Mary

Why does a child despise her family?

I know there must be people out there who get along. Families who act like the families on television. I know that, somewhere, there are daughters who love their mothers, even their fathers.

I used to think this—this indifference—was the way of things. I had no other experience to compare. For all I knew, all mothers and all fathers behaved as mine.

I was a stranger in my own house.

As soon as I learned to read, I lost myself in my books. That was when I first realized that not all families were so distant, so diffident, so cold. Only my earliest memories contained the hint of warmth from either parent. My brother had always been apathetic. Within a few years, though, things must have changed. My mother went back to school while I was left with a nanny; she graduated with a Master’s degree in Economics.

She has some high-paying, high-powered, high-intensity job now. I don’t even know what it is. I don’t really care. All I know is, she all but disappeared from the house when I was four years old, and my brother was ten. He could tell you more specifics, since he was old enough to remember at the time.

I’d rather not anyone pay much attention to that part of my life, though. I’ve left it behind me. There are times now I hardly even think about it anymore.

In the end, it was the simple, cold indifference that gave me my resolve. My parents didn’t even see me. I was miserable, and I knew it. They knew I was miserable, too, but neither one could figure out why. Instead of doing something about it themselves, they sent me off to therapists, convinced that a professional would be able to sort me out. I never talked to any of them. I never had anything to say. Some of them came up with pseudo-intellectual names for imaginary disorders that I had. Some of them gave me pills. Those didn’t do anything. I dumped them all down the toilet.

School, though, was a haven for me. The other students, friendly enough at first, soon became as indifferent towards me as my family. I didn’t really mind that. I think it was the lonely aura that I’m sure I radiated. I never was used to people being friendly to me, so I never learned how to react to them. Not until much later, anyways.

The library, though, that was my heaven. Nobody ever ventured to the far shelves. I used to sit in the dark corners of that library, surrounded by books, both fiction and fact. Anything to make me forget my own life.

Music, when I discovered it, was another way to escape from anything. My parents paid out the money to buy me piano lessons the same way they paid for my ‘therapy’. Every so often I had to go play in some recital or another to keep them appeased and assure them that the lessons were not going to waste. Not that there was any chance of that.

I couldn’t have cared less about the recitals. The music kept me company during the long hours alone at home. Soon I picked up other instruments, out of sheer loneliness. Flute, clarinet, violin. The violin is my favorite. It sounds so much like a voice. It became my voice. All those things that I was too shy and inarticulate to say for myself, I could say with my violin. The most profound conversations I ever had during that part of my life were with my beloved violin.

The teachers loved me, musical and scholastic. I was the one student who always practiced for my lessons, never complained about the difficult pieces. I was the one student who always did the homework, always read the textbooks, always wrote the essays on time and longer than necessary. I had nothing better to do with my time. The more time I spent in the library, reading and writing and researching, the more time I had away from my lonely house. The other students, of course, started to hate me for it. A few years later the blank indifference had metamorphosed into jealousy and ugliness. I spent even more time hiding in the library.

There were days when I came home and didn’t see a single soul. When I was fourteen, my brother went off to college in another state. By then the teasing had ended but the latent sibling rivalry had not. He never let me forget that I wasn’t my parents’ real child, either. Every time we spoke he called me ‘Little Orphan Mary’, or sometimes just ‘Orphan’.

I was glad to see him go.

I saw him one more time after he went away to college. The summer after his first year he went on a road trip with his buddies, but he did stop off at home to drop off his things and take some food. I never saw him again, after that. Every so often I wonder where he ended up. He hadn’t chosen a major yet by the time I left. He could be doing anything for all I know.

Months went by. Winter came again. My mother disappeared for several weeks, and I didn’t even find out until midway through that she had gone to Japan on a business trip. My father spent most nights at his office, or drinking with his friends. That’s what he told my mother, anyway. I have no idea if it was true. It was nothing but me sitting alone in that empty house with nothing but the television and my music to keep me company.

It occurred to me that nobody would notice for weeks if I just left. It wasn’t as if there were anything to tie me there. I had no job, my mother having insisted that I instead focus on homework as long as I was in school. I had no real friends. Nobody would miss me, except perhaps for the teachers.

It didn’t take long.

I lied to the teachers. I told them that my family was going on an extended vacation and that we would be leaving very soon, and handed them a forged note. They reluctantly gave me the assignments and tests for the rest of the year. I didn’t ace them as well as I might have otherwise, but I passed everything.

I cancelled my music lessons, pocketing the money that my parents had given me to pay for them. I sold my flute and my clarinet, and a dozen odds and ends that I could call my own. Jewelry, dresses, shoes. I kept my violin.

By February it was done. All of my remaining possessions had been packed away in a suitcase. Except for my violin—that had its own case. All of my homework, papers, and exams had been completed.

On February 12, 1981, I left that house.

I was a month shy of sixteen years old.

My room was bare. The piano, once covered in sheet music, was spotless. The only thing I left in that house was a short note that I pinned to the refrigerator with a magnet.

All it said was “Don’t follow me”.

The cab was waiting outside. I left my key inside and locked the door behind me.

The driver was nice enough to help me load my suitcase and violin into the back of the car.

“Where to, Miss?” he asked when I had settled into the back seat.

“Wilmington Station, please.”

I watched the trees and houses go past the window. I knew in my heart that this was the last time that I would see those houses, and those trees. We passed my high school and I watched it shrink into the distance.

“So what brings a girl like you out of school in the middle of the week like this?” he asked conversationally.

“I’m going on vacation with my parents,” I replied, the usual lie coming to my lips without a thought.

“And where are they?”

“Meeting me at the train station,” I said automatically.

“Well, that sounds real nice,” he said. “You must have some nice parents, if they’re letting you out of school like that.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “Terrific.”

