Girlfriends

Persephone made a choking noise on the other side of the mirror. Linda could see her shaking her head through the powdery cracks.

“I’m sorry, what? Wait, what are you talking about?” She darted her head, finding the largest crack to peer through. “Are you alright?”

“Guurl…” Linda rocked forward and back. “You will neva’ guess who was jus’ here.”

Persephone ticked her head in exasperation. “Who? What’s going on?”

“Thoth,” Linda grumbled. She kneaded the porcelain of the sink under her palms.

“Oh dear.” Persephone pulled her face back a little. “Bird-brain? What did he want?”

“He came in here, made a grand entrance, killed a boy; you know how he do.” Linda breathed heavily out of her nostrils. “After he kilt the the boy he say that he come to ask me if I want him to kill me, too.

“Wh-aat?”

“- And the way he said it… Gurl, I’m telling you, he was scared a’ somethin’. Jus’ the way he was actin’. He was desperate, and he wasn’t tryin’ to hide it all that good, either. That jive foo’ couldn’ kill me; I know the rules.” Linda rubbed the waddle under her chin. “What the hell could scare an elder god, and especially a guy like Thoth.”

“He’s very smarmy, yes,” Persephone chipped in. She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Let me get back to you on that. Do you have time? I mean, where is he now?”

“Gone,” Linda grunted. “A*****e left a featha’ in my sliding door. I’m gon’ keep it, see if it’s something I can work with t’ find out what the hell goin’ on; if I need to move or somethin’.” She pounded her knuckle on the sink. “D****t!”

“Oh honey,” Persephone cooed sympathetically. “You do that, yeah. I’m down here with Hades for the next few months.” She paused. “Let me see if I can find anything out for you, see if anyone’s been talking, and if I can briefly come up over there and see you.” She tilted her head, flashes of her black hair swaying behind the cracks. One of her eyes made itself visible in a crack near the center of the mirror. It cocked an eyebrow. “How’s everything else? It’s been decades! Guuurl…,” she pitched awkwardly.

Linda flashed Persephone an incredulous glare. She pressed her lips together to keep herself from cursing and shook her head. “Alright, I guess,” she breathed. “Same ol’, same ol’. Been gettin’ a steady supply o’ roots to help Kristian and I stay protected; muddying up people heads so when we talk they don’ ask no unnecessary questions past what I allow em’ to, and I still jus’ glamour my papers when I need a new job, shimma’ the ink t’ make em’ look like they fresh. It’s been gettin’ a little bit harder findin’ new places to relocate; everywhere got a damn camera ‘cept for the goddamn toilet, and even then I’m not sure I’m ain’t bein’ watched,” she scoffed. “It’s alright, though; this world is too fast-paced to care nah. One day folks be all up in arms over one thing then they move on to the next the day afta’. If my picture do turn up on the internet all I gotta do is put on a new wig and people be sayin’ it’s a coincidence. Lookin’ back, though, it’s actually a blessin’ Kristian can’t talk no more o’ else I’d a’ been found out.” Her breath caught in her throat.

“Probably experimented on,” she choked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Alla this just some mess!” She pounded her knuckle on the sink again. She shook her head and looked up at the mirror. “Whatchu been doin’? Yo mama alright? You and Hades still fightin’?”

“Oh, you would not believe!” Persephone moaned. “Just the other day, alright, so you know I’m not allowed to eat until Hades joins me at the dining table, right? Well, I’m sitting at the dining room table and my stomach is feeling something akin to disintegration because I’m so hungry. I’m there for hours! So I’m sitting down,” she cleared her throat, “and I hear a commotion from the open window. Hades is yelling at Charon, your other old boyfriend.” Linda scoffed. Persephone shook her head and gulped to refresh herself. “They’re at that pagoda next to the river Styx, right? And the way Hades is yelling, it sounds like he’s sobbing. And, I mean, you know how Hades doesn’t like to yell at anyone, and Charon’s like an old, respected uncle to Hades, so I’m just assuming that Hades just feels really bad about yelling at him, and then I’m just like well maybe it’s something that Hades did and he’s just venting to Charon or something. And, you know, I don’t really have a choice being here a season out of every year so I resolved to make this work eons ago and, let me tell you, it’s no easy task but, anyway, yes, I’m really craning my neck out of the window to listen to what’s on Hades mind so maybe when he comes back inside he and I can talk about it and maybe I can help him work it out, strengthen our bond, what have you. So I’m listening and, freaking get this, Hades and asking Charon to collect all of the ferry tolls in the Underworld -”

