Khimairal Ink

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Stories by WE Marden Michael Merriam Anna Caro Stephanie Bonvissuto Tracey Shellito

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Publisher Claudia Wilde Managing Editor Carrie Tierney Assistant Editor C.A. Casey Layout/Story Art T.J. Mindancer

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In This Issue Samhain

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6 In Dreams of Black Sleep

Claudia Wilde Carrie Tierney HH

12 Cold Hand in Mine HH 20 The Buoyancy of Gold HH Memorial

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Michael Merriam Anna Caro

25 Stephanie Bonvissuto

ISSN 1939-3393 Khimairal Ink Magazine 31 is published January, The Frog Princess; or Sweet Surrender April, July, and October. Š 2009 Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company

WE Marden

34 Contributors

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Tracey Shellito

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edazzled Ink Publishing Company attended the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Trade Show this past weekend as a vendor. We had an interesting location between a publisher with books about erotica, vampires, zombies, and vegan cookbooks and one who only publishes science fiction and fantasy. We finally put chocolate out on our table to slow the flow between the two booths.

I had the good fortune to pick up two books from our Tachyon neighbors. As I finished the last one last night, I realized just how much I enjoy that genre. The majority of my adult and children’s book collections are either science fiction or fantasy. (I put my Nancy Drews and the Babysitters Club in the later category.)

I like the way speculative fiction makes you

think outside the box and look at life with less pre-conceived or conventional eyes.

Our stories this month are certainly not conventional. They deal with death, discoveries, and chocolate. Tales that crack the door open for a peek beyond the box and make you wonder if perhaps you should step outside.

Enjoy October’s issue of Khimairal Ink with authors Anna Caro, Stephanie Bonvissuto, Michael Merriam, WE Marten, and Tracey Shellito.

Thanks for reading!

Enjoy!

Claudia

Join us for the January 2010 issue featuring . . .

Spring Fever Jean Roberta A Light for Revelation R.G. Emanuelle Wet Paint V. Jo Hsu

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t’s October and the stories in this issue reminded me of the one of two holidays my ancestors contributed to the western calender.

That other holiday, St. Patrick’s Day, has more to do with drinking green beer than honoring a saint. The October holiday is typically Irish in that it mixes ancient pagan beliefs with Catholicism.

The Irish had no problem with combining their Samhain celebration—a festival of the dead— with All Saints’ Day on the first of November.

This issue celebrates Samhain in four very different ways. Death is but another realm in the shadow worlds of “In Dreams of Black Sleep”

by WE Marden. Death sends a spirit back to perform an important task in Michael Merriam’s “Cold Hand in Mind.” Death reminds us that life is too short to not be true to ourselves in “The

Bouyancy of Gold” by Anna Caro. Sometimes we learn more about a person after they died and then have to mourn all over again that person we never knew as in Stephanie Bonvissuto’s “Memorial.”

We’ve all heard of death by chocolate, and Tracey Shellito’s “The Frog Princess; or Sweet Surrender” is about chocolate. It’s not about death, but about a saint in the form of a nutritionist. We have safely made it to All Saints’ Day. Enjoy!

Carrie

Do you write stories that are positive, quirky, clever, funny, light, breezy?

Do you write stories that make us laugh, or at least smile a lot?

Do your stories stray from the garden path of expectation in amusing ways?

In other words, are your stories fun and original and entertaining and may even have an out-of-the-blue surprise or two or clever twists?

If “yes” to any of these questions, Nuance is looking for you. http://www.bedazzledink.com/nuance

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Year’s Best Lesbian Fiction, 2009 Edition Nominations and submissions are being accepted for the first Year’s Best Lesbian Fiction anthology. Anyone can nominate their favorite lesbian short story published in 2009.

Editor: Fran Walker, Andi Marquette Submission period: August 20, 2009 to January 31, 2010 Eligibility: Short stories with a lesbian character or theme, first published in an edited market in 2009, including stories from e-presses, print presses, journals, and zines.

Restrictions: No fan-fic. No unpublished, self-published, or vanity-published fiction. No stories that are strictly romance or erotica. Stories with erotic or romantic components are acceptable, but this collection is intended to complement rather than overlap with the Year’s Best Lesbian Erotica and Year’s Best Lesbian Romance anthologies.

Payment: $25 + one contributor’s copy.

Purchasing: reprint rights (trade paperback) for 18 months.

Scheduled publication date: June 2010 Visit http://bedazzledink.com/?page_id=431 to nominate your favorite story.

From Nuance Books . . .

Year’s Best Lesbian Fiction 2008 The first annual collection of the Best lesbian short stories published in 2008 http://bedazzledink.com/?page_id=150

Lavender Ink: Writing and Selling Lesbian Fiction

By Fran Walker, L-J Baker, Nann Dunne, Sacchi Green & Andi Marquette “Hooray for publishing this book!” -- Mark Leach, Now Voyager Bookstore, Provincetown, MA http://bedazzledink.com/?page_id=152

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yacinth could not remember when she had begun to fall in love with her shadow.

Perhaps it was on one of those hot, lazy days when the summer sun of Zymmerys beat down on the courtyard of the estate of a nobleman who had purchased her favors for a period of several weeks.

He came to her seldom. Despite being besotted with her youthful beauty—her firm, supple body, clear smooth dark skin, hair like a moonless night and eyes a darker ebony yet— he was the master of one of countless trading empires that dotted the Continent-spanning city of Zymmerys, The Jewel of the World, and seemed to ration himself her favors only when he had achieved a particular coup.

It was as if he held her face and body up before himself as a goad to even greater profits and dared sample her charms only when he surpassed his previous efforts.

It mattered little to Hyacinth. In the dozen years since her virginity had been expensively taken by an obese visiting dignitary who wanted a ten-year-old virgin, she had become incapable of surprise.

She lounged on a down-stuffed cushion beside a sparkling ice cold crystal fed natural bath. Servants brought her sweets which she turned away, liquors of all kinds, and powders and crystals which they informed her were essence of Red Dreams, Black Sleep, and other fashionable narcotics.

She waved them away, having seen too many girls her own age become burnt out hulks barred from fashionable bordellos and reduced to servicing visiting sailors along Zymmerys’ unspeakably foul port district.

She sipped a delicately scented tea from one of the Dryal Oases that took two years to make the arduous journey from desert wastes, across ocean, to the courtyards of the world’s wealthiest, largest and most profitable trading city.

It seemed she had fallen into a half awake state, aware of what was going on around her and yet unable to move.

In that dreamlike state she first took notice of a dark figure that seemed to lounge on a cushion directly in front of her.

She was dreaming, she knew, so she was not surprised when the figure raised its head to stare coolly back at her. The dark shape had no eyes, no mouth, no features, and yet Hyacinth suddenly thought it the most intensely beautiful thing she had ever seen in her life.

The feminine figure which she now knew was her shadow rose up off from the shadow couch on which it rested. Hyacinth felt a flush creeping over her cheeks and neck, a pleasurable warmth in the center of her stomach moving slowly downwards.

For the first time, she understood the longing that must captivate the faceless lovers who had crowded into her bed in the years since her initial disgusting experience with male sex.

There had been woman aplenty as well, but despite the pleasurable absence of male brute attack, it had never been anything more than an intricate facade of passion she had learned to play at.

Never had she felt this hot, urgent physical desire to reach out and stroke jet black flesh, to squeeze and hold close and caress. It was as frightening as it was exciting, her arms rising to welcome this new and impossible lover.

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The action of moving her arms broke the spell.

She shook her head, dispelling the last wisps of dream and saw the dark arms of her shadow rising out to meet hers. She lowered her arms.

The shadow arms dropped. Nearby servants looked at her curiously and she wondered if she had said or cried out anything in her sleep.

She wasn’t sure when that had happened, or if she had dreamed it, or if it had happened over and over. All she knew was that over the summer she had begun to watch the movements of her dark twin, to sense its symmetry and beauty.

It was like discovering a sister and a lover at the same time. An impossible, fantastic lover.

But words would not drive her feelings away.

Throughout that dreamlike summer, between the sweaty grasping hairy bodies that sought to become the center of her world and between the perfumed thrashings of female admirers, between the travels from courtyard to gardened alcove to cloud-touching sorcerous towers, her fascination with her shadow grew.

During the long nights as she writhed under fat and sweating, old and leathery, young and panting clients, she would watch the movements of her shadow against the wall and the nights were not as lonely as they had always been.

Carcoza, her pimp, raged at her after one assignation, kicking her carefully on the behind so that the bruises would not be easily seen by clients. The son of Aquitarian refugees from the bitter Aquitarian/Aquitanian civil wars of a generation before, he was expert in inflicting pain upon his female servants that would not cost him the slightest reduction in fees for their favors.

“Stupid cow,” he grumbled as he absentmindedly punched her in the stomach, just enough to cause her to lose her breath as pain blossomed but not enough to do any damage to internal organs. “Old Beebenezer said you refused to douse the lanterns in your chamber even though he demanded it. You know the old fool can’t pretend he’s young and vigorous when there’s enough light to show his breasts and rolls of fat.

He left unhappy. He left without a substantial tip.

And he left angry enough that he may not come back. That will cost me—and you—more than we can afford.”

She didn’t try to argue him out of his rage.

She had learned long ago that such was futile.

Instead she said in a conciliatory tone, “I’m sorry, love. I promise you I’ll please him so greatly the next time he visits me that he’ll pay you twice his normal price. I’ll make him feel like he’s twentyone again.”

Flashing a contemptuous smile, he reached out with the suddenness of a striking viper and seized her left nipple, twisting so painfully that she could not keep a scream of anguish from breaking free despite her long held vow never to show fear or pain in front of him.

“Oh, I know you will, you stupid bitch. But that’s not the only problem. I don’t understand this sudden fetish you have for keeping a lantern or candle burning at all hours. Are you a babe again fearing the dark? And worse, old Beebeneezer is not the first of your customers who’ve complained to me of a”—he searched for the right word—“a certain vagueness about you. It’s as if they are taking a rag doll instead of a flesh and blood woman.”

He stroked his jaw as he watched her trying to rub the pain out of her breast.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think you’d found yourself a lover, some foolish, foppish youth you’re giving your sweets away to for free, some candy-breathed child who has stolen your thoughts away so that you’re shortchanging the customers who pay for the roof over our heads and the food you shovel into your mouth. Is that it, sweet Hyacinth? Have you been so foolish as to fall in love without my permission?”

She shook her head, squirming backwards until she was against the wall, saying, “No, love. I would not be that foolish. There’s only one I love, the others are business. It’s you, only you.”

He must have had other things on his mind because he had just shook his head and uttered a laugh with no human kindness in it. Walking away he said softly, “Who would have thought it. The cool Hyacinth a slave to love. Foolish bitch.”

She was more careful after that, because she knew he was watching her and questioning her bedmates. She knew it would be only a matter of time before his anger erupted again.

Several nights later she lay staring out a window nearly forty quars above the gemlike

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streets of Zymmerys. From her window the glittering, pulsing lights of witchfire that sorcerously lit up much of Zymmerys after dark marked the passing coaches of noblemen and merchants, marked the never shuttered doors of taverns and gaming halls, festooned the slim silhouettes of magician’s towers that climbed high above into the night clouds.