The cab driver dropped me off at the train station and helped me with my suitcase. I gave him as generous a tip as I dared, already all too aware that I had to make my money last as long as possible. He smiled, thanked me, and wished me a good vacation.

I made my way up to the ticket kiosk. The lady behind the little window looked at me oddly, but I had the money so she gave me a ticket for the next train to New York.

The next few hours are a blur. The train didn’t arrive right away, so I must have waited there for a while. Then the train came, and I hurried to get on in the brief time that it stood in the station. A few hours later I found myself stepping out of the train in Pennsylvania Station, New York, New York, and into an underground maze of concrete, shops, and above all, people. I slept in the station that night, the straps of my luggage wrapped tightly around my arms. If somebody asked me what I was doing, I told them I was waiting for my parents.

I woke up early the next morning. I found a locker that would fit my suitcase, so I parted with a few coins and left it there, praying that it would be alright. I knew I might need the violin, though, so I slung it across my back. I wouldn’t have parted with it anyway. I took half of my money and left the other half in the locker, in case one was robbed. I had no idea how long I would be gone, although I knew I couldn’t stay on the city streets all night. I had to leave the station, though. I had to find a job.

I walked a long ways, that first day. I didn’t want to spend the money on a subway pass, so I just walked. Fancy areas, seedy areas, I searched everywhere. Everywhere I went I walked into stores, delis, restaurants. Anywhere that might hire a sixteen-year-old girl. I tried the nicer areas of the city first, of course. The nicer the restaurant, the more money I’d earn. I guess I didn’t look respectable enough to work at any of those places though. I took a break around noon and found myself a spot to play for a bit. I gained a few dollars at that, and used the money to buy lunch. The rest of the afternoon and the next day I continued to look for more steady employment.

I didn’t find anywhere willing to hire me for three days. In the meantime, I played my violin in the tunnels of the subway station and out in the park. It was enough that I didn’t have to dip into the money I had brought with me to pay for food.

On the third day, when I had started to feel the pangs of desperation, I walked into a small restaurant on East Fourth Street. The lunch rush had ended, and the dinner rush had not yet started, so the proprietor was sitting behind his small bar and watching the grainy television.

“Excuse me,” I said. I hoped I wasn’t too scruffy from sleeping in the train station for three nights. I was still wearing the same clothes, and I knew I must have smelled a bit.

The man turned away from his television and glanced at me.

“Just you?” he asked, and pulled out a menu. He started walking towards one of the tables.

“Wait!” I called after him. He stopped. “Actually, I was hoping you could hire me.”

“No ‘Help Wanted’ sign on my window,” he said gruffly. I swallowed and nodded.

“I-I know,” I admitted. “But please, I really need a job.”

“Ever waitress before?”

“Well… no.”

“Not hiring.”

“Wait!” I called again. “I could clear tables, I could mop the floor, I could take out the trash, anything!”

The violin on my back shifted uncomfortably, its weight throwing me momentarily off balance. The man eyed it. “What is that thing?” he asked.

“My violin. I can play! I could play in your restaurant, or just outside, to get people to come in! I’m very good, I promise!”

The man must have seen something in my face that he liked. He chewed his lip a few seconds and finally nodded. “You play me something nice,” he said, “And if I like what I hear I’ll pay you a little bit to play for my dinner crowd. No promises.”

I sagged with relief and immediately unstrapped the case from my back, setting it in one of the tight corners of the narrow restaurant. I hadn’t had any chance to warm up, and my fingers were stiff with the cold, but I wasn’t all that worried. I had once played recitals with even less preparation, and I had been playing outside for three days now. If I could play half as well as I had been, I just knew he would hire me.

My confidence was not misplaced.

I played something for him that I thought would suit the restaurant and watched his face with growing satisfaction. When I finished, it took him several seconds to react. A grin spread across his face, and he nodded and laughed with delight.

“Alright, little songbird, you’ve got a job for the night. It’ll depend on how much my customers like you, but I’d say you’ve got a place here. I’ll give you three dollars an hour, cash. I take it you’re a dropout?”

I nodded slightly, feeling somewhat ashamed for the first time since I made my decision.

“Not the first I’ve seen, anyway. What’s your name, kid?”

I almost gave him my old name. Mary. But that was my old name, the name my parents gave me when they adopted me. I didn’t want anything to remind me of them. I wasn’t Mary Bristow anymore. I had never, truly, been Mary Bristow. I cleared my throat.

“Aria.”

“Aria What?”

“Just Aria.”

The man shrugged. “Suit yourself. My name is Doug Andries.”

“Thank you so much, Mr. Andries,” I said, shaking his hand. “You won’t regret this.”

I stood in the corner and practiced until the dinner crowd started to arrive, relishing the warmth of the restaurant. The smell of the food cooking in the kitchen made my mouth water and my stomach rumble, but I ignored them. Soon, I promised myself, I would eat like that again. I just had to get through now.

People started to trickle in. Mr. Andries nodded to me and I started to play for real, everything I could think of. I had sold my music stand, and even though I had books of sheet music in the pocket of my violin case, there was no place to put it. I had to play from memory. I managed. When I ran out of songs to play, I just let my fingers do whatever they liked. Fortunately, nobody seemed able to tell the difference. I played for five hours straight. I played until my arms were sore. I didn’t stop playing until the last person left his table. The two waitresses that worked the evening shift applauded when I set the violin in its case. I took a small breathless bow, grinning at them.

Mr. Andries came out with a plate of hot food and set it in front of me.

“Here,” he said, “Eat. You earned it. I’ve never seen a dinner rush last that long.”

