Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 10

SPECSUB PRIMER

It’s taken me a very long time to accept the advice of Smart Writers, and realise that if I want to be published, I must submit.

No, not like that.

I mean submit your work to paying markets even though it’s obviously terrifying and the pain of rejection will slice you through to the bone, leave you in a bleeding jellied mess on the floor.

Firstly, become zen about rejection. It’s gonna happen. It happens to even the Big Names, it happens to little names, it happens to new writers with no sales. You can trim down your number of rejections by ensuring your work is original, well-written, and with as few errors as possible, and by submitting to suitable markets. You trim them by READING AND FOLLOWING THE GUIDELINES. Seriously. It makes a difference. Especially since a fair number of markets auto-reject the stories where the writer hasn’t made the slightest effort to research and follow the guidelines.

You get a feel for markets, and for what kinds of stories DON’T sell, by reading lots of recent short stories. Some markets rather helpfully tell you what stories they don’t want to see. Mostly because these stories are so cliched that when the slushpuppies see them their eyes start dribbling from their sockets.

When I have a short story ready to go – unless I wrote it with a particular market in mind – I head over to The Grinder to look for open markets. Some I know already that I want to submit to, but since almost all markets do not allow simsubs (when you send the same submission to several markets at the same time) I might not be able to submit to those markets at that time. I usually keep track of my submissions with a simple colour-coded table that allows me at a glance to see what story is out, who has rejected it, or when a story has sold.

I generally start submitting to pro-paying markets first, and work my way down the pay scale. You’re more likely to get rejections from the top markets, but if you don’t try, there’s no chance at all of an acceptance. Also keep an eye on calls for anthologies – some of them are very cool. Again, you’ll soon get an idea of which editors you respect who put together great anthologies, and which to avoid. Never pay to submit to a market. Chances are it’s a scam, or the market is clueless and has no audience.

Here are a couple of my favourite markets (some just to read, not necessarily to submit stories to – you’ll get a feel for the type of stories they want to see by reading.). I focus on speculative and fantasy fiction, so these are the ones I know. There are more than this, you’ll just need to go through The Grinder for pro- or semi-pro markets. If you are more into lit fic, you’ll have to find those markets yourself.

TOR.COM – the biggie. Pays VERY VERY well, has giant reach. Also, is a black hole market. You send a story in and forget about it, write something else and carry on as though that tor story never existed. I’m not even kidding. Trust me.

CLARKESWORLD – Again, a top-paying market, and very very difficult to get into in. They pick the kind of stories that win Hugo awards. They are also extremely fast. You’ll probably get a rejection within 2 days. I like to call them the elastoplast market. Submitting to them is like pulling a plaster off a scab. It stings, but it’s over quickly and you can move on.

Charm 12/22

(start here)

Tell the Truth and Shame the Devil

We find Rain locked in the little single-room toilet, the only room with a window too small for anything to crawl through. Since the squat doesn’t have water, the smell of the toilet is overpowering, enough to make me gag. Poor Rain’s been in here most of the night. He’s curled up in a ball on the filthy floor. I drop to my knees next to him.

“Rain?”

Screw Caleb watching us, standing over me and sneering. I pull Rain close to me and bury my head against his neck. Under the sewage stink from the open toilet I can still smell the dusty-sweet nag champa that’s practically soaked into his ratty jersey. There is blood on my hands, I realise dimly. Spatters like black ink. I wonder if Rain sees. If he even cares. Did he think we were just going to go and never come back?

“I’m sorry,” I say, but it comes up choked, and all I can see in my head is that pale clawless hand, that boy’s hand where a monster’s should have been. I’ve dragged Rain into this. No. I grit my teeth. Caleb did that. He dragged us both in, with his magic and his half-truths and his scheme of using Rain to get me. I start shaking, but I can’t tell if it’s anger, or just the aftershocks of murdering…something.

Rain’s arms shift around me and we crouch on the broken floor tiles, not quite rocking.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper against his ear and kiss the small pulse point there. I want to say more than just I’m sorry, that I shouldn’t have left, shouldn’t have run when Caleb said. I want to tell him that I love him, that I always will. I want to tell him the truth. About me. About Caleb. But I’m a fucking coward. “I—” I pause, my breath rasping. Nope. Irene Kerry, murderer, cheat, coward. “It’s okay,” I finish lamely instead.

It’s as though Rain heard the things I didn’t say. Like he scraped open my brain, pushing the folds of fatty white thoughts apart and saw right into the truth of me anyway. It’s a vibration between us, a cold dive into a pool for the first swim of spring. His breathing quickens and I splay my hand against his chest, feeling the way his heart judders behind his rib cage. Rain turns his head.

“Touching as this reunion is,” says a snide voice from the passage. “We really don’t want to be sitting here when Heinrich realises we’ve killed one of his Hunters.”