She held out her fist and opened it to let the starlight play on the three small black crystals she held. She gazed at them for a moment and then placed them on her tongue.

It was as if the night rested on her tongue.

As the crystals of Black Sleep dissolved on her tongue a wave of darkness swept over her.

Gratefully she relaxed and let it take her far from the small room above the witchfire-lit streets.

After a timeless interval, a pale milky white light broke through. Hyacinth stood in an open space across from her Shadow twin, whose hand was held up as if pressed against a pane of glass between them.

She glanced around her, realizing she stood in an exotic garden or aviary, plants and trees all the single dark hue of her shadow.

A huge Arabolus tree which lived as long as a dozen generations of men, its leaves and branches winding together ever more tightly until men with axes could not hack through its cover, loomed over her.

On either side of the Arabolus tree were carefully sculptured, exquisitely scented Rallah Blossom bushes, bearing blooms almost the size of a baby’s head. Clusters of sinuous, metallic, and reptilian Wirwar vines snaking in and around the bushes.

She raised her hand to meet that of her shadow and—impossibly—felt the cool pressure of a female hand. Her other hand met that of her shadow.

Somehow she knew that the smooth, dark, featureless face of her double was smiling.

Something cold and cramped and twisted that had lain at the center of Hyacinth since she was old enough to realize what her life would be shattered in that moment and an answering smile grew on her face.

There was no need for words as she embraced her other self, the two of them sinking entwined to the mistily lit floor of the shadow garden.

Afterwards she lay in the crook of her lover’s arm, face pressed securely against the other’s black, smooth stomach.

“I never knew what it must have been like for them—my customers, all these years,” Hyacinth said. “I understand—a little—why they did what they did.

“I only wish I could die here and never have to go back. But I will take the Black Sleep again.

Let Carcoza consign me to the slutpens on the docks, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

The shadow head tossed black curls about and a voice that was like a whisper heard down the length of a night drenched street said, “No. If you die you will never return to the Shadow Gardens. And I will die with you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Don’t try, my love. Just listen. I am of you— I am shadow—but I am not you. I know your heart better than any other could, but you have your world and I have mine. Normally, we would live our lives apart and die apart and go to our separate fates.

“But our world has its own powers and sorcerers and I have found a way that you can escape Carcoza, escape the life you hate, and we can be together forever.”

Several days later Hyacinth was ushered into the waiting room of the mage Mavilor by a twisted servant with the head of bird of prey atop an apelike body that boasted impressive female breasts.

Mavilor was a small wizened man sitting on a stool behind a glowing desk of some blue FarSeeing crystal which from time to time would cloud over and then present scenes that appeared to be of Zymmerys, of far off lands like the Dryal Oases and the Aquitarian plains and the Olmerian mountain peaks, and often of no land or being she could recognize.

“And what service may I be to you, My Lady?”

She carefully let the folds of her nearly transparent gossamer gown fall in such a way as to reveal more than it concealed of her crossed legs, leaning forward so he could see her breasts clearly, the darkly tanned skin enticing against the white of the gown.

She told him what she wished. He pulled a goblet of some dark liquid out of the air with

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his left hand and took several sips before replying.

“Interesting request, I must say. I’ve been in this trade for well over four hundred years and this is only the second time I’ve ever been asked anything similar to what you wish.”

“Can you do it?”

He looked at her as if terribly insulted and said, “You wound me, My Lady. While rare, such a request is not unheard of and those of us in the trade are well familiar with the Shadow World on the other side of our own. Of course, I can do it.

The question is, will I? And can you afford my fee?”

She stood slowly, opening her upturned palm to reveal a small pouch in which gleamed golden coins. With her other hand, she touched a section of the gown and watched the sorcerer’s eyes as the white garment fell around her feet.

“I have gold and more.”

“You are an exceedingly attractive woman, my dear, but as I said, I am over four hundred years old and I can have my choice of women from this sphere or any of the thousands in the demonic and higher realms as well.”

She walked slowly toward him, working that oldest, most elemental magic to which all men are subject.

“We are both professionals. Let me demonstrate my skills and then we’ll discuss whether my pay is worthy of your service.”

When she arose from his bed in a room in a pocket realm where twin moons cast dizzying shadows and fragrant blue trees outside the window whispered in human voices, he said, “Return three nights hence and I will have prepared what you need. Visit me on four nights of my choice and your debt will be done.”

The four nights stretched over a month, during which she was careful to ensure that Carcoza became aware of her nightly visits to the sorcerer. Of course he had her followed, but he said nothing and even became gentler with her than before.

She allowed herself to become ever more negligent of her duties and contemptuous of her customers until the night that a young boy brought by his father, an old customer, left her bedroom in tears after she had laughed at the size of his male equipment.

Carcoza stormed in. He looked angrier than she could ever remember him.

“You stupid bitch,” he shouted, grabbing her by the arm and hurling her into the nearest wall.

As she came off it he backhanded her, driving her to the floor, blood gushing from a split lip.

“I gave you food and clothing and anything you wish, I protected you, and how do you repay me? You betray me with some street fakir and drive away our paying customers. I should kill you now, gut you like some beast for sale at the market, and hang your body out the window as a sign to your fellow whores.”

She made herself stare deep into his burning eyes and said, “You will not touch me again. If you kill me, Mavilor will have his servants drag you to some pocket hell and you will die for the next thousand years.”

“So this is courage born of your lover’s prowess? You think because some minor magician promises to protect some cheap whore that I should tremble in fear?”

She did not break under the power of his glare.

“I love him, he loves me. I stay with you only because I do remember all you have done for me. If I had let him have his way, he’d have had you killed a month ago and I would be his alone.”

The words he had been about to utter died in his throat. He did not make another step toward her. After staring at her for a long time, he stalked out of the room, letting the door close quietly behind him.

She knew she would not have to wait long.

Three days passed, days during which Carcoza spoke scarcely a dozen sentences to her. He did not strike her. She returned to business.

She was mopping the sweat of an Arlian sailor from her body that night when the door flew open.

She had never seen this Carcoza before, never seen him intoxicated by drink or narcotics.

His hair flew wildly and his customary cautious stare had been supplanted by a feverish glare in his eyes as he staggered into the middle of the room.

“Ho, stupid bitch,” he shouted, “I hope you had a wondrous love affair with your late lamented Mage, because I’m afraid where he’s

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gone now, he won’t be enjoying the pleasures of female flesh for a long time.”

It was not hard to act the terrified young girl he expected.

He reveled in her fear and held a bloody knife up to the lantern’s light for her inspection.

“Behold the instrument with which I slit your scummy sorcerer lover’s throat, ripped his balls off, and cut out his heart.

“That bastard, thinking he could steal my property, turn my woman against me, and I would do nothing merely because he knew a few spells. Showed him. Damn right.”

He held the blade up again and laughed.

“Should have seen the look on his face when I pulled this out . . . had come in pretending to need his services . . . never knew the knife was there . . . funnier seeing the look on his face when it went through his magic shields and cut his throat . . . arrogant bastard . . . as if there aren’t a thousand like him who would sell an ensorceled knife for a few gold coins . . .”

She tried to pretend that she was crying, but nothing could halt the growing smile that she revealed to a puzzle Carcoza.

“Oh,” he said after a stunned moment, “don’t smile too soon, my uppity bitch. You think that death is nothing to one like him. A few spells by a friendly mage or a sorcerous timed spell will bring him back?”

He laughed until he coughed as he brought out in his other hand a small round object like a silver egg.

“Behold, dear Hyacinth, the soul and power of the late Mavilor. Did you think I was so stupid I would kill your lover and not ensure that he could not come back after me? This spell cost a bit more than the knife, but it was worth it. We’ll have to leave here, move inland for awhile until those damned Guardians give up trying to find his killer. But I have you and enough of your sisters to lead a comfortable life inland.”

Hyacinth reached for the silvery object with trembling fingers. Carcoza held it out just beyond her fingertips, relishing the frustration that played upon her features, then danced back like a drunken bear balancing on hind legs.

“Oh, no, no, no my pretty Hyacinth. Think Carcoza is such a fool? Give you this bauble and some fine night you’ll be bringing back your

lover and the next thing you know fire elementals will be feasting on my liver in another realm.”

She lowered her head as if shamed by the impulse that had possessed her, then looked up at him and made herself shed tears that he would never know flowed from joy rather than sorrow.

“I’m sorry, my love. He made my head spin with his promises, made me more the fool than I already am to betray you. Please, let me continue to serve you. I will become a tavern slut and take on the worst dregs of the port if you think that is suitable punishment. Just don’t send me away.”

The speech obviously pleased him and he smiled. She touched the hand that held the bloody knife, caressing it and then laying her cheek against the side of his arm.

“You dared to kill a sorcerer for me, love, for a common slut. No whore deserves a master such as you.”

She turned as if to kiss the side of his wrist and set her teeth as deep and hard into his flesh as she could. He dropped the dagger and, roaring in pain, rapped the back of her head with the sorcerous silver container of Mavilor’s essence.

He bent down to pick her up, his eyes widening as she slashed upward into his groin, cutting arteries that spewed blood. She hit bone and jerked the knife free, stabbing again higher into muscle and flesh beneath his ribs.

He hammered her to the floor, standing over her swaying. She knew she had to move, to get away from him, until lack of blood weakened him so much that he could not threaten her.

As she stood, he grasped the blade protruding from his chest and with one swift move pulled it free and drove it deep into her stomach.

Losing his balance he sat down awkwardly on an expensive Messavi carpet in the center of the room.

He sat panting on the floor, surrounding by a growing red stain, as if he were too tired to rise to his feet. Looking at her with genuine curiosity, he said, “That was a damn fool thing to do, sweet Hyacinth. You’ve killed us both now.”

It was hard to talk but as she stooped to retrieve the sorcerous silver egg where he had

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dropped it, she said, “Not as foolish, my love, as you think.”

Pulling a small black vial that appeared filled with smoke out of a hidden fold in her gown, she began to recite the incantations Mavilor had taught her, letting her blood flow over the top of the vial. Heavy black smoke or fumes flowed out to settle over her shadow.

For the first time she saw herself without a shadow as the dark figure stepped away from her. She held out the silver egg that contained the essence of Mavilor and her shadow twin stretched out a hand toward it. For a moment black light flickered around the egg and then it was securely in the shadow twin’s hand.

She allowed herself to fall finally, down to eye level with Carcoza who had slumped to his side and was propping himself up on an elbow.

“What . . . madness . . . is this?” he croaked.

“I’m glad . . . you lived to see this, my love,” she said. “You made my escape possible, and I thank you.”

“What?”

“Mavilor sold me the spell to enter the Shadow Realm. But I knew I would never be

safe. He could find me. But now you have killed him, and I have given his essence to my Shadow Love and we will take it far into Shadow where his allies will never find him. Thank you.”

Carcoza’s eyes stared sightlessly into realms beyond even Shadow as she finished speaking.

Her lover knelt beside her, whispering, “Time to go, sweet Hyacinth.”

