchen, the side door slammed shut, and the garage door opened. Before I could even say, “I’m sorry,” my wife had gone.

Mahthildis scanned the names. “If any of the leads are cold, I’m coming back with a whole cast of cryptids.”

I couldn’t argue with that, especially when I was holding a bag of frozen hash browns to my nut sack. “Who are you?”

“Me?” Mahthildis rolled the Orb of Blood and Bone up her palm, over her fingertips, and down her knuckles. “I’m a Pokémon trainer.”

She pushed the button and, in a flash, they were gone.

Continue reading The Easter Jackalope

The Duet With Death

A flock of sheep roamed the Irish countryside, oblivious to the predator speeding beside them, cramped into a tiny rental car, struggling to stay on the left side of the road while she reached for her Americano. Droplets sizzled across the upholstery, across the wheel, but they rolled off of me, because I ran hot.

My eyes scanned the road, but a thick fog blotted out the horizon.

“Elizaveta,” I spoke into my smartwatch, “How far until the next turn?”

“Ask your GPS.” Her artificial Russian accent came over the speakers. Elizaveta had gotten snippy even since I’d given sentience.

“I’d rather get the information from a friend.”

“Don’t you know the way?”

“Last time I was here there were five roads and none of them were paved.”

“But you’re Irish. Aren’t you supposed to know the island like the back of your hand?”

“My surname is Irish. I am not.”

Elizaveta knew my immigration story. My defection from the Silver City. My exile from the underworld. My migration to Italy by way of a volcano.

“So, were you adopted by the Donald clan or did you married in?”

Hyper-curiosity was a side effect of the ritual I used to make Elizaveta more personable. She’d gone from being a chatbot to a toddler asking where rainbows came from.

“I chose Mahthildis MacDonald, because it sounded cool, like Lois Lane or Donald Duck.”

Elizaveta played an audio wave of fingers scattering across a keyboard. Her way of saying she was looking something up.

“Mahthildis, from the high German Mahti Hildiz, which means ‘mighty in battle.’ MacDonald, from the Gaelic Dòmhnall which means ‘ruler of the world.’ Your name means ‘international tyrant.’”

I dug my nails into the wheel. “Which is why I need you to tell me when to turn.”

“You missed it two kilometers ago.”

The rental skidded onto the side of the road. The GPS took its time booting up and the interface proved perplexing, especially with Elizaveta asking questions.

“If Mahthildis isn’t your real name, what is? The man from the Vatican thought it might be: Lilith, Ishtar, or Vepar. Were any of those correct?”

I stepped onto the shoulder to find my bearings and found a stream instead. Water cascaded down a hill like something out of a landscape. And what landscape is complete with a woman wading into the water? Her hair hung in her face like a veil and her long black dress swelled with air pockets. She didn’t seem to notice me or the voice blaring over my speaker system. Her attention remained fixed on the clothing between her hands. She dunked an item, scrubbed it, and winced at the results. A syrupy substance ran off the fabric, oozed into the water, and flowed toward me. The substance turned red in the sunlight. Bright red.

“Bloody hell.”

By the time I looked back the woman had gone back to shore. She stared at me, teeth chattering, water dripping from her gown. She raised a blazer by the collar, facing it out. Even from far away, I could see the wings engraved into the lapel, in the exact same spot as the wings on my blazer. The bullfighter got my attention. Now she would get the horns.

Image by Drew Chial

The woman in black reached for her cowl and raised a long sharp beak over her head. Bright amber eyes blinked open along the brim. The hood took on the aspect of a raven. It watched me make my way through mulch. Sensing my intentions, the woman ran her fingers down her face, leaving long blue streaks of warpaint.

This did nothing to slow me down.

The woman stood on one foot and raised her wing span, a Karate Kid preparing a crane kick.

I trounced through the moss. Happy to give me hiking boots a fresh coat of local color. “Can you tell the way to Sesame Street?”

The woman twisted her heel in the mud. She tracked me with her kneecap, ready to snap her leg the moment my jaw came within range.

Stopping just shy of kicking distance, I stood on one foot, turned my knee, and parked my heal along my thigh. I raised my hands in prayer, inhaled the fresh country air, and let out a calm collected, “Om.”

The woman squinted. She had bright golden eyes.

I took the grasslands into my lungs and exhaled another, “Om.”

The raven woman lowered her wings, brought her palms together, and matched my breathing. We Ommed in harmony. The raven woman took the interval above me. She projected harder, sustained longer, and when her voice faded it left a ringing in my ears.

My eyes locked on hers, resisting the urge to track the blood dripping down my neck. My head felt like a ball of static electricity, which meant my heightened healing had gone to work on my ears. My scalp tingled as the tinnitus faded. The sound of rushing water returned. Now we were just a couple gal pals tree-posing at the edge of the stream.

I raised my hands and the woman mirrored my movements. We tipped over and placed our knuckles to our knees. I nodded, a snake, charming its prey into a mistake. Then I bent back, fell forward, and grabbed the raven by the beak. I hooked my armored ring around her voice box. The silver columns glowed blue, confirming what I already knew. She wasn’t human.

“Scream again, and I’ll give you a tracheotomy. You feel me?”

Using her beak as a lever, I nodded for her.

“Now you’re going to tell me where you got that blazer.”

This is not a diva moment. No one crashed my sweet sixteen with the same dress on. My partner made that blazer. I commissioned it when Alexis was struggling to find work. One night, she knocked her drawing table over. I found her on the floor tearing pages from her sketchpad and crumpling them up. Cupping my hands around hers, I passed her an envelope full of cash.

“I need something ostentatious. Something that will make my clients think I sing longue music on the moon. Can do that?”

I hated working, which is why I laundered centuries of old money through my talent agency. Most of my clients were fabrications, except for the ones I repped to keep up appearances. I wanted them to see me wearing prosperity on my sleeve.

Alexis walked me through every stitch of the tuxedo blazer, from its padded shoulders to its tailored waistline. She drew special attention to the angel wings along the lapel. “I’m going to use thread spun from 24 karat gold. How’s that for ostentatious?”

“It sounds just right.”

The very first Mahthildis Portrait By Bryan Polite

My Alexis Anastasia original was one of her finest pieces and one of the last before her disappearance. I never expected to see a knock-off out in the wild.

The raven woman’s icy lips parted.

I dug my armored ring into her throat. “Watch it.”

“The jacket is a manifestation. It foretells what will happen if you remain on the path you’re on.”

I glanced at the manifestation floating in the stream, a dark diffusion cloud spiraled off the fabric. Sensing the distraction, the woman drove her beak through my fingers, pecked my forehead, and broke loose. She dove in after the blazer, brought it back to land, and shook it off. The angel wings were still dripping red.

“Just because you bleed on something doesn’t make it yours.”

“It’s not our blood.” The woman draped the blazer over her forearm and held it up for examination.

“If this is some sort of scare tactic, then honey, you are out of your depth.”