“The money souls gotta pay him to ride them to the Underworld?” Linda asked.

“Yes! He’s asking for every last silver! And, I mean, it makes sense because Charon’s always on his ferry. He doesn’t do anything with the coins. I mean, I don’t know where he puts it or what anyone does with it but… Anyway, Charon’s trying to calm Hades down and Hades is, like,” Linda glimpsed flashes of Persephone’s delicate hands swiping back and forth in the cracks of the mirror, “slapping Charon away and saying, ‘Just give me the money! I beg of you!’ and Charon looks just as confused as I am as I’m hearing it and he’s still trying to calm Hades down. Then Hades screams out, “I will destroy you if I have to! I will feed you to Cerberus!’; just threatening him with death, and Charon just stops and looks at Hades and, even from as far away as they are, I can just see this mix of… just hurt and fury and offense. Have you ever seen Charon upset?”

Linda pulled a wry smirk and grunted. “Naw. That man was so vanilla I swear I could’a gone upside his head and I still would’a looked at his face afterward and fell asleep snorin’.”

Persephone breathed out a stressed exhale. “Oh, honey, if you had seen how his body language just changed... It was scary, girl.”

“So, anyway, Charon doesn’t say anything; he just turns his back to Hades and gets in his ferry and floats off. And, ah,” Persephone sounded deflated, “Hades just collapses on his knees, staring out at Charon riding away until he disappears into the fog. Then he dries his eyes on his robes and walks inside. I get back in my seat, and I act like I’m - like I’m none the wiser. So he walks in, we have dinner, what have you and - and I’m trying to make idle chit-chat. I talk about my day, oh, and,” she waved a hand in front of her face, distracted, “and Hades is acting like nothing happened, either, but he’s just very quiet, you know. So I’m just talking and talking and Hades takes, like, this inhale and looks at me in this impatient way, like he knows what I’m doing. In hindsight, I can see that I was acting queer. So,” Persephone began to laugh, “I stop my rambling and I ask Hades if something’s the matter. He - he doesn’t say anything, and he gives me this sad look and shakes his head.” She sighed.

“I don’t know why I said it. I shouldn’t have said anything.” Persephone’s voice became heavy. “Anyway, Hades is looking at me and, you know, I’m trying to make us work. His problems are my problems. So I’m trying to be supportive and I tell him how my mother had left me many jewels; how their value, individually, are priceless. He gets up out of his seat and…”

Persephone sighed. “He hurt me. He hurt me bad.”

“He hit ‘cha?” Linda asked.

“Yeah,” Persephone answered. “See, look.” She moved closer to the mirror and tilted her head upward. The skin stretched across the right side of her neck upward to the corner of her mouth was blackened and charred, like the craggy surface of a volcano.

“S**t,” Linda grunted. “An’ he ain’t neva hit you befo.’ She paused. “Right?”

“No,” Persephone monotoned. “Never.” She tsked.

Linda stepped back so that she could get a better glipse of Persephone.

“Girl, I betta get goin’. I got blood on my couch, a featha’ in my door and a dead Jehovah’s Witness in my kitchen all t’ take care of. You come ova’ nah soon as you can, y’ hear?”

“Yeah, yes, of course I will. I’ll keep you posted. I’ll announce my arrival in advance so you can be ready for me. I’m so sorry for all of your troubles, as well.”