With no more than a gentle tug, Hyacinth found herself standing again. The light of lanterns was being replaced by that peculiar milky white radiance of the Shadow realm.

Then she stepped through that milky light into the pleasing grottoes of the Shadow Garden.

Faint memories of her life in the sunlight were aroused only on the rare occasions when she encountered lovers passing through the Garden on the other side of the Shadow.

Such encounters left those who walked in sunlight catching their breath at the sight of two shadowy figures. As they slipped into the shadows of the overhanging trees, they left behind only a laughter so sweet that it broke the hearts of those who heard them.

Read about the adventures of Torri and Kai. Friends in High Place the first book of the Far Seek Chronicles

Mindancer Press

http://mindancerpress.wordpress.com/books/friends-in-high-places/

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enna sipped on her morning coffee, peering over the rim of the cup at Callie. The ghost was dressed in the clothes she had worn when Jenna had picked her upon the side of the road, all those months ago. It was simply how Callie appeared: The jeans, studded belt, and pink and white pullover were a part of Callie’s existence, as was the denim jacket and heavy boots. But Jenna could still touch the clothes, feel the fabric, even— She looked away from Callie as she felt the warm blush travel up her cheeks, and the memory of the first time Jenna had worked Callie out of her clothing—starting with those boots—sprung into her mind.

“What are your plans today?” Callie asked, her blonde hair with pink tips swaying as she cocked her head. She always sat with Jenna during meals, though she did not partake.

“I want to drop off the rent check and let him know I have someone’s staying with me,” Jenna said, standing with the aid of her cane.

“Do you think it will be a problem?”

“No, but he does live above us, so I should tell him.” Jenna smiled. “After I’m back, we can lounge around all day.”

Callie gave her an impish little smile. “Sounds decadent.”

“I didn’t mean we would spend the whole day rolling around in bed.”

“No, we can roll around on the rug, and then on the futon, and then on the kitchen table.”

“Shut it, you!” Jenna laughed, swatting at Callie. “We could drive into the city. No one would recognize you.”

Callie shook her head. “I don’t know. The farther I get from Weatherford, the less real I feel.”

Jenna bit her bottom lip and frowned. Callie reached out with one cool hand and touched Jenna on the cheek. “Tell you what, you go pay the rent, and we’ll figure out some way to get us both out of the apartment without risking too many questions.”

“Deal,” Jenna said, grabbing her checkbook from her purse and dropping a kiss on Callie on her way out of the kitchen. “I’ll be right back.”

Jenna limped out the door and turned to face the stairs.

Charlie had once offered to put in a lift for her, but she had declined, determined to maintain her independence and a veneer of normalcy.

She limped. She used a cane for stability. She wasn’t a cripple. She paused halfway to the top.

She wasn’t crippled, only a little chipped up, that was all.

She smiled grimly. It was just as well she had fallen in with the ghost. It was hard enough being a lesbian in a town of barely ten thousand people—with few choices or options, and everyone in everyone else’s business—but to be damaged goods as well . . .

She pushed those thoughts down and finished climbing the stairs, pausing on the landing for a moment to collect herself before she knocked on Charlie’s door. Charlie opened it on the second knock. Jenna smiled up at her friend and landlord.

“Hey, Jenna,” Charlie said.

She waved her checkbook, and he beckoned her inside.

“How was the trip?” she asked, sitting on the futon and opening her checkbook. She stopped writing and gave her friend a closer inspection, not liking what she saw.

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Charlie looked thinner, and not in a good way, since he was already a tall, slim man to begin with. There was a fragile transparency a b o u t him, as if he might break apart and v a n ish. The long-sleeved shirt he wore hung loose on his body, threatening to swallow him, his sandy-brown hair was limp on his head and shot through with large streaks of grey that she did not remember being there before.

Charlie settled in the chair across from the futon. “It was good. I should have done this northern trade show tour a long time ago. I made more money in one month than I did in the first half of last year.”

Jenna nodded her head in appreciation.

“Nice.”

“Anything important happen while I was gone?” Charlie asked.

Jenna leaned forward. “In fact—” “Charlie, where do you hide the—” Jenna looked up at the sound of the new voice, trying to suppress a grin and failing.

“Karen. How are you?”

Karen Smith stood frozen, looking from Charlie to Jenna, the green bath-towel she had been vigorously drying her hair with forgotten in her hands. Jenna noted that Karen was wearing a bathrobe that looked to be about two-sizes too big for her.

“Um—” Karen said. “I’ll just go put on some clothes.”

The young blonde backed up two steps, then turned and darted away like a startled cat.

Jenna turned to Charlie. Normally she would be the first to cheer Charlie on—she knew good and well he’d been living like a hermit for the last several years—but she thought he should have more sense than to get involved with one of his own employees. “So—” Charlie’s expression remained neutral.

“So?” “She has very nice ankles.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow. “Yes, she does.”

“Spill!”

“We—sorted things out while we were on the road.”

“I’d wondered why you took Karen instead of Todd.”

Charlie chuckled. “Karen’s a better negotiator and more personable than Todd.”

“I see.”

Charlie leaned toward her. “There’s going to be some changes in the house and at the store in the next few months.”

“Changes?” Jenna asked, alarmed.

“Oh, nothing big, just a few comings and goings. Why don’t you come by this evening after dinner, and I’ll explain what’s going on. If you’re free, that is.”

“Yes, of course. Also, I—um—I’ve got some news of my own.”

Charlie leaned back in his chair. “Go ahead.”

Jenna felt a warm blush rise on her cheeks. “I have a—friend—staying with me.”

Charlie’s smile widened. “A friend. Or a friend?”

“A friend.”

“Bring her along.”

Jenna blinked. She had no idea if Callie had known Charlie in life. “I’ll ask her, but she’s kind of private.”

“Someone in this house is private?” Karen said, joining the conversation as she settled on the arm of Charlie’s chair.

She was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with what Jenna suspected was a comic book character, given the ridiculous size of the breasts the image was sporting.

“Jenna has a new friend,” Charlie said, his voice cheerful.

Karen snorted. “Damn. Go away for a month and look what happens. When do we get to meet her?”

“I invited them over tonight after dinner.”

Karen turned toward Jenna. “We girls can plot how to take over the house from Charlie.”

“You can have it!” He laughed.

Jenna stood, leaning on her cane. “I’ll talk to her, but no promises. She’s kind of shy.

However, I will stop in.”

“Good,” Charlie said. “Say, around seven? I’ll provide drinks and snacks.”

“Maybe I’ll bring something to share,” Jenna said, stepping into the landing. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”

“Tonight,” Charlie agreed, closing the door.

Crap! Jenna thought. She really needed to know if Callie had known Charlie or Karen while she was alive, but Callie’s memories of her life were fragmented.

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Ah well, she thought, it’s unlikely Callie would want to go anyway.

J

enna sat on her sagging blue futon and waited for Callie. The ghost had decided to try to change the appearance of her clothes. She sighed. Jenna still did not understand why Callie was determined to go with her to Charlie’s.

Callie had shown little interest in the outside world since the Jenna had pulled over for the ghostly hitchhiker.

Jenna was not the first person to pick Callie up from the side of the road. In the last twenty years there had been no less than seventy-two reported incidents concerning the restless spirit.

Everyone who lived in Weatherford eventually heard the tale of how Callie Hendrickson had been killed in a hit-and-run accident one summer night while walking along Highway 54, or else they met someone who claimed to have given Callie a lift, only to have her vanish from the car as they passed by Greenwood Cemetery. Jenna had known all this the night she had seen the platinum-and-fuchsia-haired apparition walking down the side of the highway just south of the radio station, near the spot her broken body had been found.

No, Jenna was not the first person to pick Callie up from the side of the road: She was the first to take the ghost home. As Jenna had approached the cemetery, she had reached out and placed a hand on Callie’s knee, wanting to touch the ghost if she could, before she vanished from her car. They had both been startled at the solidness of the contact, and when Jenna rounded the gentle curve that turned Highway 54 into Main Street, the spirit was still sitting in the passenger seat of Jenna’s little Mazda. Jenna’s hand rested lightly on Callie’s knee all the way home. Not knowing what else to do, she had invited the spirit inside.

“How do I look?”

Jenna blinked and raised her head. Callie stood in front of her, her clothing changed to a black skirt and boots, her bare, pale legs contrasting against them. A white t-shirt and black jacket completed the ensemble.

“You look tasty,” Jenna said.

“I was afraid it might be a little too much.”

“I like it.” Jenna stood, leaning on her cane.

Callie kept a hand firmly on Jenna’s back to steady her as they climbed the stairs to Charlie’s apartment. Jenna reached out and knocked on the door, her stomach twisting up in a knot of misgivings. Karen Smith had gone to college here. As for Charlie, she wasn’t sure. He could be a life-long resident of Weatherford for all she knew. She put on her best smile as the door opened.

“Hey,” Karen said, smiling back at her. “Come on in. Charlie’s in the kitchen.”

As if summoned by the mention of his name, Charlie walked back into the living room from the kitchen, a bottle of wine in hand. He smiled at Jenna.

“There you are. Come in and introduce us to—” He paused as Callie stepped around Jenna.

“Hello, Charlie,” she said softly.

Jenna nervously looked from Callie to Charlie and back again. The ghost looked pensive, while what little color Charlie still possessed drained from his face. He swayed on his feet and Karen moved to steady him. She gave Jenna and Callie a sharp look as she led him to a chair in the living room, settling him into it as if he were a frail old man, which he suddenly resembled in a way that worried Jenna.

Charlie kept his eyes on Callie for several seconds. “Hello, Callie. It’s been a long time.”

Callie, tears pooling in the corner of her eyes, nodded her head.

“Well,” Charlie said, looking directly at Callie and trembling slightly, “this—complicates things.”

Callie nodded again, moving to stand behind Jenna like a child seeking the safety and protection of its mother. Jenna held tightly to the ghost as she settled on the futon with Callie, wondering how this was going to go down.

“You said you had news,” Jenna said. She wanted to put off the impending awkward conversation as long as possible.

Charlie nodded. “I think we should start with that, actually. I’m going to be less involved with the comics shop. Karen’s taking it over.” Charlie and Karen shared a look. “And, Karen’s moving in with me.”

Jenna felt Callie tense on the futon next to her.

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There was a slight drop in temperature around the ghost, and in that moment Jenna was struck by how much Callie and Karen resembled each other. They were both short, willowy blondes with straight, relatively thin hair and round faces.

“I’ve already got a new tenant for Karen’s apartment.” Charlie looked directly at Callie.

“Leah’s moving back. She’ll be here in a couple of days.”

Before Jenna could stop her, Callie jumped from the futon, her clothes changing back into what she wore on the night she died.

“Shit!” Karen cried as Callie’s spirit passed through the door.

Jenna turned back and looked at Charlie. He was pasty white, his breaths shallow.

“Go to her,” Charlie said. “I’ll explain to Karen.

We can talk later.”

Moving as quickly as she could manage with her cane, Jenna hobbled after the ghost.

“Callie!” Jenna called out as she burst into her apartment. “Callie, please talk to me!”