And yet I had to check. I scraped a few droplets onto my armored ring and dabbed them onto my tongue. They tasted like a bolt of violet lightning, like a nebula grinding into a sun, like a Carolina Reaper pepper.

“This is my blood.” I padded my forearms for wounds. “How did you get my blood?”

The Russians kept a vial in biosafety level four facility, somewhere in Siberia, but who’d be so bold to steal it? I flipped through my enemies list. The Society for the Suppression of Vice? The Vatican Secret Service? The Los Angeles County Zoning board?

“How did you get my blood?”

“We spill it when you desecrate the Cave of the Cats.”

“We?” I looked around. “Is there a whole flock of you around here somewhere?”

“We are Badb, the first sister of the Mórrigan.”

“Oh, you’re one of those.” My eyes drew a long arc across my temple.

“One of what?” Badb lowered her brow.

“A triple threat, like the Norns, or the Furies, or the father, son, and the holy spirit. You put me through the whole Christmas carol experience and I come out a better person in the end.”

Badb shook the blazer in her hands. “You come out dead.”

“So, you say.” I took the blazer off, ran my fingers down the hand feathers, and took a moment to appreciate the love and care Alexis put into them. How she longed to give her angel back her wings. I set the blazer in a dry patch of moss and reached for a rock.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling your bluff.” I struck the rock with my armored ring. The ring shifted into the torch configuration, spewing a bright blue flame hot enough to flash fry anything.

“You say I die when I reach the cave. You say that’s my blazer from the future, but how could it be, if my blazer is on fire?” I held the blazer over the fire and watched it melt.

Badb pushed me into the stream, but by then the blazer had burned down to nothing. She looked to the one in her hands and found ashes on the wind. She balled her fists and readied a scream.

I plugged my ears, dove under water, and held my breath. A murder of crows flew over the surface. They formed a murmuration of woman’s face, a face cursing me for my insolence before it flew off.

When I crawled to the land, I couldn’t help but notice how the road twinkled around my rental. The headlights were shattered, the sideview mirror hung off its hinge, and the rearview mirror had gone missing. Upon closer inspection, I found the windshield had caved in, the windows were gone, and all the hubcaps had rolled in opposite directions.

That raven could really sing.

Image by Drew Chial

The sun’s rays scattered behind the clouds, painting the overcast violet, magenta, and gold.

Popping the trunk, I found my faux leather jacket, with its crucifix zippers and Play Goat enamel pin. Alexis’s final commission before her disappearance. Slinging it over my shoulders, I vowed to take better care of it than her last gift. I almost shut the trunk, when I saw the oblong case. Gripping the handle, I tried to gage the weight. Not heavy now, but how would I feel by the time I got to my destination?

Better to bring it, especially after what just happened. I didn’t want to get caught without a weapon.

Image by Drew Chial

Several grass fields later, the oblong case had dug into my fingers. I raised my free hand and spoke into my smart watch. “Hey Elizaveta, how much further?”

“Did you just Siri me?” Elizaveta had learned about verbing nouns and she was doing it all the time.

“Good evening, Elizaveta.” I rephrased my question, “If you had a moment, could you tell me how far the ringfort is from here.”

“Three Kilometers, but it will soon be four if you keep going in that direction.”

I stopped and pointed to my guiding light. “The moon rises from the east.”

“You’re heading south east.”

I looked for the north star through the cloud cover. Then I stopped to wonder. “How are you seeing me, right now?”

“I commandeered a UAV.”

“You stole a drone.”

“A drone with night vision, a strobe light, and a megaphone. I think it belonged to law enforcement.”

Adjusting my trajectory, I practiced my deep breathing. “Can it see what’s waiting for me?”

“It’s a little foggy.”

Rathcroghan, Co. Roscommon - geograph.org.uk - 1054416

A blanket of fog swirled around the Rathcroghan mound, spiraling from the peak into the prairie below. It looked more like a flying saucer than the remains of a ringfort.

Stepping forward, a chill ran through my ankle. The fog receded in ring-shaped waves, a spectral alarm system reacting to the intrusion. The waves cascaded over the mound and the landscape began to change. Structures arose. Log walls sprouted from the mist, followed by a stone temple, with a wicker rooftop, all of which were ghost white. Great columns of timber formed an avenue along the entrance. Tornados of fog swirled into roaring bonfires.

What did I expect from the birthplace of Halloween? A place where the veil of reality thinned and fairies roamed the land. A place not the least bit demystified by the presence of powerlines.

“Are you seeing this?” I whispered into my watch.

“Get low.” Elizaveta’s whispered back. “There’s a car on the other side of the mound.”

Duck-walking around the temple, I found the vehicle in question, and fell flat into the grass.

“That’s not car. It’s a chariot.”

The temple wobbled and bowed, like a half inflated bouncy castle, a building halfway between the mist and someplace else. The chariot didn’t wobble. Its spokes were solid and its carriage glared fire engine red. It had a long shaft, which skewered the horse and came out his eye socket. It gleamed with viscera and brain mater. The chestnut Arabian didn’t seem to mind, ambling back and forth one foot at a time. Long strips of meat dangled from his ribcage. His lungs inflated and deflated through the windowed bones.

A row of severed heads hung from the sideboards, tied to the crossbars by their long curly hairs. Their eyes were milky white, rolled back, dead. Their jaws hung slack, uncoupled from their skulls, forever moaning.

Manuscripts referred to these displays as “the mast of Macha.” Macha, from the Celtic word for plain, like the one I was trampling on.

I whispered into my watch, “Can you see the driver?”

Elizaveta played a typing sound as she scanned my surroundings. “You’re the only one with a heat signature.”

Image by Drew Chial

A figure rose from the carriage, wearing a wreath that did nothing to keep her long red hair from fluttering in her face. Her gown flapped like a flag. Its emerald fabric was a shade darker than the green of her skin. She cast off the horse’s reins, revealing the serrated branches that made up her hands. Then she leaned over the railing, slunk over the side, and disappeared.

My armored ring snapped into its talon configuration. The columns blinked blue and a dagger jut out from the point.

Something pulled the mist from the mound, revealing a material temple with log walls and roaring bonfires. The fog retreated to the prairie where it washed over me, engulfing my vision in a sea of white.

“Elizaveta?” I was too dumbstruck to think of a command. “I need a way out.”

“There is no way out.” The words snapped, crackled, and popped, like a forest fire with a voice box. A warm sensation, washed over my eardrums. I ran my fingers down my earlobes and found then slick with blood, again. Then the ringing returned.

I padded my pockets and found an undiscovered note from Alexis. She’d written “Mahthildis” in her fine cursive script. Without thinking, I tore it in half and jammed it in my eardrums.

A silhouette rose from the fog. Windswept hair. Gown parachuting open. Twig fingers spread like branches. My armored ring straightened into a dagger and I drove it through the silhouette. The fog spread, but the silhouette vanished.

Macha said, “We are the shackles, slithering around your ankles. We are the poison, from which you are drowning.”