I dug into my dinner, completely famished. The last thing I had eaten had been a greasy hotdog bought from a street vender at noon—over eleven hours ago. One of the waitresses sat down next to me at the table. I had done a double take when I first saw her—her blonde hair had been twisted into dreadlocks and her ears covered in more metal than skin. She had pulled her hair back while she was working; now it hung loose around her face.

“Hey there, new girl,” she said in greeting. I smiled at her through a forkful of my dinner. “They call me Razzy,” she continued. I swallowed my mouthful.

“Aria,” I offered in return.

“Cool. That your real name?”

“It is now.”

“Yeah, man, I feel that. So you gonna be hanging around now?” Razzy asked.

“I hope so. If Mr. Andries says I am.”

“Oh, you will. You totally will. You play that thing like a freak,” she insisted, emphasizing the last word with the palm of her hand.

“…Thanks.”

“So where you from, Aria?”

“Delaware.”

“Aw, lame. No wonder you cut loose. Dougie says you’re a dropout. Runaway, too, I guess. Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Hey, no sweat. I dropped out of high school a couple years ago. Didn’t get my GED until just recently. Man, high school was so lame. And the parents were a******s, too. Yours too, I bet.”

“I don’t really want to talk about it.”

I dug back into my dinner. The mashed potatoes in particular. The cook had put something delicious in them.

“That’s cool, that’s cool,” Razzy said. She chewed absently on a piece of bread that one of the patrons had left behind. “So when’d you get here?”

“A few days ago.”

“Fresh out, yeah, I figured. Where you been sleeping?”

“Train station,” I admitted. I started in on the vegetables, which I’d been putting off. There was some asparagus, unfortunately, but at the moment I couldn’t be picky.

“If you want, you could crash at the loft,” Razzy offered. “There’s a bunch of us up there, over in the Village. We’re always having people crash there, as long as you don’t mind s**t everywhere.”

“That sounds wonderful. Are you sure it’d be okay?”

“Yeah, yeah! No problem at all.”

It was the best offer I’d heard yet. I finished eating as quickly as I could and brought the plate back into the kitchen. Mr. Andries slipped a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. I looked up at him in surprise when I saw the denomination—he should have only given me fifteen! He saw the look on my face and smiled, telling me again that I’d earned it and that I should come back at seven the next morning to play for breakfast.

Razzy finished up her work and clocked out.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she asked, motioning towards the violin case strapped to my back.

“I’ve got a suitcase at the station,” I said. I pulled the locker key out of my pocket.

“Alright, no problem, we’ll make a detour.”

She led me to a nearby subway station. She had me buy a ticket for several trips, saying that I’d end up needing it. For now I needed it to take me to the train station and back to the Village, and I was grateful that she had insisted. I was exhausted, both from the night’s efforts and from three days of wandering the streets of Manhattan.

We arrived at Razzy’s loft, my suitcase in tow. When we got up there, I was greeted by no less than half a dozen of Razzy’s compatriots. It was unfinished, the walls just drywall and the floor some kind of cheap wooden baseboard. She had been right about the s**t everywhere. It wasn’t the sort I had expected, though. Buckets of paint shared the floor with ratty couches and unidentifiable materials collected in drifts. The sleeping arrangements varied; in one corner, I saw an old bunk bed; in another, several small mattresses were carefully arranged around each other on the floor and draped with sheets.

Razzy’s roommates were likewise scattered haphazardly around the large room. None of them had an appearance I could have called ‘conventional’. Only a few were girls. One of them called out to us in greeting.

“Hey, Razzy-Ma-Tazzy! Who’s your friend?”

This came from a young man of twenty years or so with long hair and torn jeans.

“Guys, this is Aria. She’s going to be crashing here for a little while,” Razzy announced. She pointed out each of them in turn and told me their names. The young man with the long hair was Georgie. I couldn’t remember any of the rest at the moment.

“Put your s**t wherever,” one of them told me. “I don’t think anybody’s got that couch right now.” She pointed at one of the couches. It had once been a bright orange but now it was just brownish and sagging. I dragged my suitcase to sit next to it and set my violin down on the cushions, claiming it.

“Two rules,” the girl said. “Aria, was it? Don’t mess with anybody else’s s**t, and if you stay longer than a month you’ve gotta chip in on rent. We keep the door locked, and we find out somebody’s stealing s**t they’re out.”

“I can live with that.”

While the loft wasn’t exactly what I had pictured in my head when I was still planning my getaway, it was in fact far better than I had expected. The other people in the loft looked like they had each once been in the same situation as I was, and some probably still were. I learned later that most of them were artists of one kind or another—the source of the paint and other assorted materials. At least one of them had been using the wall as a canvas. Sheets of spattered clear plastic covered that part of the floor. The best part, as far as I was concerned, was that none of them questioned my presence and none of them cared if I practiced my violin there.

A month later, I was earning close to eighty dollars a night. Don’t get me wrong—Mr. Andries never paid me more than the three dollars an hour he originally promised after that first night. The rest was all from tips that some of the patrons would throw in my case. It was enough that I could put in my share of the rent and even buy myself some clothes. I walked to work when I could, but the weather was still so cold that I ended up taking the subway many times. My biggest expenses were the rent and maintenance for my violin. New strings, rosin, a new bridge when my old one cracked… these all cost money. So did getting my bow re-haired. As much as I played that violin, I had to pay for those things pretty often. It’s amazing, really, how fast the little expenses add up when you’re the only one to pay them.

Mr. Andries did keep giving me a plate of food after the dinner rush every day. Nothing expensive, of course, and it was usually the same thing every night, but it was enough that I didn’t have to worry about going hungry. Every so often I bought myself some cheap crackers to tide me over until then, but dinner was usually the only meal I ever ate.

