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Incognita 6: Farewell To Butterflies

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Incognita 1 * Incognita 2 * Incognita 3 * Incognita 4 * Incognita 5

If cities had pulses, then neighborhoods had temperaments and the patch of Houston, Texas Incognita and Toby settled in used to be a pocket dimension where art and creativity thrived. Over the near fifteen years in which their marriage occurred, they traded up from a shoebox apartment to a starter home, and a pandemic forced the world into seclusion, the area transformed into a land where bars, nightclubs and fast food joints held sway and common courtesy was no longer common.

It was late August, going on Eight in the evening when the sun had retired from the cloudless skies and Nita decided to walk home from work, taking the long way to help clear out her head because it had been a particularly stressful day and she hated bringing work home with her.

Her mother had a saying, If not for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all, and that was probably why she found herself standing in the middle of the street, fear and rage a bubble in her chest about to burst because it was seven to one and the odds were not in her favor. They were on the cusp of manhood, sixteen, seventeen at best, youth and speed on their side and probably hopped up on a drug that boosted their adrenaline, while she was a thirty-four-year-old woman with a bad knee who happened to be three months pregnant. The only advantage she had was their concentration was focused on the girl about their age that they were putting the boots to.

Armed only with a half-used canister of pepper spray, a lipstick stun gun that reportedly delivered 25,000,000 volts, and a pair of steel-toed boots, she dove into the fray. The plan was to tag at least five of them while she had the element of surprise but only managed to catch one teen with a foot to the crotch, another with the stun gun, and two others with a sweeping blast of the pepper spray.

“Wait! Hold on a minute,” Toby said, interrupting Nita’s recounting of events. “You took on seven guys in your condition?”

They were in Nita’s office at the community center, where she was seated on a second-hand couch with a sixteen-year-old girl whose face was a mess of cuts and contusions. A first-aid kit and a bottle of alcohol sat between them. Toby paced back and forth while his wife gingerly cleaned out the girl’s wounds, tossing the bloody gauze pads into a waste-paper bin that was slowly beginning to fill up.

“Took on is overstating the matter,” Nita said. “I put myself between Hannah and the boys, we had a brief standoff, they decided that getting their asses handed to them by some old broad wasn’t worth their time or trouble, and they left.”

“What you meant to say was, you’re lucky they didn’t regroup and gang up to stomp a new mudhole in your ass. What if they were carrying weapons?’

“I know, Toby, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t just walk past and do nothing.”

“And I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have helped, you just need to find a safer way to do it.”

“Sorry to be so much trouble,” Hannah said.

“This isn’t about you,” Toby said, then course-corrected. “I mean, of course it’s about you, and I’m glad my wife was able to help prevent something more serious from happening to you. I’m just mad at her for acting like some rebel teen auditioning for Black Widow’s vacant spot in The Avengers.”

“Message received, loud and clear,” Nita said, moving off the couch, taking Toby by the arm and ushering him into the hallway. She closed the door behind them to give them the semblance of privacy. “I agree with you one hundred percent. It was a stupid thing to do and I promise to be more careful in the future.”

If she thought that statement would assuage his anger, she was dead wrong. Toby continued to argue at her, but she kept her tone and manner gentle and apologetic until she diffused the majority of his wrath because she realized it came from a place of concern and love.

“Can you at least explain to me why there are no cops here, and why she’s sitting in your office instead of a hospital?” Toby asked, looking at the girl on the couch whose clothes were covered in blood. She was staring at her smartphone.

“She’s afraid to go to the police or the hospital because she’s underage, smells like a bar at last call, and her pupils are dilated so there’s no telling what she’s on. It was tough enough convincing her to come here.”

“Is she local?”

“She lives in Sugar Land, that much I was able to get out of her,” Nita said. “I think she came here to have a little fun without the risk of running into anyone she knows.”

“Yeah, like no one travels to Houston.”

“I didn’t say it was a good plan, and remember, she’s young. I’m going to go back in to finish patching her up. Why don’t you see if there’s some ice in the break room for a compress, her lip’s starting to swell. And thanks for coming over so quickly.” Nita kissed her husband before heading back into the office.

***

“We weren’t bothering anyone,” Hannah said, hissing every time Nita touched an alcohol swab to one of her cuts. “We were just out enjoying ourselves, you know. Okay, so we partied a little but we were definitely still in control, and we were on our way to get something to eat, walking because the weather was nice, and Ella, that’s my girlfriend, said something sweet so I kissed her.

“All of a sudden these guys showed up and they began harassing us. They were making all kinds of nasty comments and demanding that we kiss again but this time like we meant it. We tried to ignore them, hoping they’d get bored and leave but they surrounded us and started asking which one of us was the man and how we got off by bumping donuts and disgusting things like that.

“I told them to fuck off, which was probably the wrong thing to say but they made me angry, and one of them hit me in the back of the head with something and I was looking around for Ella but they were punching, kicking and spitting on me, calling me names, and—and that’s when you showed up. You probably saved my life.”

Before Nita could respond, Toby stepped into the office with a tray loaded with ice cubes wrapped in a tea towel, a slice of pizza on a paper plate and a mug of hot tea.

“Managed to rustle up a cold compress and a slice. Don’t worry, it’s not Domino’s, it’s quality pizza that tastes pretty decent reheated, and I hope you’re a tea drinker ‘cause there ain’t a drop of coffee in the place.”

Nita took the compress and handed it to Hannah, saying, “Try not to talk so much and hold this to your lip. It’ll help reduce the pain and swelling. Keep in mind that this is only a patch-up job. You should really have someone at a hospital take a look at you, you might have a concussion or internal injuries.”

“I—I can’t,” Hannah said. “My parents would kill me.”

“And you don’t think it’s going to kill them seeing you hurt like this?” Toby asked.

“He’s right,” Nita said. “And it doesn’t seem like it right now, but in the long run, it’s easier just to tell the truth and deal with the consequences outright.”

“I need to think about it,” Hannah said.

“Okay, no pressure,” Nita reached over and plucked a business card off her desk to hand to the girl. “You know, I do this sort of thing for a living, so if you wanted me to be there when you spoke with your folks, I’m totally fine with that.”

Hannah studied the card. “Look, just because I kissed my friend doesn’t mean I’m gay, or whatever.”

“You don’t have to be, and we don’t make judgments here. This center does more than just offer outreach programs for the LGBTQ community. We offer a safe space where women are treated with dignity and can escape negative influences. We even teach self-defense classes, which are more than just learning to punch and kick. You can learn how to deescalate situations or spot the warning signs and avoid them altogether.”

“When I came in just now, I thought I heard you mention you were with a friend when this happened,” Toby said. “What happened to her?”

“She wasn’t there when I turned up on scene,” Nita said.

“She’s home,” Hannah said.

“In Sugar Land?” Nita asked.

Hannah nodded, dug the smartphone out of her pocket and held up a text message. “We drove here in Ella’s mom’s car. She sent me a text while you two were out in the hallway. She took off when the trouble started. For some reason they just let her go. She said she didn’t remember running away or getting into the car and before she knew it she was home. I didn’t answer her back because I don’t know what to say. I never would have left her like that, I don’t care how many guys there were.”