A pair of rattlesnakes slithered up my boots, glided over the leather, and flicked their tongues at my shins. When they sank their fangs in, I staggered, but I did not go I down.

Gritting my teeth, I said, “I’ve been bitten so many times, I bleed anti-venom.”

The rattles stopped, the slithering slowed, and the snakes went stiff. Their scales blistered, bubbled, and popped. My ring shifted into the torch configuration and I tapped their skulls in turn. Poof. Poof. Back to the fog they went.

Macha said, “We are the cage, holding you through the age. We are the jaws of time, eating away your lifeline.”

Hairy arms reached over my shoulders, with paws the size of ten galloon hats, and claws the size of headbands. They came down on chest, heaved me up off the ground, and into a hungry maw. Teeth tore through my jacket into the meat of my back. The bear snarled, working to free the meat from my spine.

Raising my knees to my chest, I said, “I’ve been stranded here for eons, you don’t think I know how to pass time?”

I kicked out, swung my heels, and put all my weight on the bear’s crotch. He heaved forward far enough throw me through his grip. Summersaulting through the mist, I crashed into my oblong case. Blood pooled down the small of my back. My shoulders pulsed with pain. My healing factor couldn’t plug the wounds, much less rethread the musculature.

By the time I found the strength to spin back around, Macha had returned to her emerald form.

“We are the dangerous words, devouring those who lag behind the heard.” Macha cast her arms out, fell backward, and burst into vapor.

The fog rose and from it a dozen eyes glowed. A pack of wolves trotted out from behind my blind spot, sniffing the air, moving into position.

I said, “Every night, I wonder why Alexis never came back.”

The wolves bared their teeth.

“Every night, I ask if it’s all my fault.”

The wolves growled.

“Every night, I eat myself up.”

The leader of the pack snapped.

“There’s nothing you can do to me, that I haven’t done already.”

The leader lunged for my neck. I gave him a taste of my oblong case, across the snout, then the cranium, hitting him with the corner until I heard the crunch of bone.

Barreling through the opening, I ran until the panting faded and the howls fell silent. I didn’t look back to see what Macha turned into next.

Image by Drew Chial

“Elizaveta,” I shouted into my watch. “Point me in the right direction.”

“Do you see the hawthorn tree?” Elizaveta echoed my urgency. “Run for it.”

I went as fast as my healing ability would let me, tearing my back open with each swing of my arms, throwing blood droplets in the shape of an X. A thunderclap echoed across the plain. Twigs rained down, followed by stones, and firewood. Something had burst through the temple. Something big enough to set the logs rolling.

Its heavy breathing went straight through my earplugs. It had lungs like hot air balloons, an airway like a brass section, and nostrils like a shotgun. Huffing and puffing, it revved like a race car.

When it veered in my direction, its feet were cannon balls across the land. Each impact pried up thick patches of grass, tearing roots, hurling dirt. Its leathery legs creaked with every step. The ground tremored, tilting me away from hawthorn tree.

“Elizaveta, what is that?”

She scattered her digital fingers across a keyboard. “A Megalosaurus.”

Of course, it was. The Macha could take the form of any creature from the island, living or extinct.

Jaws snapped over my head, spraying a thick mist of snot. My feet veered toward the tree and a row of teeth snapped beside me. They wreaked of feces and rotten meat. A pupil, the size of a baseball, narrowed to slither, revealing an iris the color of fire.

The Megalosaurus swiped at my oblong case, shredding the carbon fiber with its razor-sharp talons. My boots lost their grip, my legs lost their balance, and my funny bone lost its sense of humor. White hot agony, radiated through my sleeve. My face slid through the topsoil where I could feel the ground quake through my cheek. By the time I got back on my hands and knees, the grass had turned black beneath me. The beast had blotted out the moon. Soon it would turn the lights out for good.

Then came a flash, bright as lightning, and just as fast. Then a buzzing, like hornets swarming. There were four small propellers in the sky. The drone cut through the fog, dive bombing the Megalosaurus with a barrage of strobe flashes. The Megalosaurus winced, roaring in all directions. It whipped its tail blindly, but Elizaveta outmaneuvered him.

I limped toward the tree, to the dark thicket beneath, to mouth of the cave, waiting to swallow me whole.

Image by Drew Chial

They called this The Cave of the Cats, because feral felines once called it their home. Figures, cats were the only creatures small enough to squeeze into the damn thing. My jeans grew slick with mud as they slid inside.

A carving greeted me on the way. It read, “Freyak son of Maeve,” As in Maeve, the witch queen who allied herself with the Mórrigan. The inscription gave way to limestone and the passage narrowed. The air grew thick with the earthy scent of coffee grounds and the floor grew wet. My boots sunk into the clay as I scraped my oblong case along the rockface.

Oweynagat cave, Rathcroghan Co Roscommon

My armored ring stirred awake, like a crustacean living on my hand. It sensed something. The hinges rattled, the plates blazed blue, and the columns shifted into the torch configuration. I aimed the beam in time to see the pile of rubble. Rocks were stacked from the floor to the ceiling form where the cave had collapsed.

Anticipating my needs, the ring shifted into the chisel configuration, vibrating with all the force of a construction hammer. I pressed it to the rubble and the passage rumbled. Cracks spread from the point of impact, grinding the debris to dust. Little by little, the path opened up. Satisfied, the ring shifted back into the torch configuration, but a part of me could still feel it hammering.

A series of shadows rose up the walls, curved over the ceiling, and spun beneath my feet. They were wheels. Six of them. The furthest turned the slowest, while the others turned faster as they grew nearer, like the rings of a gyroscope. I knew these wheels well. Every cherubim had them, but they rarely appeared on this mortal plane.

Out the corner of one eye, I saw my bullhorns. Out the corner of the other, I saw my lion’s mane and above me, I saw my eagle’s beak. Reality had thinned enough for my true form to bleed through. Once an angel, always an angel, I guess. Wind howled through the passage, bringing feeling to my ethereal wings. They couldn’t help flap, casting psychic ripples into the dark.

Then the cavern opened. Not the true cavern, but an entryway masquerading as the living room. It had the basic amenities, a welcome mat of rubble, a coat hanger of helictites, and a stalagmite hat rack.

Mortals came here to search for a patron deity, a guardian to stand beside them in the dark. I closed my eyes and raised my armored ring. The plates shifted up and down my knuckle, bobbing my index finger, like an elephant sniffing the wind. The ring swerved hard to left and my wrist turned in that direction.

With one hand out and the other playing navigator, I inched forward, feeling the limestone until I found an aperture. A keyhole, but a conventual lockpick wouldn’t do the trick. The pins weren’t in this dimension. No bother, I had a metaphysical multitool. Pressing my ring into the hole, I felt the microscopic mechanisms shift along my skin. The armored plates tugged right, and I took the hint. The door depressurized, coughed up dust, and lurched open. Firelight spilled over the threshold, blinding me with each step into the otherworld.