Pretty soon I found myself dressing like my roommates. They showed me thrift stores were I could buy clothes cheap enough that I could afford them. I bought myself a pair of sweatpants to sleep in, and a handful of T-shirts. Most of them had pictures of bands printed across them. One of my roommates—Candy, I think—had a record player from somewhere and they played records of all their favorite bands. Some were local, some were famous. It was just background noise to me.

Spring came, then summer. The weather warmed up and I started walking to work every day.  I stayed at the restaurant from seven in the morning until it closed almost every day, and I was at the loft the rest of the time. I found the public library soon enough, of course, but for once in my life I was too busy to feel the need to forget about things and I very rarely went there.

My roommates varied. Some, especially Razzy, were friendly and always welcomed a bit of company. These roommates were the sort to offer me the occasional drag of weed, and sometimes more. I wasn’t all that impressed with it, and it didn’t seem to affect me the same way it did them, so I only accepted to be social. It was just one less thing to spend money on.

Some of my roommates kept to themselves even more than I once had. These were the ones that were into harder drugs, and they rarely left the loft. Most of the time they painted in the corners or assembled something unfathomable out of the ever-changing assortment of random crap on the floor. I could always tell when one had managed to sell a piece, because they were always more stoned than usual.

Razzy had been right about the turnover. A month after I arrived, another girl showed up. I think she was sleeping with Georgie. She was gone a month after that. One of the worst drug addicts disappeared one day and never came back. We split up his meager possessions and the rent went up a bit until somebody else showed up. I gave up trying to remember anyone else’s name—they tended to leave too quickly. Looking back, I’m not even sure whose name was on the lease. For a while I thought it might have been Georgie, since he seemed to be there the longest, but eventually even he moved out. I suppose there must have been some arrangement with the landlord, and as long as rent was paid on time, he never complained.

Autumn came, then winter. I bought myself a thick coat from the thrift store and started taking the subway to work. I stayed at the restaurant later and later, since our loft wasn’t always heated. Heating cost money. Mr. Andries let me help clean tables and take out the trash like I had offered all those months before. The best was when he let me help the cook in the kitchen, stirring pots and things. The kitchen was always so toasty warm, and I could sneak bites of food when the cook wasn’t looking. Once or twice I managed to tuck a soda or a small box of something under my coat before he turned back around. I don’t even want to think about what might have happened to me if I had been caught.

I remember one particular night very clearly. You’ll understand why when I tell you what happened.

I had finished playing for my dinner crowd. I had bought some new sheet music with some of the money I was earning and it was paying off. They loved me. I waited until the last of them had dropped their coins and bills into my case and left before counting it. Twenty-two dollars and eighty-one cents just from dinner alone!

Dinner was spaghetti and a salad that night, and a small glass of milk. I managed to snag some rolls, too, from tables that hadn’t been cleared yet, with butter from a few of those little individual plastic things.

I finished the food, pocketing one of the rolls, and helped the waitresses and busboy clear off the tables. As long as I kept working, Mr. Andries would keep paying me three dollars an hour. I might have dragged it out if I could, but the other people helping me made that impossible. After clearing and washing the tables, I got all the trash from the big can in the kitchen and the little one behind the bar and dragged it outside to the dumpster.

Razzy was out there in the alley, a cigarette in her hand by the smell of it, taking a smoke break. She nodded to me. I nodded to her. If she ended up leaving at the same time as me we would go back to the loft together, but I had stopped worrying about traveling alone a long time ago.

She was wearing a green shirt over her half-tied apron.

Her dreadlocks were held back with a handkerchief.

I went back inside. Finished up. Gathered my coat and violin. I bid Mr. Andries and the rest goodnight and decided to poke my head outside. Razzy had been outside for a little bit too long.

I got to the door and heard scuffling.

Something crunched, and gurgled.

My senses were tingling, especially my hands. My hair, I’m sure, was standing on end all over my body.

I peeked around the corner as silently as possible.

Razzy lay dead, her throat torn open, in a pool of her own blood. Her cigarette still burned a few feet away, the faint glow slowly fading away into the darkness. A continued muffled sound that I wish I couldn’t remember was the sound of what had killed her tearing through her abdomen.

That thing.

I could only see the vaguest silhouette, but I could see two things very clearly: it was large, and it was covered in fur.

At first I thought it might be a dog, but it was much, much too big. If I had stood any closer, it might have stood as high as my waist, and I’m five-foot-seven, by the way, so that’s saying something. My next thought was that it must have escaped from the Zoo. Whatever it was, I knew I should hurry back inside and tell Mr. Andries and wait for the police or animal control or somebody to arrive. Preferably somebody with a very large tranquilizer gun.

Something about it, though, hypnotized me. I couldn’t look away. I stood there, hardly breathing, peering around the corner so tightly that only a small part of my head could have been visible from the outside if the thing hadn’t been so busy with what remained of Razzy. I watched it eat her.

It didn’t stop until she was nearly gone, and I could see patches of white bone shining in the faint light from the streetlights. When it was finished, it stepped back and looked up. I shrank in the doorway, but it didn’t look at me. It was looking towards the street. A few people passed by, not seeing the dark shape in the darker alley. It … it changed. One moment it was large, and covered in fur, and after another series of moments it was … human. Not human, though. Of course not human. No human could shift into that and still be a person.

I’m ashamed to tell you that I squeaked in shock when I saw it shift. Now it saw me. In the single moment that it looked at me before I disappeared into the back of the restaurant, the door slamming locked behind me, I got a glimpse of its eyes. Its cold, dead eyes. Poor Razzy had looked more alive than that thing did.

I didn’t leave the restaurant for several more minutes. Mr. Andries looked at me oddly when I didn’t leave right away, but I couldn’t tell him now. He wouldn’t have believed me, and I probably would have gotten in trouble for making up stories. I couldn’t tell anybody.