Rain is on his feet, and he practically throws himself into Caleb’s arms. I don’t hear what he says to the bastard, but I look down at my knees when they kiss.

#

Caleb’s dragged us through the house, looking for signs of something or other. I couldn’t be bothered to care. Let them come for me, I think morosely. What does it matter? Self-pity has always been my most fetching outfit. I scowl and scrape my hands against my legs, trying to wipe away the blood. We’re standing in the little room where the Hunter attacked us; all of us staring down at its remains. I swallow, over and over and over, certain that at any moment I will be sick again.

Caleb turns away from the pulpy mess with human hands and starts digging through the stuff he left behind last night.

“Wow.” Rain looks up from the mangled corpse to me. “What did you do to it?”

“What? Why look at me? Maybe your good friend here decided to brain it with a gas-bottle.” It’s easy to fall back into this persona. Pretend nothing’s changed.

Rain shakes his head. “Caleb would have used magic. Violence is more your style.” He grins to take out the sting, but the words still hurt. If he wants to go build up Caleb as some wonderful example of humanity, don’t let me be the one to burst his bubble. Of course, I’m planning on doing just that as soon as I get him alone. He has to know that Caleb meant for him to get caught.

“And now,” says Caleb, turning to give me a long stare. “You’ve promised to come with me.” He’s evidently found what he was looking for.

“Yeah, sure. Whatever. Find the bad guy, kill the bad guy.” I shrug. “I said I’d do it, didn’t I?” It’s one thing I know about myself—I hate breaking my word. Well, I hate failure more, but breaking my word is a kind of failure. “So, you have a plan to go take out the Big Boss, or should we, I dunno, go stand in the middle of the garden and yell out our position?”

Caleb narrows his eyes. He shouldn’t do that, I think. It makes him look older, all the wrinkles gathering at the corners like wire claws. He sighs, digs in his pocket and pulls out a crumpled scrap of paper. He holds it out to me, like an offering.

“What?” I make no move to take it.

“There are people of power left in this city. People who might be turned to my cause. This is where I was trying to get to before everything went wrong,” Caleb says. By wrong I’m guessing he means ‘hit by a taxi and then attacked by winged monstrosities’. “To the Mother. She might be able to help us, and this was her last known address. Do you think you can find it?”

I roll my eyes and take the paper, smoothing it out. There’s an address written in pencil. The paper is old, tatty, and the pencil is faded, barely legible. I read it and my eyes widen. “You’re kidding, right?” I ask as I look back up at him. This has to be some kind of complicated unfunny joke. The Mother. Yeah, right.

He scowls. “Why would I be? Just tell me if you know more or less where it is.”

“Oh ja. Sure I know more or less.” I crumple the paper back up and toss it back to him. He’s fucked in the head if he thinks there’s anyone powerful at that address. They must have moved years, no—decades, ago. Still, he asked me to take him there, and that’s what I’ll do.

“You no longer need it?” He narrows his eyes.

“I’ve got it memorised.” I take one last look at the remains of the Hunter, swallow my nausea and walk out the room. Fresh air, that’s what I need right now. I need to stand in the sunshine and breathe in clean air and hug Rain until his ribs crack.

Once we’re out I give Rain a squeeze on the arm instead. It feels awkward, like now that Caleb’s around and Rain’s following him like a lost puppy, I’m just back to being the third wheel. “Sit up front with me,” I say. Caleb can sit in the back. Like an annoying child. I wonder if he’ll start whining are we there yet as I drive. The thought makes me smirk, even though it’s not particularly funny. I put it down to lack of sleep and the come-down from sheer terror.

Rain does what I suggest without complaint and it feels good, almost normal, to have him across from me just close enough that I can reach out and touch him and reassure myself that he’s really there.

“You need something to eat?” I ask Rain. The Beetle is chugging along, her needle closing on empty. I feel as hollow as she must.

“We don’t have time to waste,” Caleb growls as I pull into the petrol station but I ignore him. For a start, god knows when Rain last ate, and personally, I’d kill for a cup of coffee. Maybe all Caleb needs to do is take away my coffee and cigarettes and tell me his little pal Heinrich has them. That should work.

“Don’t care,” I say. “We need petrol, anyway.” My money is looking pretty damn low. Add to that at some point I’m going to have to phone my dad and tell him that I’ll be moving back home, and that I’ve lost my job and won’t be making the rent on the flat. That should go down well. If by well I mean like a shit-storm of apocalyptic proportions. Ah, might as well use the last of it for cigs then. I haul Rain along with me to the 24-hour shop while I leave Caleb sitting in the car watching the guy filling the tank.