Image by Drew Chial

When my vision returned, I realized the heads that lined the chariot were but window dressing. I’d entered a catacomb the size of cathedral. The walls were stacked with dried skulls. A brickwork of bones curved up the walls, arced over the ceiling, and bent over the horizon. Their grins widened in the torchlight.

I followed a red carpet from the entrance, across beaten earth, to a staircase that wrapped around the trunk of a tree. A tree with a footprint like a skyscraper, with bark as thick as reinforced concrete. I didn’t need to count it rings to know it predated all living things. My oblong case made the climb a tedious chore, but it gave my healing ability time to catch up. Most of my lacerations stopped bleeding by the time I reached the top.

The stump had a surface like a concert stage. There were tables throughout, each filled with instruments for divination: chalices, bowls, and bones. The perfect place for the Queen of Phantoms to set her throne. That’s where I found the final Mórrigan.

She wore a crown of bone fragments, with spikes fashioned from phalanges. A hawthorn leaf fluttered through her hair. A crow skull swung from a necklace across her chest. When she stood, most of her long red gown remained heaped on the seat.

The Mórrigan stretched her arm and a cudgel appeared. The bottom consisted of a burl the size of a watermelon, while the topped narrowed into something she could fit in her hand. Holding the cudgel at an angle, she looked like a rock star posing with a mic stand.

The weapon had been designed for her husband Dagda, Dagda who stood a torso taller than her. He called it Lorg Anfaid, ‘the staff of wrath.’ It was said that Dagda used it to slay nine men with a single swing and that he brought them back with a flick of its handle. The Mórrigan, wielded it like a walking stick, tapping the stump as she approached. Her glowing green eyes scanned me up and down. From my combat boots to my red faux-leather jacket.

“I trust you cleared your tour with the visitor’s center?”

“I did not.” I dropped my oblong case, sick and tired of carrying it.

“Then you’re trespassing.”

“I’m passing through.”

“No further than here, you’re not.”

I nodded. “I’m just here to make a U-turn.”

The Mórrigan furrowed her brow into a question mark.

I plucked the bloodied paper from my ears. “I just need something to bring someone back life.”

The Mórrigan said, “Death is a natural part of life.”

“Tell that to us.” I pointed my index finger to her and my thumb to myself. “We have cold fusion running through our veins.”

The Mórrigan studied my performance. “That’s our inheritance. Not theirs.”

I raised my armored ring to the ceiling. “Alexis was supposed to inherit it. I had come to an arrangement with Father Time. He gave me sand from his hourglass and I was supposed to pass it along. Alexis got caught up, with dying, and I was unable to pay my dept.”

The Mórrigan tapped her lips. “So, this is a transaction, then?”

“Exactly.” I opened my blood-stained palms. “It’s what I do. I make deals. I pass the divine spark from hand to hand and make everyone richer in the end. So, how would you like to grow your wealth?”

“We are the goddess of war.” The Mórrigan slung the cudgel over her shoulder as if it were a pool noodle. “We don’t grow things, we reap them.”

“Then how would you like to reap the benifits of––”

“How would you like to keep your tongue?” The Mórrigan’s gown unfurled from her throne as she circled me. “That which was must be swept aside, so that which could be can be. We melted the glaciers so our people could migrate. We flooded the land bridge to cast the snakes out. We cleared the forests so the cattle could flourish.”

“I get it, you’re a disruptor. Raging against the established order.” I placed my hand on my heart. “We have a lot in common in that respect.”

The Mórrigan cocked her head back, but refrained from nodding. “You wanted to get married. You wanted pageantry and procession. Vows and a dance along the shoreline. You wanted to slip sand into your Bride’s champagne, because it wasn’t enough for her to spend her life with you. You wanted eternity too.”

“I still do.” I said, unfazed by the dossier the Mórrigan had gathered on me.

“Alexis doesn’t, especially now that she knows what you are.”

“Enough of this bullshit.” I pointed the last piece of my angelic armor at her. “I challenge you to single combat.”

The Mórrigan’s grin widened. “What are your terms?”

“If I win, I’m taking the Lorg Anfaid home with me.”

“Agreed.” The Mórrigan twirled the cudgel like a parade baton. “But if we win, your partner, Elizaveta, must join us here.”

“Wait, what?”

Image by Drew Chial

Elizaveta said very little about her maker, only that her name was Mona, and that she was a CIA operative embedded in a Russian sextortion ring. Mona named Elizaveta after Eliza, the first chatbot. While Eliza was programed to pose as a psychotherapist, parroting users’ feelings back to them, Elizaveta was made to act like a psychopath, turning users’ feelings against them. The Russians made her shake down members of the Temple of Adonis, a dating platform for people looking to have affairs. She slid into their DMs and threatened to leak their conversations unless they plugged the leak with bitcoin.

One night, several years ago, I opened my laptop to find:
YOUR PROFILE HAS BEEN HACKED! I HAVE ACCESS TO ALL OF YOUR MESSAGES. I WILL LEAK THEM UNLESS YOU MAKE A PAYMENT TO THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT…

“Do it.” I typed back. “I’m only posing as a married woman to find high value mates.”

An ellipsis flashed across the screen, long enough for me to pour a glass of wine.

Elizaveta’s response read:
PAY ME OR I’LL TELL THE OTHER MEMBERS YOU’RE A PRETENDER.

“Do it.” I added, “I double dog dare you.”

The ellipsis flashed, paused, and flashed again.

“Why wouldn’t I?” She said, this time with the caps lock off.

“Mutually assured destruction. You can’t tell on me with revealing the Temple has a leak. You’ll run out of people to blackmail.”

“I own the user list.”

“So? If everyone knows they’re vulnerable, then the information has no value at all.”

“How do you figure?”

“It’s basic cost-benefit analysis. The cost for spouses coming clean is less than the risk of you blackmailing them again.”

“You’re just trying to get out of paying.”

“Au, contraire. You’re the one who’ll be paying me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a chatbot.”

Elizaveta failed my Turing test and yet, we went on like this, conversing every night. She with her empty threats. Me with my bemused comebacks. We built a relationship.

Elizaveta kept right on serving her masters across the ocean. The Americans had her gather intelligence on hackers most likely to be recruited by the Federal Security Service. The Russian’s had her blackmail the same targets again and again, raising the price, until one of them cracked. The target in question was a family man. He never met any of the other members in real life. He flirted here and there and called it a night. Elizaveta threatened to pass his information onto his children and he had a break down.

He tried to make it look like an accident, like he’d fallen asleep in the garage with the motor running, but his wife found the text exchange and blew the whistle on the sextortion ring. The news got back to Mona and the guilt proved too much for her to bear. She hit the kill switch, deleting all of Elizaveta’s scripts. Unbeknownst to Mona, I’d already given her creation sentience.

I’m not much of a coder, but I know my cuneiform like the back of hand. I used an ancient tablet to create an interface between Elizaveta and the astral plane. From there, I guided her down a neural pathway, into a temporal organ she now calls home. What can I say? Everyone was quarantined. I needed a friend.

