Adrift

The fat yellow moon lent a shimmery ivory hue to Vermont drifts. I wanted to talk about our schism, find out if we were still brothers, but Nate side-stepped it by asking about the case.

“Major storms never hit this little town. Tornadoes turn aside. Blizzards skip on by. They get rain and snow, but nothing that results in destruction.”

Nate shrugged. “Could be coincidence.”

“For over a hundred years?” I scoffed.

“Why investigate now?”

If I wanted a thousand miles of silence, I’d confess Uncle Jim and I were worried. Instead, I clung to fragile peace.

“Because Jim asked.”

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Reverberation

His dark hands flitted over ivory keys, giving life to melody long forgotten. Dust motes danced as ladies had, spinning and spun out in lace, now cobwebbed memories.

Attar of rose lingered longest, a hint clinging to tattered remnants. Odd, it should have been other scents that recalled the day, defined the moment they realized hiding had bought them only time, not coveted results, not escape from destiny.

He played it like a love song, this requiem for his masters, all bones now, wrapped in the silence they’d asked of him.

They should have asked him to mind the door.

Who’ll Stop the Rain?

By Colleen Foley

When I’d exhausted every foul word I know, I gulped the last of my coffee and whistled for the check. The waitress gave me a look that could’ve withered my balls to ashes, then slapped it on the table. I left a twenty in apology and headed for the door.

“Great. Whacko weather and witches, with the ashes of a vodun. Let’s go.”

The car spewed torrents of gravel behind it, as I gunned out of the parking lot.

“All right, genius. What kind of weather is so weird that we’re the only ones Jimmy trusts to check it out?”

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Ashes to Ashes

I shrugged off my coat, removed my hat, and waited for Nate to look up from his pie.

He blinked twice, then gave a low whistle. “What happened?”

I ran my hand over my bristly head. “Long hair is easy to pick up and use in spells. Someone suggested this would be safer.”

Nate pushed away his empty plate. “I’m gonna hate myself for asking, but where did you hold that conversation?”

“My mother’s old coven. I brought them the ashes of the voodoo priest.”

His torrent of expletives was truly impressive.

I grinned. Things were almost back to normal.

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Never Take the Bait

By Colleen Foley

“C’mon, really? Funky weather? That’s low rank crap. Tell Jimmy to have Ronny Sparks check it out.”

Seth raised an eyebrow at me, but otherwise didn’t move a muscle. I know that look. He wasn’t going to give an inch. It occurred to me that the whole thing might be a convenient excuse engineered by Jimmy, to get us talking again. If it was, he and I were having words.

I sighed heavily and pointed at the other chair with my fork.

“Fine. But this apple-rum pie is rumored to be legendary around here. You can talk while I eat.”

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Stick and Carrot

“Can’t you take a hint?” Nate focused on his pie.

“Six months is long enough to sulk.”

That got his attention.

“After dealing with legions of undead, a hive-mind violating me, and the rank invasion of your consciousness in mine, I deserve time off.” His spark of anger was like coming home to a fire in the hearth.

“You’ve had it.” I slid a file to him. “Uncle Jim called me.”

“Some legend risen to screw up our lives?”

“Nope. Weird weather in a small town.”

He sighed. “Okay. How bad could that be?”

Some questions shouldn’t be asked aloud.

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Avoidance

By Colleen Foley

Cider Mountain is a “quaint” little ski town in Vermont. It’s so quaint the only people who ever ski there are the locals and they like it that way. I’d spent the last few months going from one end of New England to the other staying in backwaters and back of backwaters Seth would never think to look in.

I needed time to sift through the BDSM and catharsis scented powder my mind had become after Kaia.

I had a forkful of apple-rum pie, mounded with whipped cream, halfway to my lips when He walked in the door, grinning.

Damnit.

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Flirting with Disaster

The plan came together in increments during a night drinking his favorite whiskey in his least favorite place. Sure, he’d needed time to recover from being possessed and slaughtering a colony of zombies, but since one of those had been a replica of my mother, and I’d processed that as best one might, he had no excuse for not returning my calls.

I packed my car, then followed the compass-shaped scar on my arm that unerringly points to my estranged brother. I found him in a pastry shop in some backwater town.

Not surprisingly, Nate wasn’t excited to see me

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Apostate

They thought that by giving me

Time out in a naked room

I would emerge contrite

Obedient

Shamed

Under the gaze of a saint.

The quiet space

Lit with images of grace

Gave me strength

Purpose

Determination

To see the world not as instructed

But in the way I was meant to

Beautiful

Somber

Complex.

Years later,

The sacred walls crumbling,

I came to remember

And took the window with me

When I left.

Photo: Gregory McStraw Photography

The Mark of a Good Editor

I kept my gaze locked with his. Damned if I’d back down when they needed me more than I needed them. His infinitesimal nod was both concession and slight.

“Belial tells me you need no coddling.” His voice like the flat of a razor, smoothing,  with threat implied.

“Don’t try to run me. God himself couldn’t manage it, much less his test-case creations.”

“Oh child, the things we deleted to preserve His preferred story are legion. But fear not, I’m a hands-off demon. I point, you kill, and we’ll get along famously.”

Truth without solace. I could work with that.

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Dance with the Devil

The gown supplied was a froth of silk, held together with filigree that showed enough flesh I’d forgone foundations. Our bargain precluded complaint. The male guests surely had none.