Around us the air feels unnatural. Clean and cool air-conditioned. It’s too real, it has nothing to do with magic or anything that happened last night. We could just be a couple of stoners grabbing our munchies before we had back home from a night out. We could be normal. Instead….

I have to speak now, before we go back out there and back to Caleb and all the weird shit he has dragged into our lives. Even if it hurts Rain, he needs to know the truth. I take a breath, order a pack of cigs. While the woman behind the counter opens a new carton, I let the words spill from me, fast, so I won’t be able to stop them. “Caleb meant for you to get caught,” I say.

There.

Done.

Rain doesn’t answer me. I wave at Caleb through the glass windows. He’s sitting hunched on the back seat of the Beetle. He scowls and I just grin at him. “He knew they’d get you,” I say to Rain.

Rain grabs his chicken and mushroom pie and the crisp packet from the weird little contraption they have set into the counter. “I know,” he says. “We discussed it before you got there. Caleb knew we wouldn’t have until morning and that you’d do what he said to get me back.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink in. “What! Are you completely crazy?” I stop him from walking back to the car, grab his shoulder and make him face me. “You could have been killed!”

Rain shrugs. “But I wasn’t. He said I’d be safe, that the Hunters wouldn’t so anything to me once they realised I had no magic, and he was right.”

I stare at him. He has tired circles under his eyes so deep they look like bruises, and his fingers are shaking where he’s holding on to his food. My stomach starts to ache, a low cramping pain, and my skin itches so bad I know that under my sleeves, my arms will be red scabby ruins. “I’m going to find a way to break that stupid spell or whatever he’s got on you,” I say. “And then you and I are going to have a nice long chat about what not to look for in a boyfriend.”

Rain shrugs out of my grip. “Irene.” He sounds tired. “You don’t always know everything.” Then he smiles at me, that shy crooked smile that he reserves for buttering me up. “Come on, let’s go get this over with, then you can have your Dear Abby chat.”

“Oh, you’re not taking any part in this—”

“See, Irene,” he interrupts me, his voice fierce, “this is what you don’t understand. You think I’m a child you can give orders to. But Caleb asks me for help, he talks about this with me. That’s what you don’t seem to get.” He stalks away to where Caleb has been watching us argue.

He’s wrong.

He’s wrong. I don’t think Rain’s a child, I just worry about him. That’s what friends do. They look out for each other. Caleb’s turning him against me with that damn spell of his.

Or.

Or, there’s a germ of truth in there. My face burns and I give the irritated cashier a mind-your-own-damn-business stare, then grab the cigs and the two coffees from the counter.

Dammit. Maybe Rain’s right. I should have at least asked him what he wanted to do. But I want him safe, not going off with me and Caleb to go fight some magic-eating monster. That’s not a bad thing, wanting someone to be safe, but somehow Rain’s twisted it. No, I remind myself—not Rain—it’s Caleb who has twisted it. He’s made Rain think that using him as a lever, as bait, is treating him like an equal.

When I get back to the car, I find that Rain’s gone to sit in the back seat with Caleb. They’re talking in low voices although they stop when I open the door. Rain’s face is sulky.

“Here,” I hand Caleb a coffee and some packs of sugar. I’m going to be bigger than them, not say anything.

Rain snaps back the pull on his can of Coke, and stares warily at me over the back of the passenger seat.

“Drink up, kids,” I say in a mock-cheery voice. “We have things to do, places to go, people to kill.”

Caleb shakes his head, but he drinks his coffee anyway. He even thanks me for it.

Rain is still in the back seat with Caleb when I rev the engine and head back toward Orange Grove. “Great,” I say. “Make me feel like a taxi driver, why don’t you?”

No-one replies, and to drown out the silence, I click on the ever-present Led Zeppelin tape. As long as it’s not Stairway To Heaven, because really, I don’t think I can take much more of the day going downhill. Bron-Y-Aur Stomp. I can live with that.

“You’re certain that you know where you’re going?” Caleb asks as I pull into a familiar street. I wonder if he recognises it from last night.

“Why,” Rain says between gritted teeth, “are we here?”

Lily’s house looms over us, even though there’s nothing frightening about its doll-house proportions.

“I thought we’d spoken about this. I told you I’m coming with you.” There’s a splintered edge of panic rising in his voice, and I wince. Rain thinks I’ve betrayed him already.

I jerk the handbrake up and cut the engine. “This is where we’re supposed to be.” I shift and turn so that I’m looking at Caleb. “This is the address on your little piece of paper.”

“Well.” Caleb pulls his arm out from around Rain’s shoulder. “Let us go and pay her a visit.”

“What’s going on?” says Rain.

The one really annoying thing about Beetles is the lack of back doors—well, that and the fact that if you take them over eighty they feel like they’re going to fall apart. They would make the crappest get-away car ever. I get out and jerk my seat forward so that Rain and Caleb can clamber out.