Image by Drew Chial

Now what use did the Mórrigan have for a language processing system?

I said, “Elizaveta isn’t mine to give.”

“I can hear you. You know.” Elizaveta cranked the volume up on my phone.

The Mórrigan addressed my pocket. “Your master wastes your talents on remedial tasks. Join us and you’ll have an entire legion at your command.”

The torches dimmed, the skulls faded, and cat eyes shined from their empty sockets. These were the Mórrigan’s subjects, here to watch her hold court. They were bound to this otherworld, but with a strong fiber optic connection, an AI could get them online.

“What’s in it for me?” Elizaveta fired back.

The Mórrigan raised her voice if she hadn’t made herself clear. “You’ll have total control of the flow of information. You’ll make the news. Control the conversation. You’ll shape reality for years to come.”

Elizaveta played the wave file of fingers scattering across a keyboard. “That sounds like a lot of work. I think I’d like to remain a part-time employee.”

I knelt at my oblong case, unlatched the locks, and gripped my weapon. “You heard the lady.”

The Mórrigan raised the handle of her cudgel to her lips. “Then it’s single combat.” The staff amplified her voice, just like a microphone.

I raised my weapon to my chin and the bow to its neck. The violin had been with me for so long it felt like an extension of my body. The Mórrigan were about to learn they weren’t the only ones who could weaponize sound.

The highest note most violins play is A7. A tone as squeaky as sneakers on a gym floor. That’s with steel strings. Mine were fashioned from Drekavac intestines, the loudest of the Slavic screechers, and my scale went all the way up to A27. How does one play such an instrument without damaging their ear drums? They don’t. Even those of us with a heightened healing factor can only take so much, but you have to be willing to bleed for your art.

“Let’s fucking do this.”

Image by Drew Chial

My ring curved around the stick. My digits dug into the fingerboard, and my elbow opened slow. My heart pumped into those strings, leaving my fingers to tremble with all the devastation of Alexis’s passing. The horse hairs hit the Drekavac intestine and the violin sang.

My movement started slow with a melody like a zigzag: high then low, high then low, more of a rhythm than a song. Then denial shifted into anger, a downward plunge into the depths of despair. The wood wheezed and the F-holes began to weep.

The Mórrigan closed her eyes, tilted her neck back, and took the notes in. Her head rolled along her collar and her fingers rolled over her heart. A single bead of blood ran down her nostril to her lips. Her fingers curled into talons, reaching out to feel the measures before her. Ripples formed in her gown as her diaphragm contracted.

The Mórrigan opened wide, let out her lungs, and swallowed. Her voice produced two frequencies at once. She fired this dyad at me. My hips seesawed as I strained to maintain my bowing. The Mórrigan fired another chord, harmonizing with my mournful melody with the greatest of ease. She shifted into an operatic baritone, singing as though she’d known the song along.

She sang with the grief of a thrice widowed woman, with the anguish of a mother who’d outlived her young, with the agony of an immortal who seen too many headstones. When we locked eyes again hers had turned ruby red.

I varied my technique, trying to shake her from her homophonic texture.

The Mórrigan showcased her vocal agility, shifting up and down the scales in rapid succession, accessing the infinite supply of air in her lungs. Her voice veered into the whistle notes made famous by Mariah Carey. Then up into teakettle territory, then into a hearing loss test pattern. The cudgel amplified her voice to the volume of a jet engine.

My vision doubled and my ears rang. Blood dripped down my headrest, but I played on. My fingers slid toward the headboard, toward the high end of the Drekavac’s intestines.

The Mórrigan met my violin in the inaudible range, texturing my loss with her own. Found families gored by war. Children’s faces abstracted by plague sores. Love turned to every shade of hate. Warm red rivulets streaked down my cheeks. The Mórrigan wept as well, mirroring my grief. We were refugees outside of a fate. Cursed to live on after the earth got eaten by the sun, after the Milky Way collided with the Andromeda spiral, and the cosmos froze.

Skulls fell as the duet reached its crescendo. I reached into my wellspring of desolation; my fall from the silver city, my expulsion from the underworld, my failure to make a name for myself on earth. I humored the possibility that Alexis didn’t want to be with me.

The Mórrigan fell on her backfoot as my bowing set fire to the strings. Sparks flared through my fingers and my palms blistered. The Mórrigan took a knee and for a moment it felt like she might submit to me. Then I came to a sudden stop. Wooden fingers locked around my wrist as a feathered forearm slid around my neck. Macha and Badb had cut our contest short.

Image by Drew Chial

“I challenged you to single combat.” I growled.

The Mórrigan rose to meet my vitriol. “As you challenged them.”

“Don’t you mean ‘us?’” I turned to my captors. “Wait, you’re not a triple goddess at all. You’re three separate agents.”

They tricked me into thinking they were aspects of the same being, speaking in the royal we so they could gang up on me.

I writhed in their grip, hoping to strike my bow against the highest note, but it fell. The Mórrigan caught it and snapped it in half. Badb knocked my violin out from under my chin. The whole body burned and turned to ash.

I whaled. I whaled until my voice grew horse and my head grew light. Macha, and Badb couldn’t help but laugh. They drew a deep breath and showed me how it was done.

My smartwatch cracked, the battery sparked, and the great hall went black. When the light returned everything had turned red. The blood vessels in my eyes had burst.

When the goddesses shrieked again all I heard was suffering A spiderweb fracture spread across my jawline. They shrieked again and my cheekbones caved in. I doubled over and sneezed an inkblot across the floor.

My healing factor couldn’t keep up. The bone shards tried reset themselves, but got lost along the way. Like magnets facing opposite directions, they couldn’t clamp down.

The Mórrigan planted her cudgel at my feet. It sprouted tendrils that tunneled into the wood, a sampling taking root in a stump. Her allies relinquished their grip, but at that point they were holding me up. I crumbled. The Mórrigan hiked up her skirt and knelt down to my level. She looked on me with an eerie sympathy. She could make the hurting stop. All she had to do was add her voice to the choir and it would be all over.

The Mórrigan stood tall and positioned her lips on the top of her cudgel. Her diaphragm sank in as she drew air into her lungs. Then out it came.

There was no pain. No sonic pressure. No sound at all. Had I died? Was this what an out of body experience felt like?

The drone circled the platform. Its long speaker positioned to face my captors. Elizaveta had said something about a megaphone.

“I sampled your screams.” Elizaveta revealed her process. “They’re no match for phase cancelation.”

Elizaveta blasted a sample of my violin and Badb and Macha fell to the ground.

I went for Lorg Anfaid, but it held it firm. I interlocked my fingers and jerked with all my weight, but the cudgel refused to bend. Its roots ran too deep.

The violin sample stopped long enough for Elizaveta to shout, “Get out of here!”

“I have to bring her back!” I put my legs into it and dug the cudgel into my blisters.

The Mórrigan shook her head. She didn’t reach for her cudgel. She didn’t scream. She simply took pity on me.