“None of us knows what we’d do in situations like that,” Nita sighed.

Hannah’s brow furrowed. “Are you defending her?”

“No, I’m just suggesting that you give her a chance to explain herself. She may have a good reason for what she did, maybe something in her past got triggered and put her on autopilot, or maybe she’s someone you just can’t depend on in a clutch. I know plenty of people like that and I still consider some of them friends.”

And the discussion went on. Hannah had eaten a little and when she calmed down a bit, she still refused the police or hospital recommendations, so Nita and Toby drove her home.

During the ride it seemed as if Hannah was warming to the idea of Nita being a part of the conversation with her parents, but as the car pulled up to her home, she politely declined and thanked them for the ride and all they had done for her.

***

A few days later, Nita was in the midst of juggling three different things for three different sets of people when there was a knock at her office door.

“Ain’t it always the way,” she said to herself as she stomped to the door, and swung it wide open. “What?”

She felt the flutter of tiny wings in her belly as her eyes fell on features that had aged over the years, become more angular yet were still as beautiful as ever. It was the face that belonged to…

“Lorelei Kilgareth?” Nita’s jaw should have cracked, it hit the floor so hard.

Lorelei smiled and held up her right hand to display her wedding ring. “Actually, it’s O’Leary now. I married someone we went to school with, maybe you remember him…”

“Tommy O’Leary? You married brace-face?” If it were at all possible for Nita’s jaw to hit the floor twice, it would have.

“Well, it’s been a long time since Tom wore braces,” Lorelei said. “You look like you’re in the middle of something, I can come back if this is a bad time.”

“No, no, come in,” Nita said, perhaps a bit too eagerly. She gestured at the couch. “Please, have a seat.”

Lorelei sat at one end, Nita at the other, and the past took its place in the space between them.

“Long time, no see,” Lorelei said after a long uncomfortable silence.

Nita nodded. “So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?”

Lorelei dipped into her handbag and brought out Nita’s business card. “You gave this to my daughter the other night.”

“Daughter?” Realization sometimes dawned slowly on Nita. “Hannah…?”

“O’Leary,” Lorelei nodded. “She told us what happened. Tom wanted to call and thank you, but I thought this was something best done in person. He would have been here, too, but he’s taken Hannah to the police station to file a report, so you should be receiving a call from them.”

“I’ll help in any way I can,” Nita said. “Did you make her go to the hospital?”

“Yes.”

“Good, we were worried about that, Toby and me. Toby’s my husband,” Nita held up her own hand to put her ring on display. “Not as impressive as yours, but still…” She had no idea why she added that last bit and regretted it immediately.

“It’s a beautiful ring.”

“Thanks,” Nita said with absolutely zero confidence. “Like I was saying, we were concerned she might have had some internal injuries…”

“Luckily, no.”

There was another awkward pause which Lorelei broke again. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you doesn’t seem to be enough.”

“It’s plenty. What happened to Hannah happens more often than you think, so she wasn’t the first girl I helped from being seriously injured in an attack, and sadly, she won’t be the last. Unfortunately, the world is still a dangerous place for women, gay or straight.”

Lorelei found it hard to meet Nita’s eyes. “She told me about the kiss.”

“I wouldn’t read too much into that. She’s young and probably still trying to figure things out. We’re more capable than men to differentiate between emotional and sexual attraction, so it could have just been a spur-of-the-moment thing. You know that as well as I do,” Nita said in a tone that surprised her. “And if she happens to like kissing girls, she shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed for it. Acceptance is probably one of the greatest gifts a parent can give. But that’s a conversation you should have with your daughter before involving an outside party.”

“I wasn’t—it’s not a—I don’t have—” Lorelei started several times, caught herself and tried to regroup, sighed and finally settled on, “I just wanted to express my gratitude to you. I still can’t believe how fortunate we were that she was saved by a friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Nita said curtly.

“Um, okay, I guess I deserved that, then by a former friend.”

“We were never friends.”

“How can you say that?”

“For the longest time I gave you credit for not joining in with the others in the bullying, but then I came to realize that you never, not once, stuck up for me. I didn’t expect you to stand in front and take the blows, but you never uttered one word in my defense, something a real friend would have done.”

“I was young…”

“You were Switzerland. You remained neutral because you were one of the lucky kids who flew under the radar. Nobody ever messed with you. And thinking about it, if I had gotten a Wonka golden ticket during grade school, maybe I wouldn’t have said anything either. And if I’m being totally honest with myself, I didn’t want to be your friend either.”

“Now, I’m totally confused.”

“From the first moment I saw you, you gave me butterflies in my stomach. The only person to ever do that. I love my husband better than I love chocolate cake and I’d take a bullet for him without thinking about it, but he never gave me that feeling. Only you, and we’ve never been intimate. Back then I wanted you to please notice me, please talk to me, please hold my hand, please hold me, please kiss me, and you did all that in your own sweet time and I got it all twisted up in my head and my heart and I fell for you. I wanted you so bad, but it wasn’t a sex thing, I just wanted to be with you all the time because, besides home, you were the only place that felt safe.”

“I never knew.”

Nita shot Lorelei a suspicious look, and said, “Really? Because I met a girl in high school that felt that way about me, Charlotte was her name, and she was the kindest, gentlest, most sincere person I had ever met, and she adored me. And I sure as hell noticed it and I loved being adored. The problem was, although I cared about her in my own way, I didn’t feel the same way she felt. And to her credit, she stuck around longer than I would have, but when the reality of the situation finally sank in, she collected the shattered pieces of her pride and left. Never heard from her again and I can only hope that she found someone who appreciates just how special she is, because she deserves it.”

“As for me,” Nita continued. “I was screwed because you became the high-water mark that I compared all my relationships to. There’s a saying, chasing the dragon which refers to a drug user’s pursuit of the original or ultimate but unattainable high. In my case I spent my youth chasing butterflies, until I met Toby and through sheer persistence he showed me I didn’t need butterflies to be happy.”

“Not to sound callous or anything,” Lorelei said. “But that was such a long time ago. Can’t we just put that incident, that I would absolutely undo if I could, behind us and start fresh? I don’t know how you feel about all this but I think fate brought us back together for a reason.”

Nita considered it for a moment. “You may be right. But I need to clear up something that’s been bugging me.”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Do you remember the last time we saw each other?”

Lorelei concentrated, flipping through the Rolodex of her memories.

“Here, let me help you,” Nita said. “It was class picture day.”

Lorelei snapped her finger and pointed at Nita. “You were wearing that pink dress!”

“And you were staring at me.”

“Of course, I was. I had never seen you in a dress before. You were beautiful. I wanted to come over, to say hi or sorry or something, but I was afraid that you were still mad at me.”

“You were staring at my chest.”

“I was surprised at how quickly you developed. You used to hide beneath baggy clothes.”

“You kept staring at my chest.”

Lorelei’s mouth opened and closed several times but no words managed to find their way past her tongue.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but since then, I’ve seen that look several times so now I know what it means, and I know that you’ll probably never say what I need to hear you say,” Nita slid across the couch, closing the gap with Lorelei.

“So, instead, I want to tell you something and I need you to believe that it comes from the bottom of my heart,” Nita said as she cupped Lorelei’s face in her hands and felt the woman tremble at her touch.