“This is where we were last night,” says Caleb as he stares around him.

“Why yes, Sherlock, indeed we were.” I slam the door. “We’ll go by the front gate this time, you know, just for a change.”

Rain starts fishing for his keys, but as I open the low metal gate, Lily is already waiting for us at the front door, her arms crossed over her chest. She’s not looking at me, or, god forbid, Rain. She’s staring at Caleb as if he’s the most repulsive thing she’s ever seen. Score one for Lily. Who would have believed it?

“You,” she spits. “What are you doing here, bringing his attention to us?”

Okay, wtf. All trace of Lily’s hippie-dippy shtick is gone.

Caleb raises his hands. “Peace, Mother. I’ve come to ask for the Sight.”

“Not likely,” says Lily. She looks about her and I can smell her sweat, her fear. “Get inside, before you draw any more attention.”

My head is in a fog. Lily? Lily knows who Caleb is?

“No fucking way,” breathes Rain. “I knew she was mental….” He trails off as we shuffle in after Caleb.

Lily glares at me as she shuts the door. “I thought you’d know better, Irene,” she says. “I allowed your friendship with Rain because I could see you were too damn stubborn to give in to the golden art, and now look what you’ve done. Mixing with people like him.”

Right. My entire world has just upended itself. It’s one thing to half-believe my mother as some kind of witch and not just a crazy suicide. But Lily? And she thinks I’m in league with the Walking Dead Man. Great. I wonder if there’s any point in telling her that it was Rain who picked him up, so I just shrug and raise my empty hands. As I shuffle past her, I feel that self-same prickling that I always get around Lily—and now around Caleb. I swallow hard and try not to scratch. Thank god I carry spare eczema cream with me everywhere, because I am looking a mess.

Inside the house is exactly the same; full of dust and beads. Nothing’s changed. And everything is different.

“Tea?”

Caleb nods. Rain and I just look at each other.

“Just a moment then.” Lily sweeps off, her Indian cotton skirt billowing, beads and bells chiming as she walks.

As soon as she’s gone I lay into Caleb in fierce whispers. “Why the bloody hell are we here? And how exactly do you know Lily? Or pod-person Lily, whoever,” I wave my hand, “that is.”

“I don’t.” Caleb takes a seat on one of the overstuffed couches. Dust puffs up, and the room smells of must and mould. “I know of her.” He wrinkles his large battered nose. “And that begs the question; how do you know her?”

“She’s my mother,” Rain says. His voice is far-away, and he’s staring off toward the bead curtains that separates the front lounge from the narrow kitchen where Lily is currently banging cups and pots around and generally making enough noise to wake the dead.

“Ah,” says Caleb. “How…complicated.” He settles back gingerly and watches us, hawk eyed.

“Here.” Lily is back with a rose-patterned plastic tray brimming with teapots and milk jugs and sugar bowls and fine china cups. The good stuff. Like Caleb is actually someone important. She sets the tray down between a pile of needlework magazines and a tray of blue glass beads, then settles herself down in her old rocking chair. “Now, Caleb Dunning, tell me what it is you really want.”

China clinks as Caleb pours himself a cup of tea. “I told you,” he says after his first sip.

“And why exactly would I want to give you anything?”

“Because I’m going after Heinrich, and if I succeed, you’ll have your magic back.”

Lily stands, knocking the tray over. It falls with a god-awful crash, sending tea and sugar and milk in all directions. “Get out of my house.”

“Lilith Pike.”

“Don’t say my name. You don’t have the right.”

When Caleb stands it’s like I see him all over again. A new man, a strange and terrible one. He’s no longer just an ageing goth in a battered black hat and trench coat. He’s a dark prince, a man wrapped in shadows and magic. “If I kill him, we all get our magic back,” he says. “And the ones like Irene, who still have theirs, they’ll be safe.” Even his voice sounds different, the gravel and cigarette growl hypnotic. “You’ll be as you were. Mother, not this withered grey-haired nothing you’ve become.”

“I was never meant to be the Mother, I was never one of the three,” Lily says. She hesitates, and I hear the thin whine in her voice that means she’s lying, that she’s pushing for something. “I don’t want it back.”

He considers her, then changes tack. “Please?”

I think I might just die of shock. Who could have believed Caleb even knew the word. And that of all people he’d be begging Lily for help.

She smiles slowly, but her hands are tugging at her beads.

Rain’s staring at his mother with his mouth open. I know the feeling.

We might as well not be here, until Lily turns the conversation back to us. “Why are you dragging them into it?” She waves one hand toward me and Rain.

“She has the golden art—” Caleb begins.