Linda nodded. “You take care of yourself, baby. Don’t forget; try to find that information fo’ me, and be careful. Yo’ husband ain’t right in his head to be hittin’ his wife after eons of marriage. He trippin’.”

“Thanks. Love you.”

“Love you, baby. Take care.”

The world beyond the mirror was no more. The space behind the cracks in the mirror was now occupied by a smooth, powder-white sheet. Swear to god, as much as I love her that’s the dumbest b***h I ever met, she thought as she shook her head. Linda left the bathroom, but not before grabbing her pack of tampons from the cabinet underneath the kitchen sink, and walked back over to the sliding-glass door. The feather was still stuck in the glass. Linda poked it with her finger. The feather bent at her touch. She lightly stroked her thumb against plumed edge. The skin on her thumb superficially split apart as if she were grazing against needles. She rubbed her thumb and middle finger together. The perforated skin knitted together in seconds.

“Two elder death gods in trouble and this b***h is running around oblivious like she was dropped on her head,” she muttered to herself. She looked between the couch and the kitchen, deciding what to work on first. The newspapers spread across the cushions were blotted with blood. Whatever remaining blood that hadn’t set in the cushions themselves before were probably set now. She grunted, annoyed, and trundled inside the kitchen. Brother Michael’s wrapped body was laying in a crumpled heap beneath the kitchen sink. Linda pulled the body to the middle of the floor. Blood sloshed inside the scaled plastic of the bound tarp. She opened the drawer adjacent to the sink and pulled out a carton of aluminum foil. She spent some time opening every tube of tampon and crushing the sheets together around the body afterward. When she finally opened the tarp, she threw the lot of tampons around the body, whereas the rest pooled inside the curled sheets of foil.

Linda wiped away her tears and stifled her sobs, as always, as she stripped Brother Michael from his clothes. She butchered his limbs with a bonesaw that she had “borrowed” from a back-alley “doctor” in the 1940s. She missed the activities of the New Orleans’ SpeakEasys that the era had to offer. It was so easy to collect roots in those days. These days, forensics made it harder to explain away missing persons. What was her name in those days? Agnes? Marie? Linda shook her head. You got too much staying power to be thinking about yesterday, she told herself. What matters is keeping your staying power. Damn you, Thoth. Thoth had told her that he was giving her a gift. She growled at the thought of the events that had just transpired. He wasn’t extending a gesture of benevolence. It was a threat.

Briskets, or steak tarare for dinner? she asked herself. Don’t fool yourself. She chortled. Kristian’ll wants tartare. Don’t trip.

She sleeved her arms inside the boy’s lower abdomen and collected his liver and seminal vesicles. She wrapped his head and hands in aluminum foil so that she could wrench out his teeth and fingernails later. She needed as many roots as she could conjure for whatever might come her way - She paused, a freshly wrapped hand clutched in hers.

“I brought the boy here as a gift.”

She tossed the hand aside and sat back, resting on her knees, hands on hips, as her face twisted in gross confusion.

“What the hell…,” she blurted out. She shook her head. This made no sense. Why would Thoth ask to kill her yet give her a body to make fresh roots from? And what did Hades need every last ferry toll for? From how it was looking, if both of these were connected, then this wasn’t some petty spat between the gods - this was something scary. And somehow, even in some insignificant, small way, she mattered. She jumped up and ran back to the sliding glass door. She didn’t want that feather out of her sight. As she reached for it, she noticed a faint, sharp smell; ionized, like burning metal. She placed her fingers around the shadow-black feather to pull it out and quickly seized it away. It burned her fingers. That’s when she noticed that the feather was slowly sliding down, searing through and leaving a glistening trail of melted glass behind itself.

She knew what it meant. She rubbed the blushed rawness on her fingers. She looked at her fingers - they were still blushed; they would heal at a normal human’s pace. Thoth was giving her a choice. End it now and go with Thoth - or fight. Thoth knew that if she didn’t want to be found, she wouldn’t be found. Her existence, her true self, was a little more than an absent-minded glimmer of knowledge buried under the annals of time. She knew what she was doing. She wanted to feed, and she wasn’t going to give up the delicious taste of a sin. Not for anything.

“Come,” she said, gazing out of the window.

The feather was still sinking. It had made it’s way a third from where it had penetrated towards reaching the ground. Linda quickly stepped back into the bathroom, opened the now-shattered medicine cabinet and took out a cherry-wooden box; it was about the size of a cigar box and was in the early stages of petrification. She also grabbed a pair of tweezers and hurried back to the sliding glass door. She opened the box and used the the tweezers to slide the feather out, sealing the box shut afterward. She walked back into the bathroom and tossed the box back in the medicine cabinet.

She slumped into the kitchen and began preparing tartare out of Brother Michael’s body for Kristian, all the while wiping tears from her eyes, as she mumbled to herself strings of incantations (the ones that she could remember) that she never thought that she would have to use. She was going to perform her roots the next day. She was just too exhausted. It made her hungry to be so riled in all of this.

Hungry.

Linda did her best to clear her head for the time being. She had made all of the sense with everything that was yet provided for her. Absentmindedly, she prepared a heaping portion of tartare cut from shanks of bicep and thigh and piled the moist mound of evisceration high on a wide platter beside capers, mint and sage. She would preserve what she had remaining with salt in clay jars for a roast later on. She lifted the platter and hefted her way up the staircase and towards the front of the door near the end of the hall, second to the last on the left. Someone was lightly pounding on the other side of the door; open-palmed, by the sound of it. Linda quickly set the platter down on the ground in front of the door and rubbed her side of the door. The soft swoosh against the paint finish drowned out the pounding on the other side and, quickly, silenced it.

“Kristian, baby, don’t you pay no mind to all that noise you heard down the’a, ya he’a? Everything’s alright, baby. Everything’s gonna be alright.” She stood there for a moment, in the dark, listening. Silence. It would have to do.

She got down on her knees, pushed the mini-door inward and slotted the platter through. Before her hand had even released the platter something on the other side of the door violently rocked it and snatched it away, streaking spilt blood behind it. Linda hooted in surprised and laughed.

“Boy, I know you happy!” she called, ducking down, and quietly swung the mini-door shut amidst the slosh and smacking of the tartare being devoured. She wasn’t going to bother cleaning it up. She knew it was going to be lapped away; it would have made Kristian happy. Other than feeding, nothing else mattered more to her.

She climbed back up on her feet and strided into the last door on the left, her bedroom. The thick, black curtains were closed, as they had been since she put them up, and the room didn’t have any lightbulbs, but she didn’t mind. When Linda needed it, darkness had been her purest ally. She fell into ease. She maneuvered in between past the corners of her vanity and bookcase that stretched against the wall beside the door and the yellowed sulfur powder that she had sprinkled around her queen-sized mattress towards the open closet near the back window.

She slotted through dated blouses and stacks of jeans that gave her girthing, gelatinous rump a trying effort at a firm apple-bottom. She grabbed one of the more recent pairs, which she tossed behind her onto the mattress, one violet slimming blouse and, from the very end of the rack, a corset. The corset was the oldest piece of attire that she owned; a harlequin-patterned binding fabric that she had received as a gift from a former paramour by the name of Aleister Crowley. One of the only great romances of my life that didn’t have no hangups, she thought with derision.

She shed the bloodied clothes that she was already wearing, walked to the other end of the hall to the shower room, took a thorough rinse (with lots of lather), oiled and perfumed herself, fluffed her hair in a wild, uneven crimp and stuck a brilliant peacock feather in its asymmetry and redressed herself. Her trusted corset, which she had diligently remended throughout the years, fulled her bust to an obscene presentation. Once she finally slipped on her heels, she didn’t stop moving until she was out the door.

Tonight, she was going to feed.