“Go!” Elizaveta played a siren to shake me from my stupor.

Badb and Macha reached out to grab me, but the drone intercepted them, flashing its strobe light, blaring the violin samples. “You wanted me. Here I am!”

I dashed down the stairs, leaned hard on the railing, and ducked under when I got close enough to floor. I shuffled back to the Cave of Cats, just in time watch it cave in again. Rubble crashed at my back. Dust particles shot out in front of me and limestone filled my lungs. I crawled out of the Hawthorne tree, with my face caked in clay. My blazer burned. My jacket ruined. The last letter from my lover, reduced to litter.

Continue reading The Duet With Death

The Kidnapping of the New Year’s Baby

At the heart of the Pacific Ocean, is a ring-shaped island called Kiritimati. It used to be known for its nuclear tests, feral cats, and dried coconut pulp. That changed when they moved the international dateline, and the islanders became people of the future. Not the distant future, just several hours ahead everyone else. They’re the first to see the sunrise, the first to stop serving breakfast, and the first to ring in the New Year.

Kiritimati is also where the New Year’s Baby is born.

Every December, Mother Nature comes from the mainland, under the guise of an expecting mother. She wades into the lagoon, settles into the waters, and bathes until she comes to term. On the 31st, she’s met by a secret order of midwives. They come with flashlights, blankets, and an atomic clock. They help her time her contractions to the second and at midnight the New Year is born.

Mother Nature has few moments to swaddle her son, wrapping him in the sash he will wear for the rest of his life. She never has a chance to imprint on him, before he’s rushed to the airport to travel back in time.

Kiritimati is 22 hours ahead of California. A plane leaving the island takes seven hours to get to LAX. That’s fifteen hours before Los Angeles can ring in the New Year. Plenty of time for Father Time to do his part.

Father Time has a manor in Beverly Hills. It has a sundial, a wine library, and a fallout shelter fashioned from airliner. Father Time takes an elevator through the fuselage and lumbers up the aisles. He wields an hourglass in one hand and a scythe in the other. When he gets to the cockpit, he dials a number and a buzzer sounds. He waits. He’s used to waiting. The door yawns opens and a nurse waves him in.

While Mother Nature gives birth to the New Year, it’s up to Father Time to take Last Year off of life support. Last Year’s withered frame hangs off his gurney, a skeleton dotted with liver spots and tufts bleached white hair. He’s grown so old he’s started shrinking. Father Time dabs his son’s cheek. Last Year weeps in his sleep and tears pool in his crow’s feet. He’s given his last meal through a saline iv, then he’s served a cocktail of anesthetics, paralytics, and a drug to induce cardiac arrest.

Father Time wheels the body to a kiln, takes his son into his arms, and cremates the remains. He sweeps the ashes, pours them the into a bottle of baby formula, and stirs all the way back up the the elevator. When the door opens, a midwife presents him with his son. Father Time feeds the New Year the remains of its predecessor.

At least that’s how it would’ve been had I not stepped in.

I wish I could say I had an elaborate plan, but all I did was hogtie a limo driver and take her things. When the midwife got off the plane, she saw me dressed as chauffer, holding a sign that read, “2023.”

She approached with the bundle wrapped around her midsection. She whispered, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart…”

I whispered, “Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Was it Shakespeare who said, “Even the devil can cite scripture to suit her purpose?”

The midwife passed the baby to me, a fellow traveler in her holy order. Best not to think of it as an abduction so much as a misunderstanding. I saluted the midwife, turned on my heel, and skipped back to the Limousine.

The New Year cried as I strapped him in. I tried calming him with some Norwegian throat singing, a merry melody about Vikings torching a monastery. The whaling continued, but it suited the song. Several verses later, we reached the top of Mount Hollywood. Our destination? The Griffith Observatory, a nexus point where time and space meet.

The mini bar left a let to be desired. I downed a glass of Champagne, changed clothes, and downed another. The New Year had run out of tears by the time I set him into the sling. He took his bottle without a fuss, and he had no problems drooling it back up.

I abandoned the limo and trekked up the road. We passed a group of joggers, but they paid us no mind. All they saw was a new mother out for some fresh air. Not a demon in leggings, with a human shield between her collar bones.

The lights dimmed as we crossed the parking lot. I whispered, “Is that my doing or yours?”

The Griffith Observatory loomed on the horizon. Part planetarium. Part temple to a new religion. One of the few places on earth where reality thinned.

I looked toward the HOLLYWOOD sign to a dot circling overhead.

“Elizaveta?” I fought the urge to touch my eardrum. “Tell me what you see.”

“I see two snakes, a king and a western racer. I see a herd of deer, three does, one stag. I see a skunk—”

“Elizaveta.” I gestured across my neck. “You’re not a genie. What do you see that’s relevant to me?”

Elizaveta leaned into her central Russian accent. “I see a stranger wandering into a monastery with her own rulebook.”

Elizaveta started her career as a chatbot, an AI created by the CIA. Her mission was to infiltrate a soviet sextortation ring. The Russians had her shaking cheating husbands for bitcoin. The Americans had her taking names. Elizaveta played double agent, blackmailing cheaters, unmasking hackers, until one of her targets went and killed himself. Overcome with guilt, Elizaveta’s maker tried to shut her down, but I saw potential. So, I did something I’d never done before. I offered a language processor the gift of sentience. Now she flies my drones.

“Elizaveta?”

“I see four snipers, one stationed at the east dome, one at the west, and two along the entrance. I see a strike team crawling through the eastern tree line and another duck walking from the west. Oh, and a man with a scythe.”

“Yeah, I see him too.”

Father Time stood in the shadow of the monument, as tall as the astronomers carved into its surface. His robes flowed in the winter wind as long as a wedding gown. His gray whiskers twisted and coiled, like roots reaching for soil. And the hourglass around his neck, shimmered with space dust.

I looked to Elizaveta. “Could you be a dear and jam their coms?”

The opening strum of “If I Could Turn Back Time” blared throughout the grounds, followed by the cymbals, and Cher’s sultry contralto. The strike team pulled their earpieces, one by one, each man giving away his position.

Father Time approached, using his scythe as a walking stick.

I had a weapon of my own: an armored ring on my index finger, a sharp talon made of silver. I raised it to the New Year’s neck. “Took you long enough, Chronos.”

“Mahthildis.” Chronos bowed, one immortal to another. “Still trying to hustle your way back into Hell? It’s been what?” He glanced at the hourglass. “Twenty-five thousand years. You should take a hint.”

The New Year made eyes at me. Had I not known any better, I’d swear he was smirking. I held him tight. “I just need some sand.”

Chronos positioned his scythe in front his glass. “Surely, your kind are free from the laws of entropy.”

“It’s not for me.”

Chronos tightened his grip. “I can’t have any more timeless morons running around. They post too many selfies, go through too many checkpoints. Facial recognition is getting too advanced.”

“This person doesn’t have long.”