She moved in and pressed her lips to Lorelei’s mouth and deftly delivered a kiss with enough body English to make the woman’s legs wobble. And she held that kiss until she felt the last of the butterflies depart her pregnant belly in search of a new home.

When she broke the kiss, Nita said, “I forgive you. And you’re right, we need to put the incident, as you call it, behind us, so I never want to see you or your husband again because you both belong in my past. Your daughter, however, is the future, and she is welcome here anytime to avail herself of any of the programs we offer, and if the location is too far, I’ll find her a place she can visit that’s closer to home.”

Nita rose from the couch, walked to her office door, and opened it wide. Gesturing for Lorelei to leave, she said, “Goodbye, Lorelei O’Leary. I trust you can find your way out.”

The stunned, smudged-lipsticked Lorelei, left without uttering a word.

Nita leaned against her closed office door for longer than she cared to admit, processing what had transpired, feeling the weight of the past slowly lifting from her shoulders.

Her next step would be to call Toby and tell him what happened. He was going to be upset, oh boy, was he ever, but eventually when he calmed down and realized she finally had the closure she’d been searching for nearly all her adult life, he’d understand, and she’d find a way to make things right between them.

And as she heard his voice on the other end of the phone line, she rested her hand on her butterfly-free pregnant belly and knew that everything was going to work out just fine.

The End.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Thus concludes what started out as a character bio that somehow transformed into a look inside and stroll through the life of a young lady who still will not reveal her name to me. Thank you to everyone who commented or who even left a simple “Like” along the way, as I stumbled my way to a conclusion, of sorts. Much appreciated.

Incognita 5: The Fitting Room

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Incognita 1 * Incognita 2 * Incognita 3 * Incognita 4

Change is a peculiar thing. When it’s for the worst, it can happen overnight and typically comes in threes, and people learn the folly of security when they watch everything they built so carefully fall apart so easily. When change is for the better, it arrives at a tortoise’s pace. Positive change isn’t measured in leaps and bounds, it’s measured in centimeters, and that’s how it was for Incognita.

Nita was able to fake her way through therapy and she did this after watching a documentary about a Christian camp that tried to use the fear of The Almighty to expunge the gay out of youthful sinners. She was sure that if she were sent to one of these camps that they couldn’t break her, but why go through all that hassle? Besides, what she had wasn’t a same-sex attraction, it was a vibe attraction.

Certain people had a vibe that she was drawn to and she wanted to absorb as much of it as she could and share a bit of herself in the process and she couldn’t give a good goddamn whether they were boys or girls, but how do you explain that to the so-called people in charge who were locked in their binary ways of thinking?

So, Nita just nodded and played along and either she was really good at pulling off her ruse of realizing her mistake and choosing to be normal, or the therapist just didn’t give a fuck and signed off on her. Either way, no more therapy past the apocalypse that was 4th Grade.

The rest of grade school was more of the same but Nita was developing a thick armor coating and let most of the nonsense slide off her back. Junior high, however, was when things began to turn around. In those three years, Nita honed her skill at fighting back. She lost as many battles as she won, but now the bullies understood there was a fifty-fifty chance of them getting away with a cheap shot or cruel prank, or having Nita explode in their face like a preteen M18 Claymore mine.

High school was when it changed for good, as a result of two physical altercations.

The first happened in the cafeteria when a girl accidentally-on-purpose tripped and tried to spill a milk, corn and applesauce concoction all over Nita’s brand-new jacket. The girl hadn’t counted on Nita’s reflexes being quick enough to grab the tray, tilt it away from her and bring the hard-plastic tray up into the girl’s aquiline nose. The girl fell back and her nose sprayed blood in every direction.

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Nita said, her tone dripping with fake concern. “I think you slipped. Come on, sit up straight. No, no, don’t tilt your head back, that’ll only cause the blood to run down the back of your throat, and you may swallow it. Lean forward slightly.”

Sure, it was a ham-handed performance but it was enough to fool the teachers into thinking it was merely an unfortunate accident. What the teachers hadn’t realized was that Nita recognized the bloody girl as one of the Barbie clones from grade school who probably thought she could carry that Mean Girl shit over to high school.

When the Barbie clone returned to school wearing a nasal cast and sporting two black eyes, Nita leaned in while passing and whispered “Who’s the raccoon now?”

The second incident involved some lunkhead whose name Nita couldn’t remember if someone held a gun to her head, he was that unimportant. He was a grade above her and wanted to show all the fresh meat who was in charge, so he went down the line shoving and intimidating newbies. When he got around to Nita, the idiot actually tried to grab her boobs, but she put a stop to that quick fast in a hurry with a rabbit punch to his solar plexus. Knocked the wind right out of the dumb bastard and he crumpled like a paper bag. Nita could have told him to sit in a crouched position, calm down and take slow, deep breaths, but instead she stood over him and laughed like a loon before eventually walking away.

No. One. Messed. With. Her. After. That. Day.

Word quickly went around that sure, you could take a swing at the chubby girl if you wanted to, but the chubby girl was out of her fucking mind and she always hit back.

Kids being the little assholes they are, still talked about and made fun of her but they did it behind her back when Nita was well out of earshot. Ever since that day, Nita noticed a peculiar thing begin to happen. Girls began following her around, inching their way closer and closer, and eventually worked up the courage to sit at her table during lunch period.

She hated to call these girls mousy, but they were the timid and shy girls who got picked on the most by bullies who went after easy targets. None of the girls ever asked for her help, but Nita assumed they hung close to her figuring they were safe within her sphere of protection. She never guaranteed them anything but she didn’t chase them away, either. And they became an unofficial clique because sometimes things just worked out the way they worked out.

She actually became chummy with one of the girls, Charlotte, and one lusciously breezy day, when Nita had a few extra bucks burning a hole in the pocket of her Target jeans, they went to the mall together. Nita passed Express and The Limited with no interest because Lane Bryant was having a Spring sale.

“Let’s go inside,” Nita said.

“Oh, come on now,” Charlotte started, all doe-eyed and rosy-cheeked. “You don’t need to shop there! You’re not that big!”

“Not that big?” Nita actually liked this scrawny girl but she had the sudden urge to dropkick her into next week. “Sorry to disappoint you, Char, but I am that big and I do need to shop there. I actually enjoy shopping there. So why don’t you just slowly step away from my fat ass and go to the skinny store or something.”

Nita entered the store and it was liberating. She had been in chubby denial for the past two years or so, and to her coming out as fat was akin to coming out as gay or bi. Both of which she had to do and the former she actually found harder.

She remembered the exact moment that she came out to her mother as fat. She went to her mother’s job one day and her mother asked, “Where did you get that outfit?”

“Lane Bryant,” Nita proudly exclaimed. Okay, maybe it wasn’t so proudly, but damn it, she was just starting to get a handle on things.

“Oh, um…they have nice clothes there.”

Nita noticed the emphasis on nice. She could almost hear her mother’s insides screaming, “My God! Has it come to this? My little girl is fat!”

In Lane Bryant, while passing one of the store’s wall mirrors, Nita noticed she had a shadow. Charlotte, walking five paces behind with her head held down.