Jenna walked around the entire space, looking in every room to no avail. She sat down on the futon and bent over, resting her head in her hands. Callie literally had vanished into thin air, and there was nothing Jenna could do, except sit on her futon and wait.

“Damn,” she whispered into the empty room.

J

enna sat in her little Mazda, tapping the steering wheel with her fingers in agitation.

“That’s not helping,” Charlie said from the passenger seat.

“Sorry,” Jenna mumbled.

Karen leaned forward from the backseat. “We should start.”

Jenna nodded and pulled out of the radio station parking lot and started down Highway 54 toward Weatherford.

Callie had not reappeared. Jenna had cornered Charlie in his apartment, demanding answers. Charlie had been silent, but promised to help Jenna seek out Callie, which was why they were all piled into Jenna’s little Mazda.

“You think this will work?” she asked Karen.

“Everything I could learn about Callie’s apparition gave the impression that she

appears between eleven-thirty at night and one in the morning.”

“So we drive around in a circle all night and hope for the best?”

“We drive in a circle,” Charlie agreed.

“It’s a crap-ass plan,” Jenna said, driving as slowly as she dared down the two-lane highway.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie said. “I had no idea Callie would react so strongly to Leah moving back home.”

Jenna turned down the street just past the cemetery and turned around in the parking lot of a local heat and air business. “I still want to know what’s going on.”

“So do I,” Karen echoed. “It’s creepy enough that Jenna’s been in a relationship with a dead girl—” “It’s not like I was humping her rotting corpse,” Jenna muttered.

Karen continued, ignoring Jenna’s outburst.

“But then all you’ll tell us is that there’s ‘history’ between you, Leah, and Callie.”

“It’s not all my story to tell,” Charlie said with a sigh. “I’d rather we had Callie in the car with us before we go into it. I’d actually rather Leah was here to talk about it as well, but she never spoke about Callie again after—” Jenna glanced at the dark cemetery as they drove past it, heading back toward the radio station. Jenna thought about finding her lover’s grave and giving Callie a piece of her mind for running away with no explanation, but Callie’s ghost had always been seen along the highway, near the spot of her death. She would go with Karen and Charlie’s plan because it was the only one she had, and she figured the police might not be too impressed with her standing over Callie Hendrickson’s final resting place, swearing fit to raise the dead.

As she drove back up the highway toward the radio station, she thought she saw the barest glint of platinum hair in her headlights, but when she tried to lock her eyes on the flash, only darkness greeted her.

“I thought—” she began.

Charlie frowned at her. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“No. I saw something too,” Karen whispered from the back seat.

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“Are you sure?” Charlie asked.

Jenna hit the gas, eating up the distance between them and the radio station rapidly, while praying there wasn’t a patrol officer nearby. She whipped the Mazda around in the parking lot, making Charlie reach for the handle over the door while Karen gave a startled squeal from the back. Jenna held the wheel tightly as the car bounced back onto the blacktop and started back toward Weatherford.

“Jenna?” Charlie said.

“Yeah?”

“We want to find Callie, not join her.”

Jenna caught the flash of Karen’s pale hand as she reached up and smacked Charlie gently on the shoulder.

“That’s not funny,” she said.

Jenna glanced at Karen in the rearview mirror. “Will you two please—” Karen’s scream and Charlie’s sudden curse startled Jenna, making her swerve into the other lane. She corrected just enough to get them back into their own lane and to the shoulder before she slammed on the brakes, stopping the car. Jenna leaned over the wheel, panting, her foot firmly pressing the brake pedal to the floor.

“Sorry,” Karen said.

“What is wrong with you two?” Jenna snapped.

She felt Charlie tap her on the arm. Standing outside the car on the passenger side was Callie. Jenna pushed the button to lower the window.

“Hi,” Callie said. “Can I get a lift?”

Charlie scrambled out of the car and held the door open for Callie. The ghost smiled at him as she climbed in.

“Hey,” Callie said. “I’m sorry I ran off like that.”

“It’s okay. Let’s go home.”

J

enna closed the door behind her with a sigh.

“How is he?” Callie asked.

“Exhausted. I was worried that Karen and I might not be able to get him up the stairs. We managed to get him into bed. Karen can handle it from there.”

Callie nodded. “I’m really sorry. I would have helped, but . . .”

“It’s okay.” Jenna lowered herself to the futon, sitting next to her lover. “Charlie said you could tell me, if you want.” She reached out and placed a hand on Callie’s knee. “I think he’s going to give Karen whatever the story is as soon as he’s rested.”

Callie stared off into space for several seconds before she spoke. “Charlie, Leah, and I all went to high school together, down in Cyril.

Leah and I were in the same class. Charlie was one year ahead.” Callie favored Jenna with a sad little smile. “I moved there my sophomore year.

I was . . . not the person you know. I changed when I went to college. And being dead has given me a different outlook. Back high school I was this mousy little thing, quiet and half-scared of the world.”

“I take it you can remember everything now?”

“Yeah. Seeing Charlie brought it all back.”

Jenna leaned forward and took Callie’s hands in hers. “Tell me.”

“We moved to Cyril when I was fifteen.

Drinking had cost my father everything, and getting the janitor’s position at the new factory was mostly luck. Mom was always sick with something. Charlie and Leah lived with their mother in the trailer next to us. Mrs. Massey worked two jobs, so Charlie and Leah pretty much took care of themselves. Once I moved next door, they took care of me too.”

“I take it adjusting to the new school was difficult.”

Callie glanced sideways at her, a mirthless smile on her face. “It sucked. Most of those kids had known each other since first grade. It made for a very small number of close-knit social circles, none of which I fit into. I wasn’t smart enough for the smart kids. I didn’t do drugs, so the stoners were right out. I didn’t wear the right clothes for the snobs, and I refused to put out, so I didn’t do well with the jock crowd. No one read the same books or listened to the same music I did.”

“Sounds like hell.”

“We made the best of it. Charlie was in the same situation. Their mom had bought the trailer and moved there a couple of years

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earlier, after his parents split up. Leah—have you met her?”

“I’ve said ‘hi’ in passing, that sort of thing.”

“If Charlie and I were misfits, Leah was trouble on two feet. She didn’t trust anyone except Charlie and me, and she wouldn’t take any shit.

She got herself suspended three times her junior year alone.”

“Really?”

Callie smiled. “Oh yeah. And then in her senior year, after we didn’t have Charlie around to help protect us from trouble, she got into a nasty fight in the hallway that ended in police cars and ambulances.”

Jenna raised her eyebrows in question.

“I got cornered by a couple of seniors behind the school during lunch hour. I was too scared to run or scream, but then Leah came along looking for me and caught them groping my breasts.

She chased them off, and I kind of went to pieces.”

“I take it she wasn’t satisfied with whatever punishment was handed out.”

Callie laughed, harsh and hard. “There wasn’t any punishment. They were both senior starters on the football team, and if there’s one thing about rural Oklahoma, it’s that football is religion. They strode right behind us between classes laughing and talking about how small my tits were. By fifth hour it was obvious nothing was going to happen to them, so between fifth and sixth hour Leah walked out to her car and got a tire iron.”

“Oh hell.”

“She might have gone to jail, except I threatened to press assault charges against the boys. I think the police negotiated a deal with all the adults involved. Leah got suspended, and I had to keep my head down for weeks.”

Callie paused and frowned. “Then Mrs. Massey died, and Charlie dropped out of college to come home and take care of Leah.

By then my mom wasn’t getting out of bed much and dad was down to doing odd jobs around town to keep the rent paid and the beer flowing.

I moved in with them after the funeral.”

Jenna couldn’t help herself. “So you lived with Charlie?”

Callie placed a hand on Jenna’s knee. “Yes, I did, and yes, we did. He actually offered to take

me to senior prom, but by then I had figured out that I really liked someone else.”

“Leah.”

“Leah. Charlie just laughed and took us shopping for prom night. It was the only time I ever saw Leah in a dress. He escorted us in, danced once with each of us, and then got out of our way.”

“That sounds like something Charlie would do.”

“After graduation, we all moved to Weatherford.

I got accepted to Southwestern, Charlie got back in, and Leah took a temp job. Things were good, at first.”

Jenna gathered the ghost close as Callie hung her head. “What went wrong?”

“I did. Once I got around people like me, I came out of my shell. Changed my hair and the way I dressed. I even slipped over the border and got a tattoo. Leah wanted things to stay the same, or at least that’s what I thought at the time. We started fighting. Looking back, I realize Leah was scared that I was going to leave her behind.”

“You might have,” Jenna said softly.

“I did!” Callie countered. “We fought and I got out of her car. And then she drove away and I died and left her behind and that’s why I’m so fucking afraid to see her!”

Jenna felt her insides coil up and turn cold at the realization that Callie had unfinished business with—and unresolved feeling—for Leah. Callie must have felt the change in Jenna’s body language, because she sat up suddenly and took Jenna’s face in her hands.

“Leah’s my past. You’re my here and now.”

“And the future?” Jenna asked in a whisper.

“I don’t have a future. I’m dead. But while I’m here, I’m yours.” Callie leaned forward, stopping with her lips less than an inch from Jenna’s.

“Yours,” she whispered.

Before Jenna could reply, Callie pushed her down to the futon and leaned over her, kissing her, running her hands over her. Jenna returned her ministrations enthusiastically before breaking the kiss and looked into Callie’s pale green eyes.

“Promise?” Jenna asked.

“For as long as we have together.”

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“Good,” she said before returning her lips to Callie’s.

“S

o how is this going to happen? Because I don’t think springing me on Leah would be a good idea.”

“We have to tell her,” Charlie replied.

“I should go away,” Callie said, looking at the floor. “I didn’t mean to put you and Leah through this.”

“I don’t want you to go away,” Jenna said.

“Neither do I,” Charlie agreed. “I want to spend as much time with you as you and Jenna are comfortable with.”

The three turned to the door as it opened.

“It’s a little early for Karen,” Charlie muttered.

The woman who walked through the door was not Karen Smith. In fact, she was about as far from looking like Karen was possible, with her spiky black hair and round, curved figure.

She wore faded jeans and a blue shirt unbuttoned over a yellow t-shirt.

“Hey, I’m home.”

With a quick glance toward Callie, Charlie stood. “Um, Leah—” Leah Massey looked from where she had dropped her bags to the people on the futon.

She glanced past Jenna with barely a passing nod before her eyes found Callie.

There were several moments of silence as Jenna held her breath. Leah took a handful of tentative steps into the room, confusion, denial, fear, and anger playing across her face with every step. She stopped halfway between the door and Callie, who had risen from the futon.

“What the fuck is going on?” Leah asked in a low, harsh voice.

“Let me explain,” Charlie said, taking a step toward his sister.

Leah bristled. “What kind of sick bullshit is this?” She gave Charlie an incredulous look.

“What are you playing at?”

“Leah, please,” Callie said.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“It’s me. Callie.”

Leah snarled and struck out with her fist.

Callie simply stood still and let the blow pass

through her. Leah stumbled and shrieked, nearly falling to the floor before Charlie reached out and steadied her. With a wild scream, Leah gave Charlie a violent push and turned toward the door. Jenna was just able to catch hold of Charlie before he crashed downward.