“I know that,” Lily snaps. “But Rain has nothing. And I promised Hestia I’d make sure her girl didn’t follow her. After Heinrich took everything she tried to trap him with the girl’s power, so certain that she out of all of us was clever enough to trick him into giving us back what was ours.” She looks to me quickly, then back at Caleb. “And she died, Dunning. Like the fool she was.”

“I’m not a fool,” says Caleb.

Hestia. It’s not exactly the most common name, even in the Highlands North Greek community. She’s talking about Mom.

“You didn’t know my mother,” I interrupt.

Caleb’s stopped talking and he’s staring at me, his mouth in a thin angry line.

“She’s lying,” I say to him, desperately. “She’s twisting things, because that’s what Lily does. I don’t know what you think she is, but she’s not that. She’s just a fucked-up excuse for a human being who couldn’t even crack it at looking after her own kid.”

“I couldn’t,” screams Lily. “I’d lost my magic, my everything—how was I supposed to take care of a child? Especially one with nothing, not even a drop of power.” Spittle sprays from her mouth in a fine mist.

Rain pushes past me and runs down the passage, feet thudding on the carpeted wood. His bedroom door slams. None of us say anything in the sudden echoing silence.

Lily takes a deep shuddering breath, her hands rising to her face. She pushes a hank of long grey hair out of her eyes. “I’ll show you,” she says in a broken voice. “I can’t give you the Sight, but I have something that will open your eyes to the flow of magic.”

“You said Heinrich took all your power” Caleb says.

“He did.” She crunches over the shattered china and the damp sticky mess of sugar and tea. “Come with me.”

We follow her down the passage, past Rain’s door. I pause to rap softly. “Rain?” He doesn’t answer, and even I know better than to push.

Caleb, however, doesn’t. “Stay locked in there like a child,” he says, “or get over your tantrum and join us.”

Lily tosses her head and scowls as Rain cracks the door open and peers out. He doesn’t even bother looking at her. “You don’t understand,” he says to Caleb.

“And I’m not here to try. If someone must hold your hand through life, it’s not going to be me. Now, stay, or come with us, but at the least make up your own mind.”

If I had to say that to Rain we wouldn’t speak for weeks, but he takes it from Caleb with nothing more than a shrug. “I’m coming, of course.” He looks up at Lily as if he’s daring her to say anything, but she just shakes her head. Guess for once things aren’t all that groovy in Lily’s world.

I’ve never been in Lily’s bedroom. Unlike the rest of the house, it’s spotless and white. There’s a small altar set up on the painted dresser; incense and a fat carving of a woman with a stone face—blank except for a single eye crudely hacked into it. With shaking hands, Lily draws a plain silver chain out from the tangled mess of beaded necklaces she wears. On the end are two tiny keys, one smaller than the other. With the first and largest she unlocks the bottom drawer of the dresser. Inside is a small flat box, no bigger than a deck of cards. She takes it out and places it on the dresser top. “Hestia tried to hide us as best she could, before she set her traps for Heinrich,” she says. “She cast a charm to hide magic from all eyes.”

“Heinrich still finds people.”

“Heinrich has more power than any of us ever did, and he has the rats.” Lily presses her lips tightly in a thin smile. “But Hestia wasn’t a total fool, she had power to hide us from each other, from him, and she also left us this.” She taps the edge of the little box with one fingernail.

Caleb looks sceptical. “Open it then.”

She snorts. “Don’t think you’re so high and mighty, you’re just like the rest of us—”

“Open it.”

For all Caleb annoys the shit out of me, I have to respect anyone who tears Lily down, even a little. I smirk as she silently bows to her task, unlocking the box with the second key and draws out a small tin, like a Zambuk tin. In fact, it is a Zambuk tin.

“Close your eyes,” she says. I hear the scrape of metal as I do, and then something cold and burny coats my eyelids, making me jerk back.

“Keep them closed,” she hisses. “God only knows what Hestia put in this, but I’m certain you don’t want it actually in your eyes.”

The burning sensation melts away, just leaving a greasy cold slick on my skin. “Can I open them now?”

She snorts, a thin cracked laugh with no humour. “If you must.”

I blink. She’s still Lily. Wavy grey hair snarled into a messy bun, tendrils frizzing about her ears. Her face is lined, the skin pouched under her eyes. But there’s something about her that would make me stop and give her a second look if she was just a stranger I passed in the street. It’s indefinable. A something. Around her the air has a faint charcoal smudge, like a black aura.

She touches her fingers to Caleb’s eyelids next. He blinks, and a grim smile twists his mouth. “And the boy,” he says.

Lily looks to Rain like he’s a slime mould instead of her only child. “He has no golden art, what good would it do to give him the power to see magic?”

“Just do it,” Caleb says, and that shimmer and shadow is back in his voice.