Nita spun on her heels and confronted the smaller girl. “I shop at Lane Bryant, so what? Sleeves on jackets go past my wrists for once. Shirts actually button around my chest. I don’t feel like a fucking freak here!”

“I don’t think you’re a freak,” Charlotte said. “I also don’t think of you as fat, I’m sorry, I don’t. You’re my friend and okay, I said something stupid and I hope you can forgive me. I mean, haven’t you ever said something, meaning well, that was taken the wrong way?”

Thoughts of Lorelei Kilgareth sprang to mind.

A long moment passed before Nita slowly exhaled her pent-up anger. She offered Charlotte a slight smile and said, “C’mon, help me pick out something nice. Let’s see if you’ve got any taste in big gal clothes.”

Nita was forced to admit to herself that shopping with Charlotte was actually fun. When their arms were loaded with outfit options, the girls went into the fitting room. Nita was so anxious to try on the new clothes in front of an audience that she stripped down to her underwear without even thinking about it. She realized the mistake when she saw the expression on Charlotte’s face change.

“What happened to you?” Charlotte asked, staring at the scars on Nita’s inner thighs.

“Nothing,” Nita said, snatching the nearest bit of clothing to cover herself up.

“Bullshit. That’s not nothing. Who did that to you?”

“Why do you care? Get out of here! It’s none of your goddamned business!”

“Of course, it’s my business! You’re my friend! If someone hurt you, I want to know about it!”

“I did it to myself, okay?” Nita admitted and had no idea why she did it. “Happy now?”

“But why?”

“I like scars,” Nita said, but it came out slowly, like she was struggling to get the words out. “At least that’s what I used to tell myself. The reality is that sometimes the world is just too sharp, you know, everything has edges, people, words, everything, and all those edges want is to stab at you, to cause you pain because they feed off your misery. And sometimes you want to feel you have some control over your life and if all you ever feel is pain then maybe you want to control that, too.”

Charlotte’s large and expressive eyes began welling up, proof that her soul was good and deep within she knew the true meaning of love and compassion. She hadn’t befriended Nita for protection, she actually had some sort of feelings for this tough girl who harmed herself in secret. The smaller girl knelt and moved the clothes Nita was hiding behind.

“What are you doing?”

Charlotte didn’t answer. She just lifted her hand and touched the scars. Delicate fingers traced the path of the razorblade cut marks gingerly, as if the wounds were still fresh.

Nita wanted to push Charlotte away, to beat her up for being so dammed nosy, and threaten her life if she ever told one single solitary soul about what she saw and heard in here, but she found that she was paralyzed, locked in the grip of something she didn’t quite understand.

Then Charlotte did the unexpected by pressing her pink tulip lips to the scars, the way a loving mother would try to kiss a child’s boo-boos better. And something inside Nita melted. Not because this clueless girl was kissing the insides of her thighs, but because she was showing tenderness to something that was much more private, more personal. She was kissing Nita’s secret pain, something she never shared with anyone, not even her own mother.

Then Charlotte wrapped her arms around Nita’s legs, gave them a gentle squeeze and said, “No more, okay? Promise me, no more.”

No one outside her own mother had shown Nita the slightest bit of gentleness and since she didn’t know how to accept it, her body trembled as her own eyes began to fill with tears as if all her emotions had condensed into a deluge of rain.

And the two girls remained in that fitting room for a long while, each crying for entirely different reasons.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Incognita 4: The Bathroom Kiss

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Incognita 1 * Incognita 2 * Incognita 3

“You ever make out with a girl?” Incognita’s boyfriend, Toby, asked in the early days before they became a couple. It was a simple question born of mild curiosity, the kind a person asked when they were bored and some stupid idle thought popped into their head.

Nita was about to answer, “Nope, sorry. No lesbian stories for your spank bank,” but the question opened the door to a memory of a person she hadn’t thought about in years. Lorelei Kilgareth.

They shared a desk back in the 4th grade and just the thought of Lorelei filled Nita’s nose with the scent of her shampoo. This girl had a knack for always smelling so clean, even when the pair got sweaty from playing at recess.

Nita always got laughed at by all the vapid, stupid clone girls because of her clothes that came from discount stores and she was picked on by idiot boys because she was considered an easy target for ridicule because of her weight, but Lorelei never fell in with the crowd, and never made Nita feel like that goofy-looking kid with the retainer that appeared in all her class pictures.

Nita wanted to tell Lorelei how she felt but she couldn’t make the words sound right in her head. Since they lived on opposite sides of town and Lorelei’s neighborhood was a damn sight better than hers, they stayed school friends, but of course, Nita wanted it to be more. In fact, she used to talk to herself when she was alone in her room and pretend she was talking to Lorelei and they had great lengthy conversations about everything that couldn’t be said in person and in those fantasy-filled discussions they discovered that they felt the same way about each other and Nita would fall asleep hugging her pillow, pretending it was Lorelei.

One day, when they were alone in the girl’s bathroom, they shared a kiss out of the blue. No rhyme, no reason and no tongues, just a simple peck on the lips because why not? And that was the first time Nita ever kissed a girl and as a result of that kiss, during lunch period she finally worked up the courage to tell Lorelei how she really felt. But the words came out all convoluted and Lorelei’s beautiful face twisted into a horrified mask of disgust and she said a word that shattered the illusion of them being together forever, shattered their friendship, and shattered Nita’s heart into a quadrillion pieces.

“Dyke!” Lorelei said loud enough for everyone to hear.

Nita could still remember that awful cafeteria smell and Tommy O’Leary, the stupid little brace-face boy who pointed at her and repeated the word and that was the ember that lit the spark for all the other kids to join in on the chant and dogpile on a girl who was in love and foolishly thought that it conquered all.

Incognita wanted the ground to swallow her whole but instead she fainted and fell face first onto the white tiled floor, deviating her septum and giving her two black eyes. After that she became known as Dykey Raccoon, a name that somehow managed to follow her all the way through junior high school. To add to her misery, Lorelei reported Nita to their teacher, which got both sets of parents involved and Nita was transferred out of the class she shared with Lorelei and was forced to see a therapist to address her unnatural same sex attraction.

School life had never been a picnic but after that, it became a living nightmare. The next time Nita saw Lorelei was on picture day. Her mother made her wear a stupid pink dress that showed the entire school that she had more cleavage than the principal she stood next to, and all the Barbie clones had a field day with that revelation, and all the boys, too immature to know how to handle a young lady going through puberty, made a game out of trying to punch her in the chest. That was when she learned to defend herself.

But the thing that stuck out in Nita’s mind was that Lorelei couldn’t stop staring at Nita’s chest. Out of disgust? Jealousy? Desire? She wasn’t able to tell and would never find out because the two never saw each other after that day.

The sad truth of the matter was if Lorelei had apologized for what she said, even after all she’d been through, Nita would have forgiven her.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Incognita 3: The Sacred Sisterhood of Lavender

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Incognita 1 * Incognita 2

Incognita ran into an old high school friend the other day and after a bit of catch-up, when she told him she had a boyfriend, his face twisted up.

He said, “I thought you were…”

“Were what?”

“You know…”

“No, I don’t, and I won’t know until you tell me.”

“Well,” his face turned red with embarrassment. “I heard you were that way.”