She looked up as she held Charlie tightly by the arm.

“Someone should go after her,” Charlie said, settling into the chair Jenna had guided him to.

Jenna looked at Callie. “I guess that means you.”

Callie frowned. “I’m not sure she’ll talk to me.”

Jenna turned back to Charlie. “Are you going to be all right?”

“I’ll be fine. Just go find her,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand.

Jenna limped out the front door and moved down the stairs as quickly as her leg and cane allowed, Callie following in her wake. They found Leah sitting on the steps of the fire escape that ran along the side of the building. She held her head in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

“Stay here,” Callie said.

Jenna stood silently as Callie cautiously approached the woman. Leah looked up. She stood and started to leap from the steps, but whatever Callie said must have convinced the other woman. Leah’s shoulders slumped and shook as Callie reached out a tentative hand, then withdrew it.

J

enna peered at the empty spot on the bed and then at the alarm clock: two-eighteen in the morning. She sat up, the sheet and blankets slipping from her bare shoulders, leaving her shivering in the cold room.

“Callie?”

When no answer came, she climbed from the bed and, picking her robe up from the floor and tying it around her body before grabbing her cane, walked out into the living room. She found her ghostly companion sitting on the futon, staring into the dark.

“Callie?”

“I have to go away. I understand now and I—I can’t stay. I can’t . . .”

Jenna settled on the futon and took Callie’s

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cool hand in her own. She gave it a squeeze.

“They say ghosts who walk the earth have unfinished business. I take it you’ve figured out what your business is?”

“Yes,” Callie whispered. “I thought getting Leah to forgive herself might be it, but it’s not.”

She wiped her cheek with the back of her hand.

“You’d think being dead would mean never needing to cry,” she said in a shaky voice.

“How long does Charlie have?” Jenna asked.

Callie turned and looked at her, startled.

Jenna gave her a sad little smile. “Anyone can see it on him. How long?”

“A few more weeks.” Callie leaned into her. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

“Will it change anything if you leave?”

Callie shook her head no, her pink tips swaying around her shoulders.

Jenna put an arm around the ghost. “I’m not going to say you have to, but I think—I think if Charlie is going to go—” Jenna swallowed back her own tears. “It seems at the end, we all end up going alone, you know? And I can’t help but think, if he doesn’t have to do this all alone, is that such a bad thing?”

Callie sniffed. “Leah. And Karen . . .”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

Jenna pulled Callie close. “I don’t want you to go either, but . . . I think we both always knew.”

“Shit,” Callie whispered.

There was really nothing Jenna could say to that.

T

hree months later Jenna Munro woke to sirens and flashing lights. She did not need to reach across the bed to realize it was empty.

She lay there for several moments, letting her own tears fall. Finally she rose, dressed, and walked into the hallway. She found Karen on the landing outside of the door to the apartment she and Charlie had shared for the last three months. The look in the small blonde’s eyes told Jenna everything she needed to know: Charlie was gone.

Together they walked down to the parking lot where Leah stood watching the ambulance as it drove away. Jenna led them all back to her

apartment. She brewed a pot of strong coffee and settled on the futon with Karen and Leah.

It was Leah who broke the silence.

“Callie?”

“She’s gone, too,” Jenna whispered.

“He was sitting in his chair,” Karen said, shaking. She burst into tears.

Leah turned toward Karen and gathered the smaller woman into her arms. “He loved you so very much.”

Jenna stood. “Maybe I should—” Karen looked up, her eyes red and puffy. She held out a hand. “Stay.”

Jenna sat down again, Karen between her and Leah. She leaned against the blonde and let her own misery have free rein.

J

enna stood in front of the two graves, leaning on her cane. She had been surprised that Charlie owned a series of plots around Callie’s grave, though in retrospect, she should have known. Charlie had been looking out for Callie and Leah for years: Of course he would have been the one to take care of her final resting place, and of course he would have made sure there were places for himself, Leah, and two more nearby.

Jenna dropped the small bundle of flowers between the graves. She looked over her shoulder. Karen leaned against the car. Leah sat behind the wheel, patiently waiting. Jenna turned back to the graves, one flat and covered with grass, the other a fresh mound of dirt. She wondered if Charlie had planned this as well, had somehow known that the women he would leave behind would be stronger together in the face of his passing. She wouldn’t put it past him.

“Thank you both,” she said softly.

She turned and walked slowly toward the car without a backward glance.

20

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Khimairal Ink

he last time Maisie had been home was almost two years before, just after the winter storm which had dredged up gold coins from the seabed and left them scattered down Holmby’s tiny main street. She had cried then too, but more from the pressures of the previous week. Classmates she had barely spoken to would catch her at the bus shelter or in the Union Café and offer their congratulations or think they were being funny when they asked her to pay their tuition fees.

She could hardly blame people for their wellintentioned jokes, even though every time she saw the images of the stone-paved street scattered with gold a shudder ran through her body until she almost cried. Though most seemed relieved when her father and uncles had taken it far out to sea in the middle of the night and let it fall to the depths of the black ocean, Maisie knew that such things could not stay buried forever.

Maisie gripped the steering wheel hard as she swung around the headland. She had left the main road almost an hour ago, and now it was only her and the occasional farm vehicle on this unforgiving network of narrow roads. She tasted a fragment of Becca’s lip gloss which had somehow survived the energy drinks and rice crackers which had been sustaining her for the past eight hours. The white Honda hugged the cliff desperately as the wind threatened to sweep her into the sea. At this latitude season was no guide to weather.

There had been a time when they had made this journey every week, six or seven of them crowded into a small van, waking early on Monday for the two hour journey to school

and returning home Friday night. As a thirteen year old she had found it tiring, disorientating, but by eighteen it was routine, studying for the Monday afternoon exam over the blare of the radio, her book jolting violently across her knee at every bend. Maisie felt a burst of nostalgia as she remembered those days. Wind blew salt spray across the windscreen. In the mirror she could see her life piled up on the back seat; a turquoise duvet, boxes of clothes, piles of books tied together with garden twine.

They stuck together, the Holmby kids, and when Maisie’s biology teacher had started to give her university prospectuses she’d felt almost like a traitor. She had never expected to leave, and saw no need to; she was strong, knew the farming procedures, and had a good head for business. And she loved the village she had been brought up in.

But slowly she’d realized that she needed to go. She had felt she was missing out on so much, and as she’d looked at the photos in the prospectus she began to picture herself in them; her sitting on the checked duvet in the room with a pinboard and two bookshelves. Her, drinking thick coffee on a bench under a tree in the courtyard. Her with her head bent down, making notes on a spiral bound pad of A4 paper. The pictures ended at graduation; she had had no intention of staying there forever, as she had continually reassured her parents, reassurances which had now turned hollow.

She had bought her car from Jamie Thomas, who wanted to upgrade to something better. “By which he means faster,” his mother had grumbled. She’d found some paint in a shed at school and carefully painted the vehicle’s

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name—Aurora—on the driver’s door, and below it some soft circles of green, pink, and blue. She’d ransacked the house, taking spare linen and coffee mugs, pens, and teaspoons, loading them onto the back seat. Then she had headed west, along the coastal road, through town, past her old school, and out onto the motorway.

When she had first arrived, she’d hated it.

Her room was a tiny box on the eleventh floor, and she hid there with the TV on loud to block out the traffic sounds below. She almost went home that first week, but then her room brightened as she bought pictures and a bedspread, she nervously knocked on doors next to hers to introduce herself, and once she knew which buses to catch and how to get home, the city didn’t seem as scary as it once had.

She saw, as she swung round the bend, the tiny cluster of white-washed buildings that made up the village proper, and the outlying farmhouses dotted between the fields. The fishing boats were tied up on the water. She took a sharp right up the farm track, stopped halfway to untie the gate, and then she was home.

She had expected to find things as she’d left them, the intangible sense of worry which had hung over the town since the gold had washed in still lingering. But everything was back to normal. Her mother and the little ones—though not so little anymore—were waiting for her. Only Robbie was missing, having taken a four month contract a couple of hours south.

“Maisie, so good to have you home,” her mother chirped, throwing her arms around her as Clara and Jacob gave her embarrassed but welcoming smiles.

Then, after this momentary hiatus, the house was in motion again, with dinner being cooked and labels being written and her father coming in with clothes all covered in mud, placing one hand firmly on Maisie’s shoulder.

As the smell of roast pork spread through the house, Maisie went upstairs to see her grandmother. Her parents had confirmed what she’d suspected for a while; the cancer had spread throughout her body and she had perhaps only weeks left. Maisie tried to fix an image of her in her mind, propped up on white pillows under the quilt she had made herself as a young woman.

Maisie’s effort at quilting paled in comparison; a misshapen cushion composed of brightly colored printed fabrics. She’d spent many hours over it in her last days at primary school but just couldn’t get it to work out; the stitches were large and irregular, always yanked too tight.

Maisie stayed only a few minutes, having been warned not to tire her grandmother, telling her the sort of things she hoped the dying woman would be proud to hear, promised to be back. She fell comfortably into the old routine; the early mornings, the full but less frantic days.

She chatted with her parents, old friends, and the other villagers as easily as she had before.

But each day she trailed the extension cable for the phone up to her and Clara’s bedroom when the younger girl was at school, and spoke in hushed tones, euphemisms, terrified of being caught, unsure of what she was scared of being caught doing.

Her mother spotted her discomfort, and guessed half the reason. “You’re not staying, are you?”

Maisie shook her head. “I didn’t know how to tell you.”

“It’s okay, everything changes.” Maisie could tell she was upset, though.

Her mother pointedly pulled out some spiral bound books from a shelf, spread them out on the table. “Correspondence course in business management. I’m trying to streamline everything, and then maybe look at learning something new.

Traditional farming doesn’t cut it nowadays; you need to have something special to offer.”

Maisie wasn’t sure what to say.

“Look, I’m not trying to make your decisions for you. I’m just saying that you don’t need to think of us as stuck in the past. You could put what you’ve learned to good use. There’s always room for you here.” She paused. “Is there a boy?”

Maisie closed her eyes and shook her head.

“No boy.” But there was Becca.

During the first week there had been free music and cheap food in the courtyard, and Maisie had spent her lunchtime sitting on a bench nibbling a greasy sausage because she had nothing better to do and the hour between classes was insufficient time for it to be worth returning home. Becca had sat down next to

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her, her tight curls stretched firmly into a pony tail, and they had made friendly but non specific conversation, the type of questions everyone asks and answers in their first week.

The next time they met was three months later. Maisie was at a party hosted by a friend of one of her new friends, a scummy flat clinging desperately to the top of a hill. She didn’t talk to Becca, or anyone at first, but with a couple of drinks inside her she perched on the windowsill next to the ripped bar stool Becca had been sitting on. On the face of it, they had little in common; Becca was a city girl, loud and popular, but when they talked they found themselves laughing before the joke had even been said, one anecdote spilling seamlessly into the next. Maisie noticed the pink streaks in Becca’s hair, and the way the light reflected off her lip gloss.