Lily doesn’t argue again, but she seems to barely want to touch Rain, and she smears the ointment on to him with the same expression she’d have if she was trying to wipe dog shit off her heel. When she steps back, she closes the tin with a soft snick. I think of knives.

“In this room, everything changes,” she says. “When you step out, all will be different.” She looks away from me, glances quickly past Rain, as if she can barely stand to look at him, and focuses on Caleb. “The girl has retrieved her mother’s book?”

Caleb nods warily.

“Good.” She locks the tin away in the little box. “I thought I could feel it on her. And Heinrich will too, if she gets too close.”

“Should I leave it here?” I ask, my hand jerking to tighten on my shoulder strap. That damn book feels heavier than a sack of bricks weighing me down to drown. Probably be better if I did just leave it in Lily’s sacred white room. Lily, and my mother. The thought swirls in my head. And Caleb, and me. And Heinrich. Just how many people with this golden art are there out in this world? I wonder if every day I walk past magicians unaware. Do they also have books full of power that look like fairy tales? I clear my throat. “Lily?”

“Not if you want to find the others,” she says. Her head swings back to Caleb. “You’ll need her to read it, you won’t be able to.”

“I already know that,” he snaps back.

It seems to me that Lily knows a hell of a lot that Caleb doesn’t want me hearing. He’s scowling—what I’ve come to think of as his default setting. So, there’s more than one reason Caleb wants to drag me along on his merry little hunt. I grin at him and flick my middle finger. “Aw, too late, Caleb.”

“Thank you,” Caleb says to Lily, ignoring me. “And if I can, I’ll bring you back what you’ve lost.”

“You do that,” she says. “Now, get out of my house.”

 

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Till Wednesday!

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Charm 11/22

(start here)

Hiding or Running

“Where are we?” Caleb asks.

I’ve parked the Beetle in an empty lot outside a bottle store. “Nowhere.” My hands are shaking, and I tighten them on the wheel. A quick glance in my mirrors assures me that we are alone here. No shadowy Hunter figures, no evil children Watchers. It’s just me and that arsehole Caleb. Between us is an empty space. I draw in a deep breath. Move, Irene, I think to myself. Sitting here isn’t fixing anything. I will my fingers to uncurl and release the steering wheel, the leather giving under my palms with a sticky kiss. The door shuts, slammed hard, and a second later, Caleb’s door echoes mine. The sound fades almost immediately, muffled in the heavy air. We set off down the deserted street, our footfalls silent. It’s like we’re not here. The night envelops us.

Around us the grid of roads is empty, quiet. There are no howling dogs, or rustling of feeding rats. It’s eerie, this emptiness. Unnatural. I fish my cell out of my pocket as I walk, and dial the speaking clock. It is, apparently, 2:40 am, and 27 seconds. For a few moments, I listen to the crisp voice, as if that will let me know that everything is normal, that I am not living in a nightmare of my mother’s creation. Some story she told me from her stupid book. I set the phone back in my pocket and trudge in what seems like aimless circles. I lead Caleb a merry path, taking as many false turns as I can.

“I asked you a question.” He’s finally trying to talk again, to get me to tell him everything he wants to know, and I let one corner of my mouth curl. Score, Irene. It’s a pathetic victory though, and I know it.

“And I don’t feel like answering.” I walk on, take a familiar left and pass a tangle of bougainvillea, their leaves shhing in the night breeze. The houses here are small, cramped on tiny plots. The area is going rapidly downhill. Like a mirror image of its cross-border neighbour; as Norwood rises, so Orange Grove falls. An Alsatian slams itself at a gate as we pass, and sends a volley of barks after us. My shoulders unclench a little. I was beginning to feel trapped in that silence. The barking dog is the breaking of a spell, and the world seems to wake up, sounds chittering through the early morning.

A few birds are starting to peep from the gardens, and here and there a light is on in a window. The horizon is still black, but it won’t be that long before sunrise. Already the sky seems lighter, as if it’s ready and waiting.

There. I stop on the pavement in front of the familiar house. I know this place almost as well as my own childhood home, and frankly, if I’m going to be leading demonic fanged monsters anywhere, it might as well be here. I avoid the curled iron gate and its perpetual squeak. Luckily Lily has never had the money to put palisade up over the old brick garden wall. “You have to be quiet,” I whisper to Caleb before I scramble over the low wall and drop into the musty black earth of her flowerbeds. Lily should still be asleep, and she never uses the old maid’s room at the back of the house. I sneak through the darkness and shadows to the small brick building. The door is unlocked but stiff, and I grit my teeth as the rusted metal handle squeals.