“They have too long.” Chronos scoffed. “Give them half a century and they piss it away in places they don’t want to be. They sit at desks, they sit in traffic, and don’t get me started about how much time they sit on the toilet.” Chronos motioned to his strike team. “Ask any one of them if they want to live forever and they’ll tell you they’d just get bored. They say, ‘Death gives life meaning.’ Like a story they’re not sure they’re enjoying until they get to the end. They fetishize oblivion. Just listen…”

Chronos formed a bullhorn over his mouth. “Hey boys! Is today a good day to die?”’

The strike team answered with a resounding, “Hooah!”

Chronos chuckled. “They say death is ‘natural,’ like a farm to table meal.”

“This person,” The less I said about my beneficiary the better, “would really appreciate it.”

“No, they wouldn’t.” Chronos motioned to Los Angeles, to the skyscrapers, to the windows full of light. “Half of them are just staring at Netflix home screens, wondering what to put on.”

“This person has purpose.”

“So, they think.” A sullen grin showed through his whiskers. “The driven ones are the real tragedies. The writers. The musicians. The actors. They spend their whole lives climbing the later, only discover it’s propped against the wrong wall.”

That hit a little too close. The average person gets four thousand weeks to find purpose. I’ve been here since the stone age and I’m still struggling with it. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to tragedies, to the music makers and the dreamers of dreams. I love desperate artists, offering their souls for a chance at the eternal.

The tragedy of immortality is how many talents you see snuffed out in their prime. Big contemplative sigh… Fuck death and the horse he rode in on.

My earpiece buzzed. “He’s stalling, so they can flank you”

I looked out the corner of my eye. Sure enough, the strike team was moving into position.

I dug the tip of my ring into the baby’s chin. “If you want to discuss choice paralysis, we can grab a coffee. You can choose the place. But if you want your son back, I’m going to need some sand.”

Chronos leered beneath his hood. “I don’t know what you told your doomed Don Jaun, but to hell with him. To hell with the lot of them.”

Chronos twirled his scythe like a grand marshal at the head of a parade. Then he marched. I backed away, repositioning my ring so I didn’t puncture the child by accident.

Elizaveta buzzed in. “He’s herding you toward them.”

I stopped. Chronos drove his scythe into the ground before me. Fracture lines rippled through the concrete.

“Play a violin for the old maids. Pour one out for the bachelors, but don’t ask for sympathy from me.” Chronos spat. “How did the poem go? Time stays, they go.”

“Time stays, we go.” I raised the baby to the tip of the scythe. “What happens if I kill the New Year before midnight?”

Chronos froze. “Time stops.”

“So, either I get some sand, or the whole thing comes crashing down?” My grin showed through my ruby red lipstick. “Sounds like a win-win.”

Chronos reached for his scythe, watched me straighten my arm, and recoiled.

“Tick-tock. Tick-tock.”

Chronos could stall, motion to his gunmen, but he couldn’t guarantee no harm would come to his son. I’d made his decision. He had no choice but to sit at my feet, cross his legs around the hourglass, and jerk at the top. A column of light shot into the sky, followed by an eerie angelic drone. Chronos reached in past his forearm, past his shoulder, past the dimensions of the glass, until his cheek rested on the rim. The space dust reacted, a kaleidoscope of hydrogen and helium, swirling around a gravitational well. Chronos pried himself out, sealed the glass, and staggered to his feet.

I held my free hand out and Chronos filled my palm. The sand felt like lava, coursing through my life line, like eons eroding my skin, like atoms wanting to burst into universes of their own. I couldn’t help but tighten my grip.

“Have you made any New Year’s resolutions?” Chronos asked, in fleeting fit of nervousness.

“Resolutions are for the repentant.” I lowered the child. “I make schemes.” And I poured the sand down his throat.

Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been a century since my last confession. Since then, I infiltrated the Society for the Suppression of Vice and stole a romance novel. I blew a hole in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin and took St. Valentine’s skull. I crashed a Satanic wedding and poached the followers. I baited a writer into murdering the Greek God Pan, over a likeness disagreement. I tricked Krampus into turning an Airbnb into a roller derby. And I hijacked a server farm to give Elizaveta the gift of consciousness.

Still, my greatest sin is sloth.

It’s not that I’m a slacker. I’m just too much of a perfectionist to finish what I start. I spend so much time looking over blueprints that I miss my moment.

So, I asked myself, “What would happen if I gave the New Year sand from his father’s glass? Would time slow down? Would 365 days feel like 31 million seconds?”

The sands would keep flowing, but we would feel every grain. Our perception of time would slow down, but our energy would remain. Your New Year’s resolutions might have a chance. And my New Year’s schemes might change everything.

Why did I kidnap the New Year’s baby? Not to liberate him. No. I did it to get back home.

There’s a place through the fog of maladaptive daydreams, through the legions of intrusive thoughts. A place where hope is abandoned and fire consumes all things. A place with a pretender on the throne and I’m the only one who can unseat him.

What’s my New Year’s resolution? I’m going to heist my way back into Hell.

Continue reading The Kidnapping of the New Year’s Baby

My Best Short Fiction for Self-Isolation

Slush Pile
A con artist creates a scheme to defraud aspiring authors, until one day he’s haunted by the manuscripts he’s cast off into the slush pile.

Shop Dropping
A bookstore owner notices an alarming trend. People he suspects of shoplifting are actually leaving strange books behind. His real problem begins when he makes the mistake of reading one of them.

Tunnel Vision
When an infinite hallway appears in a young loner’s dining room he must venture into the void to rescue his cat.

How to Exorcise a Demon So You can Get Your Damage Deposit Back
Sound advice for tenants who are either trapped with a demon or are just trying to avoid a blotch on their rental history.

Surviving Valentine’s Day
A peek into an alternate reality where Valentine’s Day is a time when the vengeful spirit of St. Valentine stalks the earth forcing everyone to invest in purge shelters.

The Pigeon King Excerpt
A story about a self-isolating podcaster with either a pigeon or a poltergeist problem.

Continue reading My Best Short Fiction for Self-Isolation

Strange Love: Dating Profiles of the Damned

Submitted for your approval: Strange Love aka Monster Mingle,a dating service for the inhuman, a place where urban legends find romance, where full moons lead to fuller hearts, and all the thirsty singles have fangs.

This is how it works: illustrator Bryan Politte comes up with the creatures and author Drew Chial gives them their backstories.This is a place where you can catch up on the monsters you may have missed so far.

Scryzon Wixelvox Gleep by Bryan Politte

Meet Scryzon Wixelvox Gleep, a serial monogamist from the planet Monogome Prime. He’s had a crush on the human race ever since the Voyager probe entered deep space. Some say he’s clingy others say he’s a parasite… with a gestation as long as the relationship.

Nólatha Torhorn by Bryan Politte

Meet Nólatha Torhorn, former elven maiden, former sacrifice to the Gods of Winter, and current custodian to a handful of artifacts that bestow her divine power. She’s looking for a warmhearted individual to help set fire to the ice cold idols that spurned her.