Maisie continued to visit her grandmother, just for a few minutes, twice a day. She tried to say things that would please her, but they just didn’t seem close like they had once been. And then, as she was turning to leave . . .

“Sit down, Maisie.”

Maisie sat on the quilt, her legs dangling over the edge of the tall wooden bed as if she were still a child.

“I’m not going to be here much longer,” she said, waiving down Maisie’s protest before she even uttered it. “And I need to make sure you can pass down the stories. Tell me about the king’s ship.”

Maisie took a deep breath. “Once, many years ago, there was a girl called Johanna. She was the prettiest girl in the village, with dark hair that fell past her waist. She was betrothed to a fisherman called Ted, and they were deeply in love.”

It was strange how her repeating these things didn’t seem at all silly when she was in Holmby.

“And then a king from a far off land saw her, and wanted her for his own. He offered gold and jewels to her father, and he accepted them, and she was taken onto his ship to be his wife.

But as they left a storm blew out of nowhere, and the ship sank. The next night treasure from the ship washed up on the shoreline. Three men testified that on the same night they saw Johanna’s father suspended in mid air, with

nothing holding him up, but his face blue as though drowning, his arms and legs thrashing desperately in thin air. They tried to help him but each time he seemed to move further and further away from them. Their accounts of his last words differed, but it all came to the same thing; she could do the same to any of them at any time.”

Maisie’s grandmother shook her head. “I think you need to know the real story. Otherwise it will die with me. There was no Ted, just a girl called Laura, who was my great grandmother.

She and Joanna were in love, but when Laura’s father found out he arranged for Johanna to be taken away. You have the next bit right; the only thing you’re missing is that Laura ran out in her night gown and gathered up the treasure, and kept it all her life. But I don’t recommend you tell people that just yet.”

Maisie felt her face burn, focused her eyes on the blue and brown strips of the quilt. “Do you . . . do you believe it was real?”

“Maybe not in so many words. But young girls can have ways of influencing things with their minds. No one really understands how it works, but you’d do well to bear that in mind.”

That night Maisie dreamed of drowning. She was in a boat which was being sucked under water, and above her she could see Becca’s face, distorted by the ripples, getting further and further away.

A loud banging on the door broke her nightmare. Clara and Jacob had run downstairs ahead of her, and when they opened the door she heard yelling about a ship. Before their mother could get downstairs they had flung long coats over their pyjamas, slipped on shoes, leapt onto their bikes, and pedaled furiously down to the shore. They could hear shouts from the shoreline below, where all the lights in the cottages were on, but the night felt eerie; there was no wind, the farm animals were silent, and she couldn’t even hear the waves.

And then, as they got closer, she saw it—a mast barely illuminated by torches. It was coming in closer, and when she got down to the beach she felt an almost overpowering sense of dread, as if something was carried on the air around the ship. Closer, now, she could see the rotting wooden planks dripping with green, the

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worn carving at the prow. The whispers were running round; she’s coming back. And Maisie knew that she wasn’t a reference to the ship.

People were building a hopeless barricade in its path; boxes and old fence posts, furniture from the nearest houses. Though they were trying to stay strong, their voices shook on every shout. The shoreline may halt the ship, it may run aground on the rocks there, but there was something which came with it that each of them knew could follow them anywhere they might run.

Maisie ended up next to her father. Everything in front of her was swimming, as if through water, just as in her dream. She thought of Becca, that first time they had kissed; they were in the living room of Becca’s flat, and Maisie’s hands were all dry and awkward, her pulse thumping in her fingertips and neck. She thought of Becca dancing, her skin shining and her hair falling down her back and . . .

“Dad.” She swallowed. “I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Pass me that box over there.”

Maisie did so. “It’s just. I’ve got a girlfriend.

Her name’s Rebecca, and I’d like to bring her home for Christmas.”

Her father looked away, was silent for a terrible second, and then turned to face her.

“Well, I guess it will be good to see more of you.

Now . . .” He froze on the instruction as the ship stopped and the air cleared. Waves began to crash.

They didn’t go home that night, and as the sun rose the ship seemed almost laughable, a heap of partially rotted wood. It would be on the news, with explanations of current changes due

to global warming, and no one from the village would say otherwise. No one spoke of it at all, in fact, except for Maisie’s grandmother, who quietly and knowingly congratulated her. But she was slipping in and out of consciousness, and four days later she was gone.

Robbie came home for the funeral. Their grandmother had left them instructions on how to find the treasure, on floral patterned note paper which smelt faintly of oranges. They lowered themselves down into the cellar, shifted out the crates and boxes, and began to dig the compacted earth. They chose their pieces carefully; Maisie noticed that a ring was amongst her brother’s picks and she smiled silently. For herself she took a simple gold necklace and matching earrings; for Becca a gold pendant with three small stones which shimmered green and blue. She also picked some of the less enticing pieces, some which had been damaged, which she could sell when she got back to the city. They wouldn’t make her rich, but they’d pay the rent for a few months, until she found a job, and Becca finished her internship.

They could move into the suburbs, rent a house with a garden, get out of those tiny apartments they’d been shifting between for three years.

The next morning Maisie pulled on comfortable clothes and loaded her car. She hugged goodbye, reiterated her promise to return at Christmas, and then she was driving.

The sea sparkled on one side of her, the cliffs rose on the other. In the clear weather she could see the road snaking out for miles ahead of her, and on the dashboard her cell phone buzzed excitedly as reception returned.

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Coming in December 2009 from Bold Stroke Books . . .

Chaps by Jove Belle You can’t outrun the past when it’s waiting right around the corner http://jovebelle.wordpress.com/ http://lesbianauthors.wordpress.com/

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aurie leaned over my shoulder, her glossy lips hovering off my ear. “Check out the monitor!”

I nudged her with my elbow: shush! Weren’t the flowers and piped-in music and mourners giving her a clue? Hel-lo, it’s called a wake?

She poked me in the back like an insistent child: Lookit, lookit, lookit!

Figuring the only way to shut my friend up was to give in, I turned my attention to the corner of the room, just beyond the closed coffin.

Amongst the clusters of roses and lilies and sprays of baby’s breath sat an anomalous A/V cart on which a monitor had been placed, playing a loop of pictures that described Ny’isha’s life. From childbirth (she made such a cute chubby-cheeked baby!) through the clunky teenage years up and up through multiple graduations, all the way up to last week when, at the young age of fifty-seven, without warning or fanfare, she died in her sleep of a stroke borne of an undiagnosed brain embolism.

Laurie tapped my shoulder: Watch!

I shrugged her finger off. I had already noticed the monitor if only because I’d never seen one at a memorial service before. Everything about my homegirl’s memorial was a new experience for this white queer chick from the ’burbs. I was dragged up Roman Catholic in a conservative Italian family so all the wakes I’d been brought to included open caskets stuffed with freshly made-up corpses that barely resembled their living selves, solemn organ dirges that hung in the air like day-old farts, a black dress code firmly in place and Biblical readings about Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead that was supposed to inspire the gathered

with the promise of redemption but always left me a little creeped out.

None of those heavy shrouds were hanging up at The Welby Family Funeral Home on 138th St. in Harlem. A soft spoken elderly man with a slight bend to his back greeted us at the door and asked which viewing we were there for. When we told him he nodded, pointing down the hall: “Sister Ny’isha is in Parlor B.” We thanked him and followed the sound of organbacked gospel. Outside the doors to Parlor B we found the registry and dutifully left our names—Jackson Mohl, Laurie Brady, and me, Lucia Deminicci. I spotted familiar names halfway up the page, Marisol and Colleen and Patty and Brian were already here. Thank Christ, because I was already feeling guarded. What gay person wouldn’t upon walking into new space, (especially one still living from the back of the closet?)

The first thing my journalist’s eye picked up on inside the room were the backs of the rows upon rows of men in dark brown and charcoal suits, women wearing coats and hats of muted purples and lavenders and green, all with their backs to us. Jackson spotted Marisol and the others from our community center, seated in the second-to-last row, away from everyone else.

We exchanged discreet waves, hung up our coats in the closet and shuffled to the back of the viewing line that ran along the wall.

I gazed about with professional curiosity, drinking down the details like a closet drunk. The coffin sat front and center, polished and reflective, innocuously unaware of all the attention it was receiving. On the paneled walls hung framed pictures of Martin Luther King and

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Harriet Tubman and Nelson Mandela and Malcom X, freedom fighters all. On the opposite side of the room an older woman in a fur-trimmed coat and wide-brimmed lilac-colored hat went walking up and down the side, taking snapshots of the mourners. This startled me although none of the seated seemed to mind.

I faced forward, admiring all the different floral arrangements, and that’s when I first spotted the screen. I watched the pictures scroll by, feeling each one pluck at my heartstrings. Here came a giggling baby Ny with just the brightest eyes, already full of Life’s flame; there went Ny’isha, now circa six or seven, wrapped in a beautiful dress and veil outside a church, proud mother and father on either side. (Neither seemed to notice the grimace on my homegirl’s face, as if that dress she had on was two sizes too small and lined in wool.)

More scenes from life gently swam by, in synch with the music oozing from the hidden speakers. Ny in a school picture, beaming before an American flag, the proud student; another of her on a pitcher’s mound, throwing an underhand fastball (and ooo, was she not the hottest baby dyke in a uniform?) A prom moment circa the ’80s, given the size of her hair and the bouffant sleeves. She was dutifully hanging off the arm of a handsome young fellow and looking terribly unimpressed by that fact, too.

The viewing line shuffled forward and so did the pictures, family shots of her laughing at a backyard picnic, hanging on the shoulders of some guys—were they friends or brothers? nephews? uncles? How large was her family, anyway? Was she close to them or distant, perhaps even shunned like so many in the community? I was quietly stunned to think how much I didn’t know about Ny, whom I spent many evenings working the reception desk at the center, co-facilitating the support groups with or just catching up over coffee down at the diner.

“Here, here it is!” Laurie squeaked.

I squinted through fresh tears. On the monitor a cropped Ny’isha now stood, looking all fly herself in a disco leisure suit that had to have come right off of Tony Manero. She had the white jacket slung over one of her broad shoulder, and her shiny black shirt hung open by at least three buttons. Ny wasn’t caring about the

camera, though; she was all eyes for the beautiful African American woman in the jade green jumpsuit beside her. The expression my friend had on was the exact same one I imagined knights of olde wore as they gazed upon their ladies fair. You could have mistaken the dance hall setting for some sort of Halloween or costume party, although I doubted any of us from the community center who had been to our fair share of tea dances would have.

Then, in the blink of God’s uncaring eye t h e photo vanished, replaced by a more t r a d i tional holiday tableau of Ny’isha cuddling children in front of a Christmas tree. And while she was grinning that mile wide grin of hers there seemed to be a little less spark and sparkle in my homegirl’s eyes.

Of that gorgeous black princess, or any other girlfriend for that matter, there were no more sign of, just nothing at all. Still, goose-pimples dotted my arms.

“Did you know she was butch?” Laurie whispered.

“Not a clue,” I confessed, wondering if anyone else in the room did either.