No sound comes from the house. The lights stay off, and I let go the breath I’ve been holding and slip into the little black room. It smells of must and damp and stale smoke, old cardboard, dust. It’s mostly filled with junk but there’s an old single bed in there, still raised on bricks, and I sit down. This is where Rain and I used to come when we both started smoking. We’d sneak in here and share our packet of Benson and Hedges Mild, thinking we were so damn grown-up. Caleb shuts the door softly and quietly behind him, and the gloom grows a little thicker. My eyes adjust to the darkness and the shades of greys.

“Where is this place?” Even with that stupid cowboy hat pulled low, I can see Caleb’s face is drawn. He looks suspicious, his mouth twisted.

“Nowhere,” I say.

“Will anyone think to look for you here?” His voice is low, curious.

“No.”

“Then it will do.” He sits down on the bed and the old metal springs creak. Flurries of dust rise, and I pinch my nose to hold back a sneeze.

In the drowning silence, I can’t stop running away from my thoughts. All that walking in circles trying to lose them, and they catch up so damn easily. I have to speak and when I do, my voice has got that horrible girlish choke to it that means I’m about to cry. “How do you know he’s alive?”

“He’s charmed to me,” Caleb says. “As long as he’s alive I’ll know.” He falters as he says it, and I know I don’t believe him. The bastard has no idea, he’s lying to me, and the knowledge strengthens my determination.

The minutes drag by. I probe at his lies, looking for the holes. “Do you know what he’s thinking? Feeling?”

Caleb shakes his head.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I want scream, to take Caleb and shake him like a dog with a rat, until his teeth fall out and he crumples up. Instead, I wrap my arms tight around my chest like I’m hugging myself, feel my heart beating, the rush of blood in my temples. What am I going to do—just wait for Caleb to help Rain? He might be dead already. I close my eyes on the thought and suck in a whimper. He is not dead. He is not. “Caleb?” I look at him, all wrapped in shadows and menace.

When Caleb doesn’t even bother to answer, I make up my mind. I’ll take the time to rest while I wait until Caleb falls asleep. when I’m sure he’s out, I’ll take my chance and go looking for Rain. I lean my head back, meaning to just close my eyes but exhaustion hits me hard after the adrenalin rush, because the next thing I know I’m waking to the sound of the mynahs squabbling on the telephone wires outside.

There’s a frangipani growing near the maid’s quarters and the scent drifts in, reminding me that outside there’s a real world, and it’s summer. One of the hottest summers in years. I glance up at the flat tin roof. From the small window high behind us a dim glow is spreading, and Caleb looks older as the morning light deepens the shadows on his face. His eyes are closed, lids flickering as he dreams. His chest is moving slowly in deep even breaths. Caleb’s stretched his legs out across the narrow bed, leaving me with just the small space that I curled up in.

Asleep, I’m pretty certain.

It’s time.

I move carefully. Slip my feet into my unlaced trainers, and do them up slowly. The whole time, Caleb stays out like a light, and I grin. I led him a nice little goose-chase last night and if he really doesn’t know where we are that gives me extra time to get back to the car, back to the squat and try find any sign of Rain.

The bed creaks as I get off it, making me wince. For a moment I stand absolutely still. There’s no change in Caleb’s breathing, thank goodness. Then I see a glint, a flicker as Caleb opens one fathomless eye.

Shit.

Caleb jerks forward to grab me, but I’m expecting it and I step back, and at the same time I knock one of Lily’s junky old storage cabinets toward him. It hits with a solid thwack, and I smile as Caleb swears. He grabs at me again, and this time he catches the strap of my shoulder bag. I slip free, leaving him hanging on to it. I feel a tiny pang at the loss of my mother’s book, but getting Rain back is more important than some stupid fairy tales.

I slam the door into Caleb’s face and race through the overgrown weeds, pushing through a small thicket of delicious monsters to reach the front wall. One easy hop, and then I’m off down the road, sprinting through the streets.

Last night I led Caleb as long a route as I could without rousing his suspicions. The car is really only a few roads away, at the small block of flats over the cluster of shops.

My mad dash scares a flock of hadedas from a tree and they launch into the air, shrieking at me as they flap up like awkward pterodactyls. The sound of the ibis flock fades and now I hear the thud of boot heels behind me. Something flickers to my right, and a huge black rat jumps into a storm drain.

No point looking back to see if Caleb really is closing in, I just put my head down and sprint faster, digging for the keys as I do.

One more corner and I spot the bottle store and the small café that sells fruit and veg and home-made vetkoek. The Beetle is sitting yellow and grumpy in the tarred wasteland off the parking bay and the sight of it spurs me on. My trainers slap against the road, and I make it to the car with the sound of my own heart drumming in my ears. While I scrabble the key against the lock, I risk a look over my shoulder.

Caleb’s still at the far end of the block. Relief washes over me, and I start laughing. Once I’m in the car I’ll be fine, I can get away and go find Rain.

A deep sound twangs under the panting of my breath, and it shudders through me, vibrating along my spinal column.