When I did get up the courage to go back to the loft I told what roommates were there that Razzy had been killed in a drive-by. None of us knew her real name, if she had one, so they couldn’t check to see that I was lying. They just saw the haunted look in my eyes and accepted my story.

We divided her belongings.

Rent went up a bit, until somebody else showed up.

The very next day I started asking around for somebody who might sell me a gun. I was still too young to buy one legally. To the people I asked, I told the story of Razzy’s death and how I wanted to protect myself. I played up the young-girl-living-alone bit. Eventually enough of the right people felt sorry for me (or were distracted by my underage cleavage) that I was able to locate a seller. He gave me a sturdy, somewhat large-caliber handgun in exchange for a large stack of the money I had saved, as well as a small supply of ammunition for it. He sent me off with a wish of luck and a stern admonition that I must never admit to having met him. I wasn’t completely sure that what I now had would kill the thing I had seen, but I needed something, even if only to make myself feel a little safer.

I kept the gun in my violin case, in the compartment in which I normally stored rosin and spare strings. I kept an eye out for the thing, determined to find it and kill it, to get it back for eating Razzy. Every night I checked the back alley, and every night I saw nothing.

It was two months before I saw it again. I’m not sure it was the same one, now, but it doesn’t bother me much.

By then, Mr. Andries had hired a new waitress to replace Razzy. The new girl was out in the alley smoking a cigarette just like Razzy had been. I watched her, secretly, after I finished with the garbage, from my doorway. I always watched, now, whenever somebody went outside for very long and I wasn’t busy playing for the patrons.

A dark silhouette, man-shaped, slipped into the alley, and the girl didn’t see. At that point, it could have still been just your average, ordinary, late-night mugger. I didn’t want the girl to get mugged either, though, so I stepped out into the alley. I pulled the gun from where I had tucked it into my waistband and leveled it at the intruder.

“Back off,” I growled as bravely as I could. He laughed. “I mean it!” My hand shook a little. He grinned, a predatory grin, and kept walking toward us. The other girl had dropped her cigarette and was now endeavoring to get behind me. I let her. The man got close enough and I could see his eyes. Dark, dead eyes. Even the most evil of eyes glitter if there is a soul behind them. Behind these eyes was nothing at all. I couldn’t hesitate. Either this guy was a mugger or that thing I had seen two months before, and he was going to hurt us. I couldn’t miss. I didn’t know much about those things back then, but I knew that I had to kill it as quickly as possible. The most likely spot would be the heart, or the head.

All these thoughts flashed through my brain faster than lightning. Barely a second after I saw his dead eyes I shot him through the heart. I’ve always had good hand-eye coordination; I think it’s from playing the violin. He stumbled and fell to his knees. I shot him through the head. He fell. He disappeared. Not even a corpse. The only thing left behind was a spreading rotten stench like week-old meat left out in the sun.

I looked behind me. The waitress had already fled. I don’t know how much she saw. I hoped she had the sense not to tell anyone. Either way, I never saw her again. I assume she freaked out and found another job in a presumably safer neighborhood. I looked at the empty place where that thing had been, and then at the gun in my hands. My hands were still shaking, but now I could feel the first flicker of fire burning through my veins. The exhilaration of knowing that I had ended even that small spot of darkness, that I had destroyed a piece of something so black that evil couldn’t touch it.

You see, an empty shell cannot be evil. Evil necessitates malice, and intent, and a soul to make the damning choice. The thing I had just killed was not evil; it was a void. A patch of darkness in a world created from light.

At that moment, I did not yet know all these things, or at least I could not articulate them. Then, I had only the hint of a suspicion, laced with the first stirrings of nascent fire in my blood. The only things I knew for sure were that I had done something good, and I desperately wanted to do it again. The aftereffects of the kill still lingered in me. I could almost taste it. I knew even then that it would pull at me like an addiction, more powerful than anything my naïve roommates could ever concoct.

It still surprises me that nobody cared when they heard the report of my gun firing into the night. Even so, I began to stay out even later, to ensure that Mr. Andries would have left before I started my hunt. That’s what it became. Every night I waited, hoping to find another. I eventually branched out into the neighboring alleys in the hopes of increasing my chances. I worried that I might run into human attackers as well, though, so I never ventured farther than a block.

I almost got in trouble once.

It was after I killed my third one. A policeman had been passing at just the wrong time, and actually came into the alley to see what the trouble was. Thank the heavens I had already stashed my gun in my coat, or else it all would have ended right there. I was able to lie again, telling him that a figment of my imagination had tried to rob me, and his gun went off, and he ran. I sent the policeman on a wild goose chase down the street. I made sure I was gone by the time he got back empty-handed.

After that I knew I would have to be more careful.

I needed something that would fire silently, or at least less noisily than my gun.

It took some searching.

By pouring through the phone book, I found a store on the other side of the city that sold novelty weapons. Medieval kinds of things. It had swords, daggers, morningstars, and most importantly, crossbows. I picked out what I needed, made note of the cost, and got one of my roommates, older than I, to go back to the store for me.

The bolts were the trickiest. The crossbow only came with one of them, and it was hard to explain to the merchant—via my roommate—why I needed more. We finally managed to convince him that the few dozen extras were for target practice. I bought a dagger as well, just in case. My aim might fail me, and I might find my ammunition gone, so the dagger was my fallback. It took almost all of my remaining funds. My roommate thought I was nuts. That was okay.

Unfortunately, my crossbow was harder to carry than my gun. It was only a small one, but even a small crossbow is a bulky burden. I started carrying around a backpack, claiming that it was for music stuff. Since nobody else really knew anything about violin music, they didn’t question it. Just in case, though, I threw a spare bit of rosin in with the crossbow. I still kept my gun in the violin case, and sometimes in my coat, and I put the dagger in my waistband where I could get to it easily.