Someone from behind me cleared her throat, and I saw it was my turn. Taking a deep breath, I walked up to the casket. The lid was closed, as though to keep its secrets dear. Upon the lid sat a framed photo of Ny’ sitting at desk covered in schoolbooks. A blackboard filled the space behind her, and I could just make out some of the day’s lesson: “You can’t separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.”—Malcom X. A sob leaked out of me. She was a teacher.

How did I not know that? I only knew she was long retired by the time she came around the center to volunteer, that my homegirl had a laugh that could fill a room like a warm summer breeze, was terribly lonely and seemed to have resigned herself to a lifelong empty bed. She had had a patience saints would envy, swooned whenever Ella or Marvin came on the radio, had Chinese take-out at least twice a week and pored her energy into helping people, especially us, her community sisters.

My chest hitched. I dropped onto the kneeler, hands clasped tight. Goddammit, Ny’, I can’t believe you’re gone. Who am I supposed to go

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out for coffee with now? Who am I going to talk about politics to and trade books with, share my Heidi Klum crush with? Tears dropped heavy on my cheek. I’ll miss you, hon. Who am I kidding?

I’m missing your laugh already. Wherever you are, save a cup of coffee and a place at the table for me, ’kay, babygirl?

My legs buckled as I stood.

As expected, the front row was taken up by a family I never knew Ny’isha had, if only because, whether by design or lack of opportunity, she never mentioned them. There sat a pair of middle-aged men I recognized from the photos, no doubt brothers, neither looking a day over forty-five. I whispered my condolences, and they automatically nodded, their faces still registering the shock. Seated beside them was a young lady who identified herself as Aayiah, Ny’s niece. She had her aunt’s eyes and same gregarious smile. If nothing else I could take away this fact—Ny lived on.

Aayiah asked me my name and thanked me for coming. She then introduced me to the elderly white-haired woman sitting beside her.

This was Emma, Ny’s mother.

It seemed an effort for the mom to raise her head so I squatted down before her. “Hi. My name’s Lucia. I was a friend of your daughter’s.”

Clouded eyes lifted. “Lucia? That’s a pretty name.”

“Thank you,” I said.

A sad breath escaped those parchment lips. “Tell me, where did you know my Ny’isha from?”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

Words clogged my throat, thoughts gummed up my brain. I tried to breath but it felt like invisible hands were squeezing my neck. Why were there no windows in here, no crossventilation, no free flowing fresh air? Had we been coming to these parlors for so long we just expected to be suffocated by the stagnancy?

Finally I forced myself to look into those hurting eyes. “Um, I knew Ny’isha from, ah, the community center where we both, er, volunteered.” My voice trailed off as though fearing it would have to explain it was a gay/lesbian/ bisexual/transgender/questioning community center.

As though she’d been waiting for this very conversation all evening, Aayiah leaned over and patted her grandmother’s hand. “You’ll have to excuse her,” she said to me. “Gramma’s very tired. It’s been a long day.”

“Of course.” I nodded, grateful the conversation had ended.

I made room for Laurie and Jackson to shake hands and give hugs. Then we slipped away to the back of the room, ignoring the heads that turned to follow us. Colleen motioned to some saved seats. Thank god. While I felt no animosity from anyone I’d either seen or met, it was good to sit next to familiar faces, someone else who knew all the L-Word plotlines, had spoken to state legislators about marriage equality, and held monthly pot-lucks in their homes.

“What took you guys so long?” Brian asked.

“We got lost,” I admitted. “I’ve never been to this part of town before . . .”

“Us, too,” Colleen added, squeezing Patti’s hand. Her lover smiled back. I couldn’t help but notice they were keeping their clasped fingers out of sight. You did that in an environment whose gay-friendliness was an unknown quantity. Work, school, on the street or home for the holidays, and yes, even at funeral parlors . . .

A tall black man in a dark suit stepped up to the right side of the casket. Three older women had slipped out from one of the rows to join him.

“Good evening, brothers and sisters,” he said in a practiced voice. “Thank you for braving the bitter cold to come and see our dear sister Ny’isha off across the river. For those who do not know me, I am Rev. Wooley, pastor at her church, and these good sisters at my side are deacons at the same house. Some of your faces I’ve seen before on a Sunday morning, others are new to me. But for this one evening Sister Ny’isha has brought us together under the same roof, as family.”

A few of the seated nodded their heads. I caught out of the corner of my eye Colleen doing the same.

The Rev. Wooley took a step forward and positioned himself between the coffin and the first row. “Although we are shedding tears and feeling a heaviness of heart this is not the time for sadness, my brothers and sisters, oh no. We should be thankful, grateful even, appreciative

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of this gift we’ve been given by the Lord. You know that gift, don’t you? It’s that present that waits under your tree every morning of every brand new day, all wrapped up and covered in shiny bows. It’s called Life, brothers and sisters, a God-given Life! Tell me something, did you remember to open it today? Or did you step over it on your way down to the kitchen to get yourself that first coffee? Did you bother to say, thank you Lord for the dawn before asking where your plate of eggs and bacon are at?”

His voice swept us up. “God gives us this gift because He wants us to open it that box, take Life out and try it on! Turn it on! Roll it out the driveway and take it for a spin, yes He does!

He wants us to get up off our lazy butts and get up on our feet. Go on out the front door and get active, be engaged, add your voice to the choir of humanity and sing, my brothers and sisters, sing at the top of your lungs, sing until they hear you all the way out in Montauk and down on the boardwalk of Atlantic City!

“You know Sister Ny’isha did, back in the day, every Sunday,” Rev. Wooley said. “She even helped take the choir all the way down to Washington D.C. and sing for the President himself. But that wasn’t all! She used that gift from God when she volunteered at the shelter, making sure everyone who came through the door had themselves a bowl of soup and blanket . . .”

“Did you know . . . ?” Marisol asked.

I shook my head. So did everyone else in that second to last row.

The minister gazed across the room with eyes wide open. “She was a sister who educated the masses, in the classroom and out of the street.

She was a professor—the first in her family to go to college, mind you!—because she knew that in this Life information was power. The more you knew about yourself and your family the stronger you were and the stronger you are, the louder your voice. And God wants to hear your voice, oh yes He does! He wants to hear your truth, all the way across the river. That’s why He gave us tongues, that’s why He gave us mouths (some larger than others), that’s why He gave us lungs and gave us brains but most of all, gave us Hearts. To proclaim, brothers and sisters, to proclaim!”

Halleluiahs sounded.

The Rev. Wooley nodded and found his place back with the other women. “Now can I get a witness up here, someone to testify in their own voice before all these good people the righteousness of our beloved sister?”

From the third row a large woman swaddled in richly colored scarves stood. “I’m Tilda, Ny’isha’s aunt from her daddy’s side. Most of you know already, but Ny’isha came to live with me for a while when she was young. Lordy thought, she was a swee’ pea back then, so full of energy, I could barely keep up with the child! She’d bounced off walls and never wanted to go to sleep and was always climbing trees wherever she found them . . .”

Heads bobbed up and down. Apparently this was how others remembered Ny, too. None of us in that second-to-last row moved—we had yet to be a part of Ny’s story back then.

Others began standing up now. A friend of the family spoke of Ny’isha’s glory out on the softball diamond, contrasting it with her abject miseries in the kitchen. (“Who knew a bunt cake could explode?”) An uncle recalled how Ny was always learning, always questioning, ever the Lord Himself. (“That’s okay, that’s okay,” Rev. Wooley said. “God don’t mind. The only thing He can’t abide by is silence.”). A smartly dressed young man in a yellow and brown sweater shared how Ny’isha helped him get into college: “She kept on me, every day and night, making sure I filled out my applications, sent them right in. When I got rejected she just got on the phone and chewed out the person on the other end.

I ended up feeling bad for whoever picked up that phone. I think the rest of the block did, too.

Maybe even folks in Jersey. I mean, she was fierce that day. She was fierce, every day. No one ever spoke up for me louder than Professor Browning.”

As others stood I glanced at my row and waggled my eyebrows. Well? Was anyone of us going to stand and add our voice to the conversation? Who was going to tell this congregation about knowing Ny over the last few years? Of what a great peer support facilitator she was, always keeping the peace during the talks or spending a few extra minutes after a meeting to make any newcomers feel welcome, encourage

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them to keep coming back, keep coming back.

Or how she volunteered to flip burgers at the Pride Picnic and worked those grills until every plate was full? Or how cut out of work to make sure she was present at our marriage equality rallies? Held our center’s banner all the way down 5th Ave on Pride Sunday? Which one of us was going to testify to all of that?

A few met my gaze, only to drop theirs. Eventually so did I, unable to bear all the weight in that room. I remembered feeling the same way, crushed beneath an avalanche of expectations, at my cousin Ritchie’s funeral. He had been found hanging in his dorm room by friends, who said they never saw it coming. The sermon had been about lives lost and how only God knew why things happened. But that wasn’t exactly true now. I knew he was gay, as did his brothers, mother and father. Only no one spoke about it that day. The priest had prattled on about how Ritchie was a good son and uncle. Friends had walked up to the pulpit to look my aunt and uncle in the eye and say what a great friend he’d been. There was no mention any of the AIDS related services Ritchie had volunteered for, how many times he’d schlep up to Albany to lobby state senators for marriage equality, or how fabulous he looked in drag. His older brother spoke of how deeply Ritchie had been loved by all his nieces and nephews but forgot to say how he was told never to bring boyfriends around or even mention them around the dinner table. If you’d been a stranger sitting in pew next to me that day you would have thought my cousin a well-loved and respected man, but it’s doubtful you would have concluded he was gay. This whole side of Ritchie’s life had been jettison and turned into flotsam and jetsam to save the ship from sinking.

It was Jackson who finally said, “Enough of this shit.” He stood up and gave everyone goodbye kisses, not caring who saw, even God if was

the case. Laurie and I followed him to the coat closet.

Minutes later we pulled out of the lot across the street from the funeral home and followed the elevated tracks back toward the highway.

Jackson said nothing, afraid of what might fall from his quaking lips. Laurie laid a hand on his shoulder, and he rested his cheek against it. It was January 4th, 2009, just a few baby steps into the new year, this season of change. No one said anything, the silence fat as it sat upon us, stifling, suffocating. Finally someone switched on the radio and slow sad bluesy strains dripped out, sounding terribly beautiful and beautifully terrible all at the same time. Yeah, this fit.

We rolled up to a stoplight swinging back and forth in the wind. A red flicker caught my eye.

Across the street a barrel fire was burning away, flames dancing above the metal rim. I could just make out in the red glow a pair of bodies standing close, holding onto each other as only lovers could. A black boy and girl lost in their mid-teens, wrapped up in each other’s arms, faces pressed together cheek to cheek, trying to create a little warmth in a world that would strip it away.

The light turned green, and Jackson stood on the gas, eager to get home. I stole one last look back, wondering what it took to represent like that, in the middle of the cold dark night.

The pair retreated until the only glimpse of their tableau was the determined glow of their fire. Soon even that was gone. I faced forward.

Pictures of the young boy and girl, Ny’isha and Ritchie all bounced about in my head and for no good reason, or perhaps for every possible reason, I thought: I’m going to write a story about all of you and I’m going to call it “Memorial.”

But first I was going to call my mother, who still asked me when I was going to find a man and settle down.

We needed to talk.

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In Keisha’s Shadow Tori’s life seems to be going from bad to worse when brash and flirty Ashley shows up and turns her world upside down.

Nuance

http://nuancebooks.wordpress.com/books/in-keishas-shadow/

Art For Art’s Sake: Meredith’s Story by Barbara L. Clanton Regal Crest

visit http://www.blclanton.com/

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ne Upon a time . . .

“ . . . I’ll take that to go.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“You really shouldn’t. The cream in that frappe at this time of the morning will just slow you down. You’ll feel sleepy. Your concentration will be shot. You won’t be at your best.”

I stared at this person who was determined to separate me from my chocolate. She raised her hands as if reading my mind.

“I wouldn’t dream of coming between a woman and her chocolate fix! But if I might suggest another way to drink it that would be more beneficial?”

She set a bowl sized china cup in a matching saucer on the counter and poured in something the exact color acrylic paint goes when you blend every color on your palate together. A completely unappetizing grey/brown sludge. I was about to tell her I don’t do tea— especially not tea that’s been brewing since the dawn of time—when the smell hit me. Deep, rich and—oh God—chocolaty.

“What . . . is that?”

“Ayurvedic spice tea. The closest anyone has ever come to the Aztec Xocoatl. It’s cassia cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, barley malt, cardamom, cloves, black pepper, liquorice and chocolate. Try it. If you don’t like it, I’ll make you a frappe. On the house. What have you got to lose?”

My breakfast? I thought but did not say. I checked my watch. I really shouldn’t. I had a meeting in less than ten minutes and even if the elevator was working it would take me the

better part of that to get back to the office. But the smell . . .

Cupping my hands round the bowl, I lifted the brew to my lips and sipped. At first it was bitter. I almost spat it out. Then the flavor crept up on me and I swallowed. Like honey drizzled down my throat. I didn’t realize I’d closed my eyes until I bumped my nose raising the cup for a second sip.

“That’s . . . amazing!”

The tea brought my health guru into sharper perspective. Her skin was mocha her hair the deep blue/black of the east, floppy bangs hiding twinkling mischievous eyes. Her teeth were very white and very even and she had the most delicious smile. She pushed a paper tea bag sleeve across the counter.

“So you know what to order next time.”

“Thank you. I mean it. This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.” She gave me Namaste and went about her work.

“Wait, how much do I owe you?”

“This one is on me.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!”

She just smiled and went into the back room, leaving me with my drink.

I sipped again and again and soon the cup was empty. I was sincerely sorry to see it go.

I toyed with the idea of a second cup, but one look at my watch told me I had to be going. And with my fairy godmother gone I couldn’t even thank her for her spell.

I arrived in time for the meeting with the design team, somehow not out of breath and more relaxed than I had any right to be. The clients greeted me warmly. By virtue of my prompt arrival I was allowed to start setting up

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the display for our pitch. The others straggled in late. Every one of them baring a cup of their own personal poison. Since I’d shown no need for moral support or something to hide behind, the clients were eager to have me go first, impressed with my go-ahead attitude. I gave what was without doubt the best presentation of my life. When I was done nobody could critique my performance. I’d covered all the angles.

Listening to the other teams, I could see plenty of flaws and was able to raise coherent counters and objections which only made our work look better.

At the end of the meeting the brass took me aside and complimented my performance. High praise indeed. Less than an hour later I was called back into the conference room and congratulated on landing the biggest contract we‘d ever had. My ecstatic team all but carried me round the office on their shoulders. I ended the day on the biggest high of my life, bemused but happy.

When I raced into the coffee shop the next morning I was about to order my usual sludge when I recalled the heavenly brew that I will always associate with success and fished the paper sachet from my purse. I slid it across the counter to the server. It wasn’t my health guru from the day before, but the brew was just the same. And when they rang up the sale it was only half the price of the frappe. I drank up and went humming to the office short of only one thing. A mocha framed smile and laughing eyes.

T

here was a beautiful Princess . . .

“ . . . I hardly recognized you! You’ve lost weight and I don’t know what you’ve done to your hair but damn, girl, you look good! Hell, you look great!”

“Thank you.” It was true. Dropping the cream in the morning, the new account keeping me busy sweating off the pounds, instead of busting out all over, I was going in and out in all the right places. I can’t count the number of dates I’ve been asked on. But turned them all down.

I find myself dreaming of mocha skin and midnight hair.

“I’m serious, girl, what’s your secret? Diet?

Exercise? What?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.”

“Honestly? It all started with a cup of tea.”

“Honey, you’re right I don’t believe you! Look, I gotta run. You take care of yourself, ya hear?”

“I will.” I watched my friend melt into the crowd and pushed into the busy health food shop to pick up a box of that tea for myself. I’d also found an Egyptian spice blend that gave me a great night’s sleep, letting me wake relaxed and ready to face the day. The Mexican chocolate spiced tea my dream lover had introduced me to woke me up and had me raring to go in the morning.

I picked up my regular two boxes and made my way to the counter. It might be a health food shop but they sure knew how to make money.

Right next to the cash register were racks of chocolate bars. My hand reached out to gather a clutch of them.

“You shouldn’t.”

Startled, I looked up. My mocha goddess was standing right there. The reality of that smile was even more impressive than I remembered.

I found myself smiling back.

“No, I shouldn’t. But I’m sure you’re going to recommend what I should do instead. You’re pretty good at figuring out what’s best for people.”

“I’m a nutritionist, that’s my job.”

People started backing up behind me. She stepped out from behind the counter and waved someone in to take her place. She crooked a finger and I couldn’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t follow her.

She drew me toward the back of the shop and a rack of much bigger more expensive chocolate bars. She ran a finger contemplatively along the display, paused, nodded once and selected a bar almost the color of her skin with a bright orange band running across it. The smell of oranges and burned cinnamon tickled my nose.

“I know this is more expensive than the stuff we use to catch impulse buyers’ eyes, but this is worth every penny. Am I right in saying you want to try and give it up and can’t beat the craving?”

“Are you a mind reader as well as a nutritionist?”

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Khimairal Ink

She laughed. It was every bit as attractive as the smile.

“Nope, but I see the way you look at those chocolate bars. Like you love ’em and hate ’em.

I used to feel the same. I’m telling you this is the one for you.” She set it in my hand with reverence.

“You make it sound like worship.”

“Oh, it is! You feel the craving come on and you pick up this bar and unwrap it with all due ceremony. Smooth out the creased paper.

Unfold the foil. Chase every last crumb and fragment with a whetted finger. Then slowly, carefully break off the first line . . .”

Listening to her was like being undressed.

Imagining her damp fingers smoothing out the creases and unfolding me. I was getting hot just watching her caress that wrapper.

“Less is more. It isn’t giving up, it’s trading up.

Refining your taste. I promise you, two squares are all you’ll need. You won’t want more. You’ll feel perfectly full, perfectly satisfied . . .”

She tilted her perfect head on one side and her slow burn of a smile became a fire. The wedge cut silk of her hair tilted tantalizingly with it, still hiding the color of those teasing eyes.

“Tell me what’s in your heart right now.”

I blurted out the first thing that came into my head. “Chocolate body paint.” Then I blushed like a stop light. She laughed again.

“You have got it bad! Tell you what, you take one of these and go do whatever you have to, then take it home and try it out. If I‘m right—and right for you—you come back here somewhere round six and we‘ll see what we can do about that chocolate body paint.”

She tucked the bar in my purse and held my eyes beneath the long fall of her hair.

“Should you . . . ?”

“Sure. This is my place. I can do whatever I want.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

She stuck out a mocha brown hand. “Amrita.

And you are?”

“Sarkara.”

“Then we are truly well matched. Your name means Sugar in Sanskrit. Mine is Nectar. Go home and try your chocolate, sweetness. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.”

A

nd they lived happily ever after?

It’s surprising how long it takes to properly prepare chocolate body paint. Getting it to exactly the right temperature, covering the bed to avoid spills.

While it was heating she cooked for me. As we ate, we discovered how many things a thirtyfive year old nutritionist and a twenty-nine year old graphic designer could have in common. Our likes and dislikes, our hopes and dreams, our triumphs and disasters, our wants and needs and what we might do toward their mutual fulfillment.

Showering, scrubbing our bodies with coconut soap, we found out even more. But it was in the candlelight of the bedroom that the greatest revelations came. And the only thing I ever disagreed with her about. Two squares were not quite enough. It took the taste of her mocha body beneath the glaze of the body paint before I was truly satisfied. That and the sight of her beautiful brown eyes. The exact shade of melting chocolate.

34

Khimairal Ink

WE Marden William Marden is a Florida high school teacher. He’s been a newspaper reporter and editor and a public relations professional with a state medical organization. He’s had one science fiction/fantasy novel, “The Exile of Ellendon” published in the U.S. by Doubleday and in England by Robert Hale. He’s had about 50 short stories published in small press and pro magazines in the U.S., Canada, Australia and England, in the fields of science fiction, fantasy, horror, sword and sorcery and mysteries.

Michael Merriam Like most writers, Michael Merriam has worked a variety of jobs, including musician, short order cook, and freight logistics manager. After being declared legally blind, Michael began writing. Michael has sold fiction to several magazines and anthologies, including Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, Fictitious Force, and Three Crows Press. He received an Honorable Mention in The Years Best Fantasy and Horror 2008, and was nominated for the James B. Baker Award in 2007. A member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association and the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers, he lives in Hopkins, Minnesota with his wife and an ordained cat. www.michaelmerriam.net.

Anna Caro Anna lives in Wellington, New Zealand with her partner and two somewhat evil cats. She has had short fiction published in, amongst others, Aphelion and Antipodean SF. Her website is at http://www.pterodaustrodreams.org.

Stephanie Bonvissuto Stephanie Bonvissuto is a forty-something New York based author who lives with her partner and three cats. Her stories and poems have been spotted in such magazines and websites as On Our Backs Magazine, Sapphic Voices, Oysters and Chocolate, Girlphoria, Chaotic Dreams, New Mystery Reader, Afterburnsf, The Harrow, Outlaw Biker, Aiofe’s Kiss, Not One of Us, The Lusty Library, and very-koi. net. When not writing she can be found at protest marches, planning coffeehouses for her community center, out on Fire Island, or up at The Cape.

Tracey Shellito Tracey Shellito has been published in six genres; crime, erotica, speculative fiction, western, supernatural mystery and poetry and has resolved never to be pigeonholed. Her works include Personal Protection, published by Crème De La Crime UK. (2005) Also in print are short stories “Free in Locked & Loaded” published by Torquere Press (2006) and “Mind Games” in Periphery from Lethe Press (2008). Her e-books include Red Skin (2007) and The Scantlebury Demon (2009) from Torquere Press. Also from Torquere Press, “Steel Toed Boots & The Uptown Girl” in Working Girls (2009) and “Strange Relationship” in Vamps (2009). She can be reached at traceyshellito@fsmail.net her website http://www.traceyshellito.moonfruit.com or her blogs on Live Journal or Amazon Author Central.