I freeze. My hand is glued to the unbudging key, its point just touching the slot. I will movement through my body, push muscle and bone and sinew but it’s as though I’ve turned to stone. Nothing. Not a twitch. I can’t even blink. Just like last night. It’s magic, and there is nothing I can do to break it.

Heinrich. He’s found us. It must be. I strain my ears, listening for the faint pipes but I can’t hear them, just that low drone, like the bass E string on an electric guitar humming through a crappy amp.

Not pipes. Not pipes at all.

Inside I’m a jumble of dancing nerves, but my skin is still, not a single damn tremor. Every muscle is perfectly frozen. My eyes are beginning to burn and my eyes are slowly drying out. And out there, somewhere in the suburban gardens, Heinrich is coming.

“That,” says Caleb right by my ear, “was unbelievably stupid.”

I can’t even warn the bastard that Heinrich’s here. He probably just thinks I’m too terrified to move. Or that I’ve given up.

A hand, pale and long with fine black hairs on the wrist, sweeps into my field of vision, and Caleb pulls the key from my hands. “What were you hoping to achieve?” he says. That low hum of a plucked guitar string buzzes in my ears, making them ache. “You’ve forced me to waste magic stopping you,” he mutters. “Fool girl.”

The sound cuts out, like someone pulled the juice on the amp, and my body is my own again. I’m not expecting it, and my over-tensed muscles let me down, and I crumple to my knees. Hard.

That bastard. It was Caleb who froze me, and I can’t even do anything about it, my muscles are jellied, as though I’m waking up from anaesthetic. “Rain,” I mumble. “I was going to rescue him.” My mouth is slack. My lips feel too fat and I can’t shape the words. It’s like coming back from the dentist, numb and sloppy and stupid.

Caleb squats down next to me. “How exactly were you planning to do that? You don’t even know if he’s still there. You would simply have been wasting time.”

He’s right, I just wish the bastard didn’t have to be so damn smug about it. I curl up into a ball right there next to the Beetle and bury my head in my arms.

Caleb snorts as he stands. “Here,” he says, and drops something next to me. “You left your bag behind. Interesting contents,” he adds, drily.

As I reach out for it Caleb speaks again. “You’re a fool. You have no idea how powerful Heinrich is.”

A thought occurs to me. “You think I’m powerful too, right.”

He snorts. “Not that powerful. And you’re too stupid to accept what you are.”

“But—” I stand, one hand against the cool metal of the Beetle. If I didn’t have the car to lean against I’d probably still be on my knees in the dirt and pebbled tar. “You still want my help. What if I agreed, no arguing?”

“You’ll agree anyway because if you don’t, you’ll die when Heinrich finds you.”

“That’s what you say.” There’s grit and red dust on the palms of my hands and I wipe them clean on the front of my jeans. “So, what if I stop all the disbelief, and just go along with you?”

He doesn’t answer, and when I look up, he’s frowning. “No arguments at all?” he asks. “And just what would I have to do to gain this?”

“Help me get Rain back—”

He shakes his head and I raise my voice, keep talking. “You said he’s still alive. Do this one thing. Help me get him back, and I swear, I promise I’ll help you with your stupid magic hunt-thing. Just get him back, and break that spell you’ve got on him.”

“And what would you swear on?”

Well not the Bible, that’s for sure. Growing up in a house with a lapsed Catholic and a mother who believed in fairies means I’ve never even seen the inside of a church. “This,” I say, and pull my mother’s book from my bag. I don’t even have to tell Caleb what it means to me, this book thing of my mother’s. It is all I have that was ever truly between the two of us. It practically sings with magic.

A slow grin that shows his long teeth slides over Caleb’s face. “Oh, a worthy trinket indeed.” He reaches out to touch it, then stops with his hand hovering just over the cover. “How you can keep denying your power when you carry things like this around….” He trails off, and then withdraws his hand, shoves it deep into his coat pocket. “There are others like this,” he remarks. “Sealed in vaults. Or in private displays, under thick glass, behind layers of security.” He looks into my face like he’s searching for something there. “Fine,” he snaps. “Your word for mine. Get in.” He nods at the car and tosses me the keys.

I catch them instinctively.

#

It’s really weird driving around Joburg in the middle of the day, going the opposite direction to all the lemmings. The traffic on Gillooly’s is backed up, bumper to bumper as the entire East Rand heads out toward Sandton, and here we are in the opposite lane, coasting in toward Edenvale.

I pull the car into a petrol station, draw the last of my cash and buy a pie for myself. After a moment of grudging thought I even buy one for Caleb. I’m not a total shit. Or maybe I am, because I buy him a manky-looking curry pie and myself a steak and pepper.

According to Caleb, Rain is still close to the squat.

Dammit, if Caleb hadn’