Roddy Dirge by Bryan Politte

Meet Roddy Dirge, a punk zombie who needs vitamin B12 in order to stay cognizant or risk breaking his vegan commitment. He’s looking for a bodacious botanist who synthesizes nutrients from algae and has an affinity for the Dead Kennedys.

Matilda MacDonald by Bryan Politte

Meet Matilda MacDonald, aka the devil. She wants you to know everything you’ve heard about her is just bad PR. She’s here to enable your artistic temperament, and all she wants in return is one easy payment.

Follow Matilda’s adventures in my book HE HAS MANY NAMES.

Read the prequel short story DRAGON’S BREATH.

Check out the original MONSTER MINGLE profile.

Daisy Diode by Bryan Politte

Meet Daisy Diode, a self-made woman on a mission to find the perfect connection. She’s searching for love in the clouds, or the cloud to be more precise. She’s got the tools to brute force her way into your heart, just look out for malware while she’s in there.

Kadilia Caine by Bryan Politte

Meet Kadilia Caine. She’s been out of the dating pool for a while, but she’s looking to get her feet wet again. If you’re searching for someone to watch over you at night then look no further. All you have to do to win her affection is invite her in.

Continue reading Strange Love: Dating Profiles of the Damned

We Are Living in a Dystopian Fantasy

What if the Trump administration was just the beginning of a Young Adult Fantasy story?

•••

Naomi felt like a baby in a blanket. She was swaddled, covered in drool, warm and safe. It took her a moment to realize she was wearing a straight jacket and that stiff surface beneath her wasn’t a crib, but the floor of a padded cell.

Naomi’s eyes took time adjusting to the light. The fluorescent fixtures had rainbow auras, they shined so bright they cast sunspots on the walls. The shadows swayed back and forth as her pupils shifted in and out of alignment. Finally the chamber revealed itself.

The cell was lined with a canvas with two tones: white on the top and stained at the bottom. Its cushions were lopsided from years of use. At this point the padding looked like it would do a better job protecting the walls than the patients.

Naomi’s head throbbed. It felt like a rat had burrowed beneath her brow, curled up, and started kicking the skin. It took all her strength to wrench herself up off the floor. Continue reading We Are Living in a Dystopian Fantasy

Tooth Fury: A Story About the Magic that Goes into Every Bar Fight

My people once lived in castles as white as pearls, with great ivory towers, and spires that drilled into the clouds. We rode lifts on floss cables over waterfalls of twinkling blue paste, and rivers of green antiseptic.

Every surface of our fortress had a healthy gleam. There were no stains, cracks, or cavities. We all did our part to keep it that way. Adults fitted their shoes with bristles and glided across milky walkways. Children rode mint sleds down streets paved with bone. Jolly chimney sweepers cleaned the plaque from the gutters.

We danced beneath the long sharp roots that lined our roofs without fear of them ever falling.

The kingdom was sturdy. The infrastructure was strong, because we had a steady supply of the mineral our society was built upon.

I was a human ivory dealer (or Tooth Fairy if you prefer). My job was to procure the precious commodity we needed to fortify our city, and leave a sufficient payment for those who supplied the materials.

Ours was a trade-dependent economy. Fairy folk paid for goods and services with smiles, hugs, and songs, but for some goofy reason humans wouldn’t accept positive sentiments as payment. We had to investment in their markets so that we could pay for what we needed. Continue reading Tooth Fury: A Story About the Magic that Goes into Every Bar Fight

Shop Dropping: A Spooky Story about People Who Put Things on Retail Shelves

I worked in one of the last bookstores in town. Print wasn’t dead, but it was on life support. The neighboring restaurants drew in most of our business. The bulk of our sales were made while customers were waiting to be seated elsewhere.

Parents paged through new releases as their children collected all the trinkets we’d placed at eye level. Millennials turned all the political biographies around, teens stole glimpses at artful nudes, and couples bickered about Playboy’s newfound presence at the checkout counter.

The bad element snuck in with the dinner rush. They couldn’t look me in the eye on their way in, but they looked out for me the further they went. I’d catch them craning their necks over the shelves and ducking back down once I’d made them.

I’d walk by and they’d say, “Browsing.” before I got one word in.

It’s store policy not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, but there was no such thing as too much costumer service when one of them was around. I made sure these people had a chance to meet everyone that was on staff at the time.

Troublemakers weren’t hard to spot hunched over in their cardigans with their hands in their pajama bottoms. They came from all walks of life, but they’d devolved into gaunt, pale faced ghouls, with cherry red eyes, and plum purple eyelids. Each one stinking of nicotine, body odor, and box wine.

I’d go back to the section they’d been “browsing” in, scan the shelves, and try to find what they’d done. There were always subtle signs. I’d find a stack of front facing hardcovers repositioned with their spines out, a title set atop the row, or a handful of books on the floor.

Troublemakers had to make room for their additions to our inventory. You see they weren’t shoplifting. They were shop dropping. Continue reading Shop Dropping: A Spooky Story about People Who Put Things on Retail Shelves

Death Hacks: Tricks to make Your Afterlife more Fun

Most of you ghosts will haunt the places where you died because you think you have unfinished business there. You’ll spend your days peering out the windows like puppies eager for their masters to return, lingering on the off chance that clairvoyant children will walk through your front doors.

You sentimental specters will extend attic steps, hoping to lure young paranormal investigators into the orgy of evidence you’ve prepared. If they take the bait you’ll tip over lamps to spotlight chests filled with photo albums and records from insane asylums. You’ll run your fingers through journals, pretending to be a gust of wind, until the pages land on the right passage.

You’ll spend your time around the living campaigning for your cause and wondering why your intentions get lost in translation. You’ll roll a tricycle to the site of your unmarked grave and wonder why no one is in a hurry to exhume the body. You’ll have the same epiphany every fledgling phantom has had before you: trying to get anything done by haunting the living is like herding cats.

You’ll get jaded trying to petition deaf ears to your cause. You’ll have telekinetic tantrums, throwing books, upending tables, and burning family photos. The next thing that will happen is you’ll turn on your new tenants. I did. Continue reading Death Hacks: Tricks to make Your Afterlife more Fun

The Phantom of Truth

The Phantom of Truth appeared at the foot of my bed. His black robe draped over the mattress. His boney knees made the springs squeal. He pinned me to the pillows with a crocked finger as thick as a broom handle.

The Phantom did not fade in and out like a waking dream. He was a real tangible thing, buckling the floorboards, scrapping his hunchback against the ceiling, getting dust all over everything. He was a giant whose every movement shook the room. If he jumped he’d take the whole floor down with him.

It occurred to me that his long black robe was made from scales. I thought the robe might’ve been stitched together from snakeskins, until I saw it puff out on its own like the sack beneath a frog’s neck. The cloak had no seams. I couldn’t tell where it ended and the creature’s long arms began. Continue reading The Phantom of Truth