Going off a high school rumor, he wasn’t thinking the word bisexual. He wanted to say lesbian and his expression told Nita that he thought of her preference like it was a sickness or affliction.

He wasn’t a bad guy back in high school and probably was still decent, so Nita let him off the hook, saying, “Yeah, I sold out and got myself a boyfriend and a little apartment uptown.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it, I mean it’s your choice and none of my business…it’s just I saw you and that weird goth girl holding hands and kissing in the mall, and I thought…”

“You thought the same thing everyone else thought, that I was a card-carrying member of the Sacred Sisterhood of Lavender. But I kissed you, too, back then, or was it so bad that you don’t remember?”

“I remember, and I was hurt and confused because I thought we had something…”

“We did, we had a moment and it was nice.”

“But I wasn’t enough.”

“I didn’t know what I was doing back then. Nobody was enough because I didn’t know what I wanted. I kissed other boys besides you and other girls, too. I like kissing, sue me. Look, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll give back the toaster oven gift I got for being a switch hitter.”

“I think you’ve got this all wrong…”

“No, I understand it better than you do. You judged me back then, just like you’re judging me now, and you can’t even be decent about it and ask me how I feel, or take a moment out of your day to consider what I was going through. Do you have any idea what it’s like being too queer for the straights and not queer enough for the gays? Having both sides turn their backs on you?”

And that was when her high school friend shut down and the rest of the conversation was nothing more than him issuing a string of apologies over and over again. Incognita stood there longer than she should have and let him say sorry repeatedly because she knew this would be the last time she ever saw him.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Incognita 2: Gifted Kids Are Meaner

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Incognita 1

Yeah, Incognita got teased. A lot. She was the smart one in the family. Most of her earliest memories (well, the good ones, anyway) were of curling up with one of her mother’s medical textbooks and encyclopedias, reading about exotic diseases and conditions, women’s lib, and mammals. But people never saw past her weight or funny clothes. Her mother tried hard, she really did, but the little blonde girls, safe in their pristine two-story houses with their mommies and daddies and all their pretty toys didn’t care for her one whit.

Early on, Nita entered the world of the gifted and she always felt that she didn’t belong. Most kids lived across the street from the upper-class genius school, but she had to commute from the lower-class area. Sure, there were a few girls she got along with, but most just pretended she wasn’t there. But as bad as the girls were, the boys were the meanest ones.

She doesn’t remember exactly what they called her, but she remembers being absent for almost half of fourth grade for fear of getting beaten up by this one boy who didn’t like her size. She wasn’t unhealthily obese or anything, just chubby…and poor.

Nita tried to make friends for two years or so, and when that didn’t work, she decided to become invisible. By age ten she became jaded and cynical, reasoning that maybe it was just stupidity that made them so happy. She watched them at an Easter fair, giggling, tossing rich, pastel confetti eggs in the air, and running from boys. Maybe ignorance made them laugh and made them whisper.

But gifted kids are meaner ’cause they know better.

She used to read Judy Blume books about slumber parties and crushes and wondered “Who are these people? Does this shit happen in real life?”, then decided probably not, and picked up “Go Ask Alice” instead. She often wondered if she closed her eyes real tight and made one of those Twilight Zone big wishes, could she have teleported herself home to where things were peaceful and safe? If she stared intensely enough at the back of someone’s head that she hated, could she make it explode? If she stopped smiling, would anyone on the planet notice? Then concluded that maybe if she just stopped asking questions and took it, it would be over sooner.

Maybe she could make it until Friday, and die before Monday.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Random Character Bio: Incognita

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

As the title suggests, I have a character who refuses to tell me her name, so I call her Incognita, or just Nita for short.

She’s a stubborn as hell 20-year old Taurus of Mexican and German descent, a genetic composition she claims makes her fit for world domination, but she lacks the drive to become a leader, whether it be in the form of a shepherd or an antichrist.

She spent most of her life alone with her mother, her beloved privacy, and repressed memories of an absentee father, until her mother remarried when Nita was thirteen. Inadvertently, she developed an affinity for Gershwin early in her adolescence.

She now lives in Houston with her boyfriend, Toby, in a shoebox apartment on the most interesting stretch of horizontal pavement in the city, and self-mutilation has become a nightly ritual because she loves scars.

She is a completely monogamous bisexual who’s endlessly intrigued by Japanese and Chinese culture, and from the moment she learned to read at age three, she fell in love with medical reference books, and they turned her into the sadistic little weirdo that she is today.

Nita really wishes she could draw but she handles a pencil as well as she does chopsticks, which is why she eats her Chinese takeout with a fork.

She despises misogyny in all of its veiled and abundant forms, and can sing and play the drums like the devil, but only when she’s alone.

Among the things she loves: her mother’s little black dog (more than anything in the world), deep burgundy lipstick on girls, scraping the frosting off birthday cakes, lined sheets of paper, and old school Nintendo games, especially River City Ransom and Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, which she considers spiffy!

She can’t stand fashion magazines and their contradictory messages: Be yourself, but dress like this! Love your body, but long to be thin! Be independent, but here’s how to get a man! Be assertive, but speak softer! They all fall into the Go Fuck Yourself category.

She’s an absolute sucker for expressive eyebrows, hates to wake up before noon or go to sleep before two in the morning, and she used to like The Daily Show, Sifl & Olly, and Trauma: Real Life in the ER, but her cable got taken away due to non-payment, so now she feels she has nothing.

She also usually hates herself, and hopes I understand.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Her Parents’ Blessing

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Ewan Marsh never believed in mystics, psychics or any of that paranormal nonsense, but he stepped into the tiny shop with bright red and blue neon lights in the window announcing

Authentic Tarot and Palm Readings @ Reasonable Prices

because it was Sunday night, nearly every other place was closed, and he was utterly bored out of his skull.

It was a hole in the wall, barely larger than a closet, walls covered in dark curtains. A round table covered with a tablecloth that matched the drapes sat in the center of the space. He was directed by hand gesture to take a seat in a padded wooden chair across the table from Madame Siora, skin of alabaster, lips of blood and eyes of emerald.

“Tired of living in the moment?” Madame Siora asked. “Of making a blind guess at the correct path that will lead you to what you desire? Are you ready to seek the counsel of one who is attuned to the forces that science and logic cannot define or understand?”

“I have to give you credit,” Ewan said. “You actually managed to say that with a straight face.”

Madame Siora smiled. “Doubters make the best believers,” she said. “Please, may I see your palm?”

With his patented cheesy grin in place, Ewan proffered his hand…and seventy-five dollars later, he knew this woman would be his wife.

They broke dawn together and over reheated Chinese takeout and beer, he learned that Madame Siora’s birth name was Kiera Houghton, and when they became serious and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together, Ewan, being the old fashioned type, wanted to ask Kiera’s parents for her hand in marriage. Kiera told him that was absolutely not necessary, but Ewan insisted, so she arranged a date.

Ewan arrived early at the Houghton Family residence, but Kiera was running late because of a client who was paying serious money for an in-depth reading. Kiera’s mother, Tegan, welcomed Ewan with open arms. He must have caught her in the middle of a meditation session because she was dressed in a long velvet robe, deep crimson with some sort of crest over the right breast, and the house was illuminated only by candlelight.

