It was as if everyone and everything had conspired to force Bri into this situation. There had been the panic attack on the way to the job interview. There had been the cat who had broken into her no-pets apartment right before the landlord showed up - and then of course there had been that stupid fire that had started the night -after- she was given her 20 days notice.
It wasn’t her, nobody could prove it was her, but her landlord had been convinced. Every background check inevitably led to a polite refusal. One went so far as to mention that they were concerned about her “anger issues” and “arsonistic tendencies” This of course made her angry. She yelled at him, but did not light anything on fire.
Add to this that she was living in her car. Her apartment had burned down after all, and now she was paying medical bills for the burns that she probably wouldn’t have gotten if she had been the one starting the fire. She had taken the batteries out of the fire alarm so she could burn incense in her room, and by the time she woke up it had been a mad dash through a blazing living room coughing her lungs out. On the bright side, at least she didn’t have any stuff she had to pack into storage!
If I were going to burn down my house, she thought, I would at least get fire insurance first.
She didn’t have parents she could turn to, of the four sets of foster parents she’d had during her childhood, only one were on speaking terms, and even that wasn’t great. She’d only found one place that didn’t require a background check, a yurt set up in some guy’s backyard in the middle of literally nowhere. She’d driven an hour on increasingly derelict roads, past where the power lines stopped, to look, and then spent the next half an hour backing off slowly as her fat pervy would be landlord kept not so subtly looking at her a*s, and suggesting that if she couldn’t pay rent they could arrange ‘something else.’
Rent was only 200 dollars, she assured him she would always be able to pay rent, but left with a vague “I’ll think about it” that she dearly hoped she wouldn’t.
Unfortunately, she started thinking about it. Would living off the grid in an oversized tent with a pervy landlord be so much worse than living in her car? She would at least be able to cook her own food, and sleep on a bed. The landlord had been hazy about what had happened to the last tenant, but they’d apparently left a lot of stuff, a bed with sheets and some dishware. All hers, he promised, to make up for the lack of amenities.
She called him back, very drunk, at 10:30 at night a week later to tell him she was in. He told her it was hers that night if she wanted, and she wove her way the hour drive from town. She turned from “DelLuna” road onto “Landes”, missed her turn onto the little dirt road and didn’t realize it till she hit “El Sol” and had to drive back west. Muddled and tired and drunk, she took the turn onto “Old Landes lane” too fast and slid off the lane into a tree hard. Everything slowed for a moment as she felt her car curl around it, U shaped now. Her whole body jerked. Her lungs hurt. She unbuckled her seatbelt. She heard a small explosion from the back of her car - the other side of the tree - and knew she had to get out. Smoke again. Her door wouldn’t open. She looked out to see an old woman running towards the car. No, get back, it’s going to explode! The woman pulled on her door from the outside to no avail, then Bri distinctly saw her straighten and get larger. Her face elongated into a black cow’s head with a white star on her forehead. She ripped off the car door, pulled Bri into her arms, and ran. Bri counted, one, two, three, four, five - and then there was a larger explosion. Something hit both of them, and Bri passed out.
Then she was in the cow woman’s house - she was pouring bitter tea down Bri’s throat and asking where she lived in a thick eastern European accent. Bri managed to get out the name of her landlord, “Ferrious” and the woman scooped her up and started walking.
“I can walk” Bri insisted,
“I am sure you can, but it is faster this way,” the woman returned. “I need to get you somewhere safe so I can go help put out your car, and my tree.”
Ferrious looked different too, he had horns too, little knobby ones, and, oh god, his penis was sticking out of his pants, except his pants looked weird too. He greeted the cow woman as ‘Hilda,’ who she now noticed looked normal all of a sudden. She didn’t seem to notice and pushed Bri at him. She backpedaled wildly, but not fast enough, because then he had her wrist and was pulling her towards her yurt. “Sleep” - he told her, and shut the door.
She went and sat on her bed - got up and locked the door - went and sat on her bed again. Sleeping seemed like the last thing she wanted to do, but what else? She laid down on top of her bed, and shut her eyes and tried not to think about whether any ribs were fractured from whiplash, or that her car was definitely totalled, or weird cow women hallucinations, or the fact she didn’t have health insurance. She started crying, for no particular one of these, just the slow release of everything that had come before, and the unfairness of it all. Life was ganging up on her - and she saw no end in sight.
When she woke up, her chest hurt, her arms felt like noodles, she had a hangover, and to top it all off she had the familiar sensation of hot sticky blood between her legs. Her period had started in the night and she had never changed out of her clothes, so that her only pair of jeans were stained at the crotch. She started laughing, because what else can you do, sacrificed one of her socks as a pad stuffed into her panties, took off her jeans and wrapped the top sheet around her waist, folded in half in her best approximation of a skirt.