It was well worth it.

I continued to find the things. More frequently, as the weeks went by. I didn’t understand why it had taken me so long to find them, since they seemed to be so common in those days. I roamed farther, too. I started to take to the rooftops, feeling safer there than on the streets. On the rooftops I could fly away to the next building; in the alleys I was trapped. My aim suffered briefly, when I was still getting used to the distance and angle, but it got better.

For a little while I was afraid that I might get it wrong one time. What if I killed a human? I didn’t even want to think about the possibility. I took my time, making sure that the eyes were dead before shooting. None of them were ever human. Not all of them disappeared completely, though. Some of them collapsed into dust, dust that I could still see if I went down into the alleys to investigate. Those kind, I had to shoot with my crossbow, and through the heart.

It got to the point that I could tell just by looking at them which kind they were. The dust kind was much rarer. They seemed to be getting less rare, though. All of them.

It made me nervous.

There were nights when I killed two or three of the things. It wasn’t just that I was staying out later, and searching farther. There were more. I knew it.

Still the months went by. Roommates came and went, and soon I was one of the few that had lived in the loft the longest. I had laid claim to the top bunk by then, after the person occupying it had left.

Spring came again, then summer. Then autumn.

I had been living in New York for close to two years. There were people that came to the restaurant now that had come almost every week since I arrived, just to hear me play. Mr. Andries started paying me an extra dollar an hour, because I was bringing in so much business. The waitresses loved me, because I would play requests for them between meals. Every so often one would invite me over for a party or something after work. Sometimes I went. Most of the time, though, I itched to hunt too badly to do anything else.

One of the few times I did accept an invitation, I ended up leaving early, claiming a headache. Instead of going back to the loft, though, I set out across the rooftops. I probably shouldn’t have chanced some of those jumps with both my violin case and backpack strapped to my back, but I didn’t care. The night before had been one of those increasingly rare nights that I didn’t find any of those things, and my blood ached to burn with that fire again. The more I hunted, the more of those things I destroyed, the more
I loved it. I was getting less sleep, I knew, but I was waking earlier in the mornings, and feeling more cheerful during the day. I had never felt more alive in my entire life.

I was determined to make it continue.

I jogged easily across the rooftops, leaping across the gaping alleyways. Every time I passed one, I looked down to see if it harbored my prey. The bums and vagrants I ignored. I ignored the petty criminals, too. Those weren’t my concern. Sure, it would be nice if they could ever get rid of them, but I had more dangerous things to hunt.

The next alley brought me luck.

Not only did it have a dirty homeless man in it, one of those things was coming in from the other side. Dusty variety, from the look of it. That was good—that meant it wouldn’t kill the man right away.

Dust-things required a crossbow. I unslung my violin case and backpack from my back and set them gently on the tar of the roof. Fetched my crossbow, checked the bolt. I waited until the thing had bent over the homeless guy so that I could get a better view and shot it cleanly through the heart before it had a chance to actually bite the guy.

While I was bent over my backpack again, loading another bolt into my crossbow and tucking it back in the bag, I heard a soft thud next to me. Startled, I leapt to my feet and pulled the dagger from my waistband, prepared to kill it up close if I had to.

I needn’t have worried.

In front of me stood a young man, Hispanic if I could tell in the darkness. He was staring at me. Even in the dim light I could see the glitter in his eyes. If the things I had been hunting had eyes too dead for a human, this man’s eyes were almost too alive.

I lowered my dagger slightly but did not put it away just yet.

“Who are you?” he asked softly. His eyes shone into my own.

“…Aria,” I ventured.

“My name is Alejandro,” he said in return. There was no doubt that he was Hispanic, now. He even spoke with a Spanish accent, although not quite the same as somebody from New York. “You are hunting those things.”

He said it as softly as he had his name, but I could hear the surprise in his voice.

“You know about them?” I asked. He swallowed a laugh.

“Yes,” he said, “I know about them. I hunt them as well. I was hunting that vampire before you shot it. You have wonderful aim, by the way.”

“Thank you,” I said awkwardly. “…Where are your weapons?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out. He paused and sighed. “I have… put them away,” he answered finally. He bent down and helped me with my things. “I saw you put your crossbow in this backpack,” he said. “What is this for?”

He hefted my violin case.

“It’s my violin case.”

“I did not know that violins were so heavy,” he commented. He pulled the strap over his own shoulder.

“I’ve got some other things in there, too. What are you doing with that?” I demanded.

“Carrying it for you,” he told me with a small smile. “That is, if you will let me walk you back home.”

There was no reason I should let him. I knew nothing about him, other than that he hunted those things just like me. For all I knew, he could be some crazy man, ready to slit my throat and take my things as soon as we got to the loft. Something about him told me he wouldn’t though. It was something in his eyes. So I returned his smile.

We continued along the rooftops.

I must say, I appreciated the help with my things. Alejandro was much, much stronger than me and had no trouble carrying them across the breach. Halfway back to the loft we found another one. It was the regular kind this time, the kind I had first encountered. Alejandro saw it first and pointed over the edge of the roof at it.

“There is a therion in this alley. You can take this one.”

“No, it’s okay,” I said. I felt kind of bad. “I killed the last one.”

“I insist,” he said. “You have such wonderful aim. It is a pleasure to watch.”

I stammered a bit. I must have sounded like an idiot or something. Secretly I was a little grateful, though. Even to this day, I will never turn down a kill. I love it too much. I got my gun out and shot it through the head. Easier target, from this angle. Alejandro was suitably impressed. He complemented my aim again and I blushed. If he had even a single wicked bone in his body I would have been in terrible trouble.

We did not encounter any more of them that night.