“If I’ve come at a bad time, I can wait in the car until Kiera arrives,” Ewan said apologetically.

“Don’t be silly,” Tegan said. “It gives us a chance to get to know one another.”

Mrs. Houghton led Ewan to a room that was too large to be a sitting room and too small to be the living room. The walls were lined with tapestries depicting the darker nature of the Old Testament of the Bible, and the room was devoid of furnishings besides the sturdy long table varnished in a dark red lacquer in the center and the surrounding medieval metal candlestands.

Tegan Houghton moved with the grace of a cat and stood almost nose to nose with Ewan. She turned her back on him and asked, “Can you get the zipper, please?”

It took Ewan a moment to understand what she was asking. He located the zipper in the back of the robe, fumbled with the hook and unzipped the robe down to the small of her back.

“Thank you,” Tegan said, as she turned to face Ewan again, still a hair’s breadth away from touching noses. She did a little shimmy and the robe slid off her shoulders and gathered around her ankles, exposing her nude body.

At least Ewan thought she was nude. He wouldn’t allow himself to look down. She was Kiera’s mother, after all.

“W-will Mr. Houghton be joining us?” Ewan stammered.

“Jordan is running errands, picking up a few last-minute items for dinner tonight,” Tegan said with breath that smelled of honey and mint. “He was supposed to be here by now but he always runs late. A bad habit Kiera picked up from him.”

“Um, Mrs. Houghton?”

“Tegan, please.”

“Tegan, I, um, don’t really feel comfortable being in the same room with you while you’re naked. If anyone walked in right now, they might get the wrong idea.”

Tegan laughed. “If either Jordan or Kiera walked in right now, they would know exactly what was going on. They know how I am. I love the naked form, Ewan. May I call you Ewan?”

“Sure, no problem.”

“This was the way we were intended to be before that silly original sin was committed. Here I stand before you, naked and exposed, with all my secrets revealed. Do you want to see my secrets, Ewan?”

“No,” Ewan answered, sweat beading on his brow. “You’re entitled to your secrets.”

“How generous,” Tegan said, wiping sweat from Ewan’s temple and tasting it. “If it is too hot for you in here, feel free to strip down to your level of comfort. There is no dress code in this house.”

“I’m fine.”

“But I am not fine, Ewan,” Tegan Houghton said, her voice an octave lower than a moment ago. You stand here before me tonight for the first time and you have not yet become initiated into the mysteries of the ancient House of Houghton.”

“Um, I think there’s been some misunderstanding. I’m not here to be initiated into anything. I’m just here to ask for Kiera’s hand in marriage.”

“And you believe that my husband and I would grant you access to our daughter without first testing your mettle to determine if you are worthy of joining our inner circle?”

“That thought never really crossed my mind, if I’m being totally honest. I figured you’d either say yes or no.”

“Well, now that you have been made aware, you may be wondering what is going to happen, so I will tell you. Before proceeding to the mysteries, it is, of course, necessary for the mind and soul of the initiate to become purged and to be made clean.”

“What exactly do you mean by that?”

“You are going to need to become in tune with us by submitting to a very simple process of control,” Tegan’s eyes seemed to grow somehow, filling up Ewan’s entire field of vision.

“C-control?”

“You will need to place yourself under the guidance of the House of Houghton.”

“Please, can I just go back to the car and wait for Kiera? Maybe she can explain all this to me in a way I’ll understand.”

“Do you refuse to be initiated?”

“I mean, I really love your daughter and I want to be with her for the rest of my life…”

“Then you are decided!”

“Well, I’m not so…”

“Be silent! And relax,” Tegan took Ewan by the chin and turned his head in the direction of the nearest candle.

“What’re you doing?”

“Calm your breathing and keep your eyes fixed on this candle flame.”

“But why?”

“Shhh, just relax and keep your eyes fixed. Before receiving entry into the House of Houghton, your mind must be white and blank. You are already feeling sleepy. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Ewan heard his own lazy voice coming from outside himself.

“Your mind is becoming quite blank. You feel that, don’t you?”

“Yes, quite blank.” His concerns were evaporating level by level.

“And you will obey my every command.”

“Yes, obey.” It was less stressful to obey than to resist.

“Good. Now, remove your shirt and expose your bare chest.”

“Yes, remove shirt.” It was too hot in this room.

“Now climb upon this altar and lie on your back.”

“Yes, lie back.” Ewan climbed onto the table and did as he was told.

“Now, are you prepared to sacrifice everything to have our daughter?”

“Yes, sacrifice everything.” It was true. He would have given everything to be with Kiera.

“Even your heart for hers?”

“Yes, my heart.” It was the very least he could do.

From its special housing secured beneath the table, Tegan Houghton unsheathed a ceremonial dagger engraved with symbols from a time before language, gripped the handle in both hands and raised it above her head.

“Mom!” Kiera yelled as she burst into the room. “Will you stop fucking around with Ewan, put some goddamned clothes on, and snap him out of the trance, for chrissake!”

“Oh, come on, honey,” Tegan turned to her daughter and smiled. “I wasn’t really going to sacrifice your boyfriend.”

“Fiancé,” Kiera corrected.

“I was just having a little fun, that’s all. Who knew he’d be this susceptible?”

“Fun? You were about to stab him in the heart!”

“Only a little. You know we can bring him back.”

“Yeah, but you’re not the one who has to make love to a reanimated corpse!”

“Who says I haven’t?”

“Ewww! Too much information, Mom! I want this one alive, not all necromanced up like all the others, do you get me? In his original condition!”

“But look at his chest…it’s so stabbable. Just a quick one?”

“Mom, I’m not playing with you!”

“All right, all right, spoilsport, but if I let this one live, you have to promise to make some new friends and invite them over so your father and I can have a little fun. We don’t get out as much as we used to.”

“It’s a deal,” Kiera said. “And I know whom I’ll bring. Remember I mentioned that psychic shop that just opened right across the street from me? Turns out it’s run by some Eastern European outfit that’s using it as a front for a bordello.”

“Works for me,” Tegan Houghton said. “And just so you know, I think this one really loves you. He didn’t look at my body once. Imagine ignoring this pretty piece of flesh?”

Erp! Kiera placed a hand to her mouth. “I think I just threw up in my mouth a little. Now, get this all cleaned up before Dad gets home, and not a word of this to him! I’m not in the mood to hear him questioning Ewan’s manhood for not trying to cop a feel off you.”

“He might have a point.”

“I can reanimate, too, you know, so don’t push me,” Kiera warned. “And you never know, a good resurrection might just help you to mature.”

“Good luck with that,” Tegan said with a smirk, before slipping back into her robe. As she prepared to bring Ewan out of the trance, she leaned and whispered in his ear, “You’d better not let anyone slice into that heart of yours before I get a crack at it.”

“I heard that!”

“Honey, retrace your steps,” Tegan said, rolling her eyes. “I think you lost your sense of humor along the way.”

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

The Widowmaker

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

The pain was slightly sharper than heartburn, lasted less than half a minute, and he felt perfectly fine after it subsided. He was of an age where unexplained body pains suddenly appeared and disappeared as a common occurrence, so he gave the chest twinge no further thought. But there was a saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know” and what he didn’t know was that he just had a heart attack.