It was like this, that she knocked on her new landlord’s door. A young man answered, he couldn’t have been any older than 16, who introduced himself as “Sylvan”
“Briana,” she gave back “Do you guys have a laundry machine I could borrow?”
He laughed at her. Laughed! And told her that there was no electricity and no running water here. “You could try scrubbing it in the creek, but good luck getting the blood out.” he said, looking at the bundled jeans in her arms.
“What do you do for laundry?”
“In the winter we go into town about once a month and do it all at once at a laundromat.”
“And in the summer?”
He paused, embarrassed, and then finally said “I don’t know what my dad was thinking bringing you here.” He smiled at her. “You want some food?”
She decided not to pry, and accepted the food. Over breakfast Sylvan offered to drive her into town to buy the things she needed. Just as they were leaving, his dad showed up - she could see now how she might have mistaken the tufts of his hair for horns - but thankfully didn’t ask to come along.
On the way out they passed the remains of her car, a skeletal blackened thing wrapped around the remains of a half burnt tree. Nobody would ever miss this turn again. She went to take a picture and realized that her purse, which had her phone in it - had both been left in the car.
So began her day in town. She went to her bank to withdraw money, and maybe it was the bed sheet skirt, or maybe it was the crazed look in her eyes, but for the first time ever they asked for ID - The DMV needed ID to issue new ID - maybe a Birth certificate? But no, that had gone in the fire. She could still log into online banking at a library computer and order a new credit card, so she did. Sylvan offered to pay for the basics, and so she just bought one more set of clothes, tampons and top Ramen.
She’d mentioned her love of animals on the way in, but she was surprised when, on the way home, Sylvan pulled into the pound and let her pick out a cat, black with white paws. She promised to pay him back, but he told her this last was a gift. He seemed solemn and sincere. They sat in the parking lot of the pound, her with her new cat tangled on her lap, and a bag of cat food at her feet.
“Your new home is a pet friendly apartment,” he said, and then winked, not at all awkward - maybe he was older than 16,
“Thank you,” was all she could say. On an urge she reached out to give his knee a squeeze, and jerked so violently when her hand went into his knee, that she slammed against his passenger door and the cat screamed and sunk its claws into her calf at it fell off her lap. She could see blood oozing from the spots where her hand had gone into his leg, though she noted dully that his jeans weren’t ripped at all.
He looked at her, with head cocked sideways, not afraid, almost curious.
“Your leg,” she said.
He looked down. He didn’t seem to be in pain. Finally he turned to her and said “You’re not human are you?”
“What?”
“This is very dangerous to even be saying, we could both die.”
“What?”
“Do you know who your parents are?”
“No, I grew up in foster care.”
“Have you ever seen anything supernatural?”
“No! Your leg is bleeding! What’s going on!?” - something in her remembered the feeling of his leg, almost not there, except the brush of yarn against her fingertips.
He looked around, up, paused. “I’m going to wait until that plane is past.”
“What?!”
He paused, looked around again. “I’m not human.”
“What?!” Yet somehow she believed him. She flexed her fingers involuntarily. Breathed. “You’re made of yarn?” She asked.
He looked at her puzzled. “I’m a satyr.”
She shook her head not understanding. He looked around again, what was he looking for? - and took her hand and pulled it to his head. She felt little nubbins, invisible, except as she felt them with her fingers she started seeing them, small spiraling horns, glued onto one of the pink princess hair things. Why hadn’t she noticed before? She tried to pull them off and they wouldn’t, she reached for the velvety band and couldn’t feel it, blinked and it was gone, replaced by his hair gelled into points, but that wasn’t the right texture, then the hair was replaced by seashells jelled in . . . then her mind finally got what it was seeing and she saw horns, part of his scalp.
“What . . . ?” she repeated, her mantra of not accepting. He looked around again and then pulled her hands down to his ears, she saw them replaced by the plastic stick on pointed ears you can get for halloween, but the texture was off, and it wouldn’t pull and more quickly now her brain registered how pointed his ears really were. How could she not have seen that?
Then he was pulling her hands to his thigh. His jeans changed into sweatpants which changed into these weird fuzzy coveralls, he pulled her hand down along his legs until she saw her hand go in, and then his leg changed to be really skinny. He kept moving her hand down and his leg got thinner, until it too shifted all at once into a bizarre backwards knee.
He put his feet up on the dashboard, and guided her hand so that it went into his foot, which changed into really tiny feet - and then into hooves. It was around then that her brain had enough, and his whole body shifted. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He had hooves. He wasn’t wearing pants. He had furry animal legs. His erection was around a foot long.
“That’s why you don’t do laundry in the summer.” She said dully “You don’t wear clothes.”
He nodded, “You’re definitely not Human.”
“You keep saying that,” she complained.
“Bad things happen when you show a human, or rather you just can’t and the more you force it the more extreme things happen to stop you.”
“What do you mean?” She asked, buying time to accept the revelation he had hooves.
“I’ve never tried, but it’s happened to lots of relatives. My brother Favian tried to show a human girl once, and a gunfight broke out upstairs and a stray bullet killed him.”
“Oh” was all she could say.
“But what are you?” He peered at her. “I’ve never met anything but a satyr before!”
“Your neighbor is some kind of half cow,” she said.
His turn. “What?”
“Last night when I wrecked my car, Hilda came out and saved me. I thought I was hallucinating.”
He hissed in a breath “Wow, she must have assumed you’d think that. That’s so risky!” He made it sound as if this was a good thing.
“Would you cover yourself?” she asked plaintively, pointing at his erection, he grinned and upturned a paper shopping bag over it. “Better?” She grimaced.
They started driving home, the cat curled up back on her lap, she started peppering him with questions.
“Is your whole family Satyrs?”
“My dad is, my mom wasn’t”
“What’s she?”
He winced. “A goat. She’s passed now, I miss her a lot.”
He said it so seriously. “. . . I’m sorry.” She finally said.
“It was 30 years ago, but it just never quite goes away, y’know?”
“Wait,” she stopped him. “How old are you?”
“37? How old are you?”
She blinked. “22 - how old is your dad?”
“Somewhere over a hundred, I don’t think he keeps track anymore.”
“I saw him last night too. With horns and legs like you I mean.”
“Sometimes it happens when someone is really tired or on drugs the glamour wavers. It’s super dangerous, we try and avoid people like that because of it.”
“Glamour?”
“Disguise - magical disguise.”
“And bad things happen when humans see you.”
“That’s right.”
“But nothing bad has happened? Is it always immediate?”
“It’s always before you show them. To stop you from showing them. It’s not always bad - but it often involves dying.”
“So I must not be a human.”
“Exactly! That’s what I keep telling you!”
“What am I?” She ran her hands carefully along her legs and head.
“You never see your own glamour. I always look like this to myself.”
“Huh.”
They lapsed into silence for a bit. She opened a window because now that the glamour was off she’d begun to notice a musky smell coming off him, that made her feel . . . odd. She tried not to focus on it and thought about what this changed. Magic was real.
“We should talk to Hilda,” he finally said. “She might know what you are.”
When they got there, Bri led the way. She vaguely remembered the way to the farmhouse, having been carried from it the night before. They found Hilda pruning in the orchard by her house.
“I’m sorry about your tree,” Bri said to Hilda. The woman was larger in the light, maybe six feet tall.
“I am just glad the fire did not spread,” Hilda said in her deep eastern european accent. “How are you feeling?”
“Awful,” said Bri honestly, “but at least I’m not dead.”
“I could not let you die right outside my gate.”
Sylvan broke in “-That was very brave of you, revealing your true shape to rescue her like that.”
“I do not know what you are talking about?” said Hilda placidly
“It’s okay - I’m a satyr.”
“And I’m a - we don’t know yet.” Interjected Bri, “But not a human. I know what I saw last night.”
“You were probably hallucinating,” insisted Hilda.
“I thought I was until Sylvan showed me what he was.”
“And what is Sylvan?”
“A Satyr!” Shouted Sylvan. He bounded up to her, she could now no longer see the quick walk with legs, only the bouncy jumping of a goat, and put Hilda’s hand on his head. Bri watched her expression change into puzzlement and then wonderment.
“You have horns - but I could not see them,” she said. “How unusual.”
“Aren’t you a magical creature?” Asked Sylvan, suddenly looking a little uncomfortable.
Hilda paused, “No,” she finally said, “I am not.”
“But I saw!” Insisted Bri.
“What you saw must have been a miracle sent by God.” Said Hilda.
“Great be His glory.” echoed Sylvan reflexively.
“If you would like to feel my head you are welcome to do so,” Hilda continued. Sylvan eagerly reached out his hand, and rubbed her head all over. He looked at Bri reproachfully. “I believed you! Do you know how dangerous that could have been?”
“There’s nothing there?” Bri also rubbed Hilda’s head, and gently touching her face. Nothing. “I must have actually been hallucinating.”
“I have only ever seen one thing like yours before in my life,” said Hilda abruptly. “There is an Angel living on this road.”
Sylvan looked at Bri a little scared. “We’re not coming out to another person just because someone said so.” He looked shaken.
“I wanted to meet the neighbors anyway.” She murmured back. “Who?”
“Her name is Theresa,” Hilda said. Sylvan nodded, recognizing the name.
“I’m not doing it.” He said
“You don’t have to do anything, just point me in the right direction.”
Hilda broke in “I appreciate your sharing your magical secret with me. Do not worry, it will not go any further.”
“Um, thanks,” said Sylvan. With that they got back in the car and drove the rest of the way home.
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