I stopped at the door to my building, and he relinquished my things without protest. As I was about to disappear through the door, though, he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“…Wait,” he said. I turned back and looked at him. “When can I see you again?”

I told him that I worked at the restaurant the entire day.

He asked me which restaurant.

I told him.

The next day I saw him walk into the restaurant while I was playing, just as the lunchtime rush was starting. I smiled at him, but I couldn’t stop playing, so he let himself be seated and ordered lunch.

He sat there, watching me and listening to me play, for four hours. The waitress, who had tried to flirt with him when he first arrived, soon gave up her efforts. She winked at me when she passed my corner and formed the word “cutie” with her mouth.

I finished playing.

All the other customers had left.

Alejandro walked over to me, then, and bent down next to me while I placed my violin carefully into its case.

“So,” he said quietly. “She is a siren as well as a hunter.”

I stood up a little too quickly, completely embarrassed.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I should not be so forward.”

“I-It’s okay.”

I had been stuttering way too much since I met him.

“Do you have a break now?” he asked. “You have put away your instrument.”

“Well, I… I guess. I don’t know. I usually help clean off the tables for the dinner rush…”

“Perhaps your boss would allow you to take a break for an hour. Where is he? I will ask.”

“Er… over there,” I said, feeling slightly helpless. I gestured towards the small bar, where Mr. Andries was at his usual post watching the television. To my mortification, he walked straight up to the man.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said, “I wonder if you might allow your musician an hour so I can buy her an ice cream?”

Mr. Andries was surprised, for I had never had a young man with me in all the time that he had known me, but he gave his permission. It wasn’t such a sacrifice for him, though, since there were no customers to play for and he wasn’t going to pay me for that hour. Alejandro was thoroughly pleased with himself and he came back to the corner where I still stood and gathered my things.

“I know you would not want to leave these behind,” he commented as he shouldered his burdens.

“Thank you.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say. When we left the restaurant, the cold autumn air hit us and I remembered what he had said to Mr. Andries. “…Ice cream?” I asked. “Isn’t it a little cold for that?”

“I will buy you something else if you like,” he said with a smile. “Me, I have always liked ice cream, even if it is cold outside.”

I was inclined to agree with him. Not only that, it had been almost two years since I had last tasted ice cream, or eaten more than a few bites of anything in the middle of the day for that matter.

He took me to an ice cream parlor in one of the prettier parts of the city. He even paid for my subway ride. We spent at least the hour that Mr. Andries had granted me, talking over our ice cream. I even laughed, as I became more comfortable.

He told me he came from Spain, although it had been years since he had been there. He told me—covertly—that he had come to New York to hunt the night-things. He called them vampires (which I had already expected) and therions. When I asked what that word meant, he told me it was the name for the ones that changed into beasts.

I told him about my first kill, and he reacted with surprise when I told him about the eyes. He told me that they were demons, and that normal people could not tell the difference. He said he supposed he could tell me that because I had already seen.

I told him I had come from Delaware, but that I didn’t like to talk about it. I told him how I came to the city, found my job, and found a place to live. In his eyes I could see that he was sad to hear what I had been through, but also impressed that I had done so well. I told him about my weapons, even my gun, and he laughed when he realized that it was the reason my violin case was so much heavier than it should be.

It got late.

I hurried back to the restaurant so that I could start playing again before the dinner rush started. He again stayed, sitting at one of the tables and eating a small meal until the sun disappeared. When it was dark outside, he dropped a small scribbled note in my case and left with a wink.

Hours passed, and with them the customers, and I was finally able to read the note. It said. “I will be back at midnight.”

He was.

I had already put away my violin and eaten my dinner, and was trying to keep too busy to admit to myself that I was excited to see him again. I even managed to put a crossbow bolt through a demon that was lurking around back.

Then he came, and he picked up my things, and gave Mr. Andries a nod.

“You don’t have to walk me back home if you don’t want to,” I said self-consciously. I wasn’t used to this kind of attention at all.

“I do want to,” he reassured me, “but not yet. First I thought we might hunt together for a little while.”

We went to the rooftops again. Every time we found a demon, though, he told me that I should kill it. Not once did he kill one himself. At first I thought he was being some sort of gentleman, but after a while it had started to creep me out. My backpack was soon empty of bolts for my crossbow. I had more at the loft, but until I returned there I could not kill any more vampires, and I was hesitant to use my gun even against the therions.

When we found another one, he paused as usual to allow me to kill it, but I made no move to do so.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’m out of bolts. I guess you’re finally going to have to kill one of these things,” I said, feeling a little snippy.

“…I… I have nothing that can be shot,” he said. I could read nothing in his eyes. He, likewise, made no move.

I had had enough. With an exasperated growl I went down the fire escape with every intention of killing that thing with just my dagger. I had never been quite so close to any of those things before, but I knew I could do it. I had killed enough of these things to know where they were vulnerable, and my dagger was long and sharp. It was a vampire, so the kill would be trickier, but I didn’t care. I was too frustrated.

Alejandro must have finally realized that I was serious. When he saw me circling the demon down in the alley he gave a frightened shout and leapt from the roof into the narrow alley. Three stories.

I had already attacked.

My first blow, aimed at the throat, missed when the demon dodged and landed instead in its shoulder. I snarled. These things were easier to kill when they didn’t know I was coming! Unfortunately, instead of really harming it, the wound just seemed to piss it off. It caught me with a blow to my side and I was shocked to feel sharp nails slicing deeply into my flesh. Before it could attack again, it was pulled off of me and flung against the side of the building. Alejandro charged it, something in his hands, and caught it through the chest. It collapsed into dust.

I staggered and fell back against the other building, looking in horror at the spreading crimson at my side. I felt faint. My shirt was ruined, I lamented. My legs gave out and I landed in something sticky.

“Aria!” he yelled. He cursed, loudly, and rushed to my side. He pulled my shirt up at the side, but I was feeling too dizzy to protest. He must have been able to see my bra, at least. He stared at my side for several long seconds. I never did find out just how badly I’d been hurt. Alejandro still won’t tell me.

To my horror, he ripped open the palm of his hand with what must have been a fingernail, although I had never known a fingernail to be strong enough to do that. He muttered something, and held his hand to my side.

It tingled.

It burned.

Liquid fire poured from his hand into my side. I could feel it spreading through me. A few moments later, my head cleared and I stared at him in wonder. For a few seconds it appeared as though there were another copy of him occupying the same space as the first, sculpted out of the fire. He dropped his hand. My side was healed. He was staring back at me.

“Y-you are a hunter!” he whispered, his voice cracking with shock. “You are one of us!”

The double image of him had faded, and I blinked with confusion. “One of… who?”

He helped me to my feet. “Who are your parents?” he demanded. “Are they hunters as well?”

“N-no… They were just a******s.”

He shook his head. “No, that cannot be right. I felt it in your blood! I saw it! You are hunter-born!”

“Er… Well, I was adopted.”

He looked into my eyes and nodded slowly. “That would explain this. You never knew your birth parents?”

“No.”

“They must have been hunters,” he muttered to himself.

I was now completely tired of his odd questions and evasive answers.

“Look,” I said, a little more sharply than I intended. “Why do you keep going on about hunters? Just because I kill these things? Why does that mean my parents must have, too? And what the hell did you mean about my blood?”

I could see his eyes darken slightly as he thought something through. I stood there, hands on my hips, waiting for an answer to at least one of my questions.

He sighed.

“I am sorry. You have the right to know these things. Forgive me for not telling you sooner, but it is very rare that we reveal ourselves to anyone that is not our kin. Come with me. There are some things I must show you, and this is not the place.”

He wrapped me in his coat, hiding the large bloodstain on my shirt, and returned briefly to the roof to retrieve my backpack and violin case. Thankfully he did not jump straight into the alley with my violin in his hand. Carrying my things was the least he could do considering how frustrated I was at the moment.

Instead of returning to the loft, he led me to an unassuming convenience store that had closed for the night. He explained that I could not return to the loft as I was, in case somebody was there to see my bloody clothing. He keyed open the grate in front of the store, and the door behind it, closing both behind us. In the back was another door. The same key opened this, and I could see narrow stairs leading up to another floor.

“Is this where you’ve been staying?”

He nodded.

We walked up the stairs to the apartment above. There were a few other people there, standing around a table that had been covered in papers and maps. They looked up in surprise when they saw me.

“Alejandro, who is this?” one of them asked, another young man with sandy blonde hair and a British accent.

“It is okay, Grandfather, she is hunter-born.”

…Beg pardon!?

I coughed.

Alejandro smiled slightly and introduced me to the others. He explained briefly about how I was adopted, and how he realized I was ‘one of them’. His explanation seemed to satisfy them.

Introductions completed, he led me to a small bedroom and found a new shirt for me in the closet. He waited outside the door while I changed, and I called him back when I was done. He sat next to me on the bed.

“To be perfectly honest,” he said, “I have no idea where to begin. I have never needed to tell anyone about our kind before.”

“How old are you?” I asked. He looked at me, slightly surprised, before the flicker of understanding passed across his face. He had called one of the others “grandfather”, even though the other man looked no older than he.

“I am a month from twenty-one years,” he said.

“And the British guy?”

“You heard correctly. Seth is my grandfather. He is one hundred thirteen years.”

“…How?”

They did not age. Their bodies healed too quickly, and were too strong. They did not suffer from old age, or poisons, or infection, or any other kind of physical harm that stopped short of an instant death. They—we—were immortal.

They were strong. They were fast.

They could see demons. Not just recognize them, as I had learned to do, but notice and see them immediately, even if just from the corner of their eyes. The void I could only vaguely sense gnawed at them until they ached to destroy it.

How did they kill?

Claws, simply stated.

I know, I know… I laughed, too, at first. Until Alejandro bid me stand back and showed me his own. Razor sharp, and as long as his hand at their longest. They looked strong enough to pierce wood. I couldn’t even imagine where they went when he had them retracted.

I sat there silently for a while. The things he had told me sounded ridiculous. And yet… I had seen him jump three stories onto solid pavement without harm. I had seen his fantastical claws with my own eyes. He had healed me with a transfusion of his own blood, and I could not see a single mark on the hand he had torn open for me.

As ridiculous as it all sounded, as briefly as I had known him, and as little real reason I had to trust him, and trust that he wasn’t somehow pulling one over on me, I believed him.

And I was one of them.

It was passed along the generations, he told me, as long as one parent had the blood. When a hunter had children, those children each had the choice. It explained why I had never realized it before; until the choice was made, the child was no more than human. That I had progressed so far on my own was barely short of a miracle.

Alejandro had found me because I was that rarity that was a human hunting demons. They always watched those, because of the possibility that the human could be adopted.

Now I had a choice.

I would always be poor. I would be forced to move, as the years went by and I did not age. I could never have friendships that lasted more than a few years, except among my own kin. I would never have a career. I would be working as a waitress, or a simple performer, or any other job that could be picked up and dropped with a moments’ notice, for the rest of my long life. I would spend every night out on the street, hunting those demons. Every night for the rest of my life.

In the end, it was an easy choice.

A few hours later, just before dawn, they took me to the east side of the island, out on the waterfront, where we could see all the way to the horizon. I was called as the sun rose across the water, and the light burned into me. It flooded my veins, and sparked behind my eyes. This time, it stayed.