It would be another two months until the pain returned, intensified to the point that it dropped him to his knees and led him to be taken to the emergency room. The cardiologist found two plaque build-ups that blocked ninety-nine percent of his left anterior descending artery, which was responsible for a heart attack known as the widowmaker.

In the intensive care unit, as he was recovering from surgery, mind swimming in a morass of anesthesia, a sound caught his attention. It was a heavy sobbing that seemed to be emanating from somewhere within the room. When he attempted to look in the direction of the whimpering, an unseen force turned his head away. Out the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he saw the night nurse’s shadow jitter and twitch in a jerky fashion.

At first, he thought it was an anesthesia hallucination, but came to believe that something unnatural was at play and his suspicion was confirmed when the nurse left the room…but the shadow remained behind.

The shadow struggled to break free from the confinement of the nurse’s silhouette and once achieved, it slid down the wall like obsidian mercury. It crossed the floor in a spidery fashion, tendrils of ebony arcing up and out, digging into vinyl flooring and pulling itself toward his hospital bed. The darkness that seemed somehow sentient pooled on top of him and he could feel its weight—weight that a shadow should not possess—putting additional pressure on his already weakened chest.

The black mass rose, building upon itself and transmogrifying into the solid form of a woman in tattered scrubs. Beneath its widow’s veil was a sorrowful face that wept tears of misery so black as to absorb the surrounding light. He wanted to turn his head, to stare directly at the creature, as his mother taught him to do when he was that young boy afraid of the monsters that lurked under his bed and in the closet.

“Look them directly in the eye, see them for what they really are, and make them disappear,” she said. But this beast was far more cunning than the night terror monstrosities of his youth, for it would not allow him to view it head-on, only from the corner of his vision.

“No fear, no fear,” the shape said in a voice as raspy as tires on a gravel driveway.

The weeping creature straddled him and splayed its fingers, the tips of which were flat like electrode pads and one by one placed them all over his chest. He could feel those fingers sinking through his hospital gown and grafting themselves to his trembling flesh.

“Feed, feed,” the deep timbre of its voice anchored his body in paralysis and he finally realized the creature’s purpose. Similar to the vampires of myth and legend, whatever this thing was, it gained its sustenance from the heartbeats of the living, as opposed to blood. This was the true Widowmaker.

He tried with all his might to struggle, to break the connection and throw this abomination off him, but he was too weak to prevent it from siphoning the precious beats that gave him life, an act that would continue for as long as his strained heart held out, an act that rendered him helpless and was inducing a deep and dreamless sleep.

His final thoughts, as he slipped into unconsciousness were how many heartbeats had the Widowmaker taken? How many hours, days, years, had been stolen? And would this mourning and hungry beast leave any behind for him to continue his existence?

Skinship 3: A Feel For Torture

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Skinship 1 * Skinship 2

Cutter woke to total darkness. The last thing he remembered was walking out of the police station and heading for the E train home. Now, something was covering his face that stank of stale sweat.

“Are you finally awake, Mr. Coles?” a man’s voice said in an accent that Cutter couldn’t identify but sounded vaguely European.

The thing covering his face was a sack and it was snatched off his head. It took a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the light and to regain his senses. Standing directly in front of him were four men wearing balaclavas and dressed in all black, with holstered sidearms. Cutter tried to move but found he couldn’t because his body was strapped to a gurney that had been tilted at an angle so that his feet were higher than his head. He was in some sort of abandoned warehouse, big enough to house a black van with tinted windows parked in the distance.

If he wasn’t scared out of his wits, he would have laughed at how cliché it all was.

“Who are you? Where am I? What do you want from me?” Cutter asked the questions in rapid succession.

One of the balaclava men stepped up, the one with the indistinguishable accent, and said, “I wish to make one thing perfectly clear before we begin, Mr. Coles: I have no grievance against you. I recognize your part in all this. You are an innocent man caught in the web of deception spun by a cunning woman you knew as Michelle Clarke. Were she still alive, I would be having this conversation with her instead.”

“Was it you, you sonuvabitch? Did you kill Mickie? I fucking swear I’ll make you pay!” Cutter meant it to sound more threatening than it did, but fear made his voice crack.

“Spoken like a true friend, but your anger is misguided,” the balaclava man said. “We had nothing to do with Miss Clarke’s demise. In fact, we first arrived to see you being escorted from her apartment in handcuffs by the police after you destroyed her apartment looking for something. What were you looking for, Mr. Coles?”

“I’ll tell you like I told the police, I didn’t trash Mickie’s place, it was like that when I got there! Somebody came in through the window! How do I know it wasn’t you and your goons?”

“We have not been properly acquainted, Mr. Coles. You may call me, Mr. Vex. I will be your interrogator for the evening, and I have but one pet peeve, I hate liars, therefore I do not lie myself. Behind me are my associates, Misters Rampage, Bedlam, and Blitz. They will be offering assistance during our tête-à-tête.”

“This can’t be real,” Cutter mumbled to himself. “I’m not about to be tortured by some faux Bond villains with codenames ripped from a Tarantino script.”

Vex said, “I assure you this is very real. As for the torture, that does not need to take place.”

“Great! So how about you untie me and we can talk about this like civilized men? I’ll tell you everything I know, which’ll be a short conversation because I don’t know a goddamned thing.”

“I will make you a promise, Mr. Coles: if you tell me what you were searching for in that apartment, I will release you unharmed. You have my word on that.”

“But that’s the thing, you see, I don’t know what I was looking for. I was hoping to find a clue or something that would help the police find Mickie’s killer!”

“Why is it that I do not believe you?”

“I don’t know, man, but I swear I’m telling you the God’s honest truth!”

Vex seemed to consider this for a moment before saying, “Perhaps you might reconsider your answer if you saw things from my point of view. Your friend, Mickie, illegally obtained something that did not belong to her, something that was meant to be delivered to me. Fearing that I was coming to collect my goods, she undoubtedly hid it somewhere she considered safe. It was too valuable to be left in her apartment, so she would have entrusted it to a person that she groomed to care for her because that was what she was trained to do. And all signs point to you, Mr. Coles. Now, all you need do is to tell me where I can find my property. I will consider this matter closed, and you can return to your normal life.”

“I don’t know anything about any stolen property.”

“The last time you saw her, she gave you something.”

“She didn’t give me anything. But wait…let’s say she did…now, if I had this thing, why would I need to tear her place apart looking for it? I mean, what sense does that make?

“Perhaps you left it behind by mistake,” Vex shrugged. “Or you somehow realized what she had given you and you became greedy and returned looking for more? Whatever the case, I will have the truth from you. And since you refuse to be cooperative, you leave me with no other choice.”

Mr. Vex signaled to Rampage, Bedlam, and Blitz, who picked up metal buckets of what appeared to be water, as he fitted the sack over Cutter’s head again. Then something else was placed on top of the sack, over the areas covering the nose and mouth, a towel, perhaps?

Cutter felt a slow cascade of water going up his nose, and he held his breath for as long as he could. He was not a swimmer, had never done any breathing exercises in his life, and had no idea how many minutes he could go without air, or how much time had passed since he last took a breath, but eventually, his lungs began aching for air and his body gave him no other option but to exhale. On the inhale that followed, the wet cloth clung to his face and he was breathing in water.