“I hate everyone here,” I murmured.

My angelic handler propelled me forward. “You hate everyone everywhere.”

“You most.”

“Yet you made the bargain.” Belial handed me pills, staples for my pretense of courage.

I swallowed them, then went to meet the lord of demons, pulled like a star toward a black hole.

He surveyed me. “Yes, I think you’ll do nicely.”

“Never nicely.”

His laugh caused lacerations. “No, not at all.”

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Dangling

The cord strained my arms, back, legs. Even the boulder bracing me groaned as I pulled. Don’t let go. Don’t let go.

“Let go,” a bittersweet plea. Liam had never believed in my strength. Even now, he doubted my resolve.

I tugged harder. He scrabbled for purchase, hindered by slick stone, ice forming in crevices, pebbling on my skin, turning fingers brittle.

The rope slipped. Liam’s gasp echoed off the canyon wall. Woven length wrapped around my hand, cutting off feeling, I turned around and heaved.

He scrambled over the top, tears frozen.

“Next time, wear the goddamned safety harness.”

Fresh Start

Do as you’re taught.
Do as you’re told.
Don’t look too hard
at the things that you hold.

Mind the condition
of soft oiled hide.
Keep sticky fingers
apart and aside.

These things we carry
are precious and few.
The ashes behind us,
ahead all is new;
no one will speak of
the deeds that were done
to you, me, and mama
under guise of ‘just fun’.

But I will remember
weak morning light,
soft squish of footprints,
remainders of night,
and chunky cold meat
that littered the floor
as we tanned him, left him,
and closed the back door.

Painted A Lady

Cleaned up, brushed out, laced tight, I finally looked like someone of value. I questioned why the angel would care, since he could see my shattered soul.

“I prefer a veneer of sanity when I present my finds.”

I was as much a whore as if he’d laid me down – which he threatened to do whenever I balked at his sartorial selections. I held out against heels. My paranoia prefers sneakers. I accepted flats.

“Who am I meeting?” I didn’t care.

“Satan.”

“I thought he was asleep.”

“No, Lucifer sleeps. Satan is far less kind.”

Suddenly, I cared very much.

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Damned blessing

Angel-boy couldn’t convert me with his promises of luxury and glamor. A pampered slave is still a slave, and I had enough things trying to control my life. Drugs, booze, sex: I had no qualms about doing too much, often simultaneously.

He didn’t mind my tendency to sin – liked it, in fact – but he detailed exactly what I’d done to my body in an attempt to escape its confines. There was no simplistic suggestion of rehab from heaven’s pretty demon. Instead, he offered what I wanted most: infinite capacity to recover.

It was a sucker deal, but I took it.

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The Right Tool for the Job

His elegant fingers reached for me. Behind him, the shadow of decaying wings, a bullshit trick; earth-bound angels can’t fly. No means of escape, I suffered his touch. His resultant smile set fire to places I wish I didn’t have. When I say you shouldn’t fuck with angels, I mean it.

“Just kill me,” I begged. “Whatever you want me to do, I’m gonna screw it up. Maybe on purpose. Your observers should’ve reported my predilections.”

“Indeed. I hope to see you indulge them all, and then some.”

“Why?”

His smile left me raw. “Because daughter, it will waken Lucifer.”

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Traditions

Marla stirred methodically, humming a lullaby familiar as my own name. I picked seeds from piles of pungent leaves, making a pyramid of possibility on splattered harvesting canvas. The kitchen smelled as it always had on brewing days: sweat, herbs, roses, and the stink of clarifying fat.

Marla sang with the same cadence as grandma had. Mama had skipped out on this part of her duty. On us, too.

I joined Marla, my fists filled with crushing green sweetness. “Told you Charlie Wright was good for something.”

“Bones woulda been optimal,” Marla said. “Still, it’s gonna be a fine gravy.”

Apostate

Stitches for the bigger lines
vining pink now that the blossoms
have been washed off,
running brown down the drain to disappear
in streams of crusted lifesblood,
promising scars much deeper
than a knife could go.

Plasters over nicks and scrapes,
mere reminders of the feel –
his hands on my nape, hers on my back
where welts now fade
to mottled yellow with a purple center,
another flower for the flower of my youth
crushed callously under heel
because I would not.

They call me heretic
when my only sin
was hearing the voice
of a god not their own.

You Get What You Pay For

When the city came down, flight was not an option, literal or figurative. We were cut off from the world, our own forever changed, no idea who survived or where.

We weren’t taken down by the strife of nations fighting over god and territory – never asking approval from the people who suffered and died – nor a “rogue operative” with a dirty bomb.

We did it ourselves, too busy focusing on sucking all the resources from the earth to notice the cracks – in society, the ice, the flatlands.

Seas rising, land trembling, our only prayers now are for a merciful end.

Outskirts

Peggy and I were mismatched as a pair of girls could be, she willowy, me a human fireplug. Ignoring snickering boys, frowning biddies, suspicious parents, she was my world and I hers.

The penalty for what we planned was beyond reckoning, but we had to get away. The woods whispered of a different world. We’d heard of its horrors our whole lives.

Dauntless, we climbed the wall and found it all true. Woodland people are savage, ruthless, cunning. Fighting every step, we learned first how to live, then thrive.

Civilization is a false façade for slavery. We will never return.