Cutter, at one point or another, most likely after watching films with interrogation scenes in them, had constructed a belief that he could retain his manhood up to a certain level of torture. That delusion was shattered the moment water entered his lungs and his gag reflex kicked in. He was in the grip of a sheer panic like he had never known before.

The water pour stopped, and Mr. Vex said, “That drowning sensation must be a horrible experience. Tell me what your friend gave you and where I can find it, and I will make this stop.”

“She didn’t give me anything!” Cutter sputtered, coughing up water with each syllable.

The pour started again and Cutter’s body flopped and squirmed on the gurney as if he was having a seizure.

While this was happening, Mr. Vex said, “Did you know this process causes lung and brain damage from oxygen deprivation, and even lasting psychological damage? The adverse physical effects can last for months, and psychological effects for years.”

The pour stopped again and this time Cutter was expelling water and snot as he was vomiting. The pain was excruciating.

“Where is my property, Mr. Coles?” Vex asked.

“I don’t fucking know!”

The pour began again, and Vex said, “I was being kind by having the water poured intermittently to prevent permanent injury. However, if you continue to be uncooperative, the water will be poured uninterruptedly which will lead to death by asphyxia.”

Suddenly there was a noise, a loud explosion and the pour stopped abruptly. Vex ripped the sack from Cutter’s head, as Rampage, Bedlam, and Blitz ran out of Cutter’s field of view. There were gunshots and sounds of commotion in the distance.

“You have to tell me where I can find my property now before it is too late,” Vex said.

Cutter couldn’t concentrate on Vex’s words because the bits of the man’s face visible in the holes of the mask, his eyes and mouth, seemed to be melting and sliding down his face and disappearing into the mask.

Before he could question it, there was another explosion and Cutter’s world went white in a blinding flash, before it went pitch black.

To be continued?

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys

Ottilie Was Not An Angel

Posted by Madd_Fictional on

Ottilie was not an angel, despite firsthand testimony to the contrary. The eyewitnesses weren’t liars, mind you, they accurately relayed what they saw; they simply hadn’t seen the event in its entirety. Blame it on the limitations of sight from three-dimensional eyes.

As a child, she was fun and full of life, enthusiastic and excited about everything. Blessed with a contagious personality, an infectious laugh, and vivid imagination, she was always in the middle of trying to sort out an illusory problem, usually some trouble she had unwittingly started, running two steps ahead, dragging me and explaining the faux pas while we ran from invisible monsters.

As we grew older, the monsters never stopped chasing her.

Ottilie was never satisfied. Born fortunate and afforded comforts most would have killed for, my sister always yearned for more. Not to have more, but to be other than what she was. Something less limited. In fact, that was a bone of contention between us. She never grasped how I was so contented with my lot and the finiteness of my existence. I tried to explain I had two lives, my own and the one I lived vicariously through the connection we shared; that bond that was more than just mere telepathy, shared consciousness or psychic rapport.

To me, it was far better to be the only ugly entity in a world of beauty rather than the reverse. From my vantage point, whenever I looked out into the world, all I’d ever see would be splendor. And that was what it was like sharing Ottilie’s mind. I tried to present this as eloquently as possible, but somehow her thirteen and a half minute head start in life granted her a gift of expression that I lacked and allowed her to brush my reasoning away with weary disinterest. I never held it against her, though. I knew I had the better view.

Sadly, what made her beautiful to me, made her dangerous to herself. She realized early on what her life could be and her mind would not, could not, allow this world to be enough, so she contemplated and calculated for days on the best way to escape. And those days blossomed into months and those months matured into years. A lifetime of limitation, combined with therapy and drugs—both prescription and street—wore down the tread of her spirit.

To everyone else, she was a woman of secrets and it bothered her that she couldn’t keep those secrets from me. I told her I would never discuss it with anyone and I never did, but she didn’t believe me.

In drugs, she finally found a way to shut me out. Her mind became a shattered prism refracting pieces of wailing mayhem in the blindness. My first and only choice for a sister and best friend became little more than a stranger to me. A clouded reflection trapped beneath a layer of ice too thick for my thoughts to penetrate. For the first time in my life, I truly understood the meaning of the word loneliness and I thought what did I do that could have led to this?

Among the things she dabbled in, philosophy, inventing, and mathematical architecture, Ottilie was not a busker. Yes, she performed in the park, but not for money, merely for her own sanity. I visited her most days when time allowed. I wasn’t quite sure she knew I was there most times. Except for the last time I saw her perform.

On that particular afternoon, the old spark had returned to her eyes. I knew instantly she was off her meds because I felt her consciousness tickle the outer fringes of my mind. Not like it used to be, her thoughts were close yet somewhat far away but I didn’t care. I had been alone in my head for so long I’d gladly accept any crumb or morsel thrown my way, and this was the first time since we were children that I had seen her approach anything near the neighborhood of happiness. She could barely contain her excitement when she told me she finally figured it out.

“Harmonics!” she said, as she danced and twirled around me like a pavement ballerina. “The answer was there all along, hidden in plain sight, staring me in the face, and now I’ve worked out the formula!”

She sat me down on a park bench and sang for me, or rather she sang to me and for herself. Her voice was divine, unmatched; a summer breeze through crystal chimes. People were drawn from their workaday existence. They formed a circle around us, unable to turn away from Ottilie, who sang of theories, both superstring and Bosonic, of manifolds and fractals, octonions and triality, as she strummed vector chords of coordinate geometry on a second-hand acoustic six-string.

What the throng of spectators saw was Ottilie being lifted into the air; her toes brushing the top of the manicured grass as her skin turned a tone so soft and unearthly to the eye that the color defied description, yet radiating like so many suns. The light that enveloped her made all other light seem dark in comparison, for the briefest of moments, before she popped completely out of existence.

What they hadn’t seen was the enormousness her frail frame acquired—probability, enfolded symmetry, phase space—as she ascended dimensions. Her song had given her the freedom she desired all her life and carried her onward and onward until she encountered a barrier that prevented her progress. Thinking quickly, she changed the tone of her song. She no longer sang for herself, she sang for the barrier and what lie beyond. Flattering it with melody, requesting an audience.

That was when a pinhole opened in the outer barrier of everything, allowing the omniverse to kiss my sister. She knew in that instant it was not what she wanted. She tried to flee, but the feverish rush of knowledge feasted on her being without mercy. She suddenly understood everything that was meant to be understood, as well as all the bits that weren’t. This tremendous understanding allowed her to spy the surface of a giant puzzle that contained the ultimate ensemble of every conceivable information pattern, as it was about to be solved.

But she simply couldn’t endure her brief exposure to timelessness. Her bones popped, limbs twisted and organs reformed as she was purged from the omniverse; stripped of her personal dimensionality and the many unnecessary facets of humanity attached to them. Layer by layer. Until all that remained was her core self, a small and insignificant thing that lost all depth, width and finally length, as they imploded within her.

Ottilie was not an angel, but I allowed people to think she was, as I combed the park grass daily, searching for my sister who called out in my mind telling me she wanted to be other than what she was—a zero-dimensional entity.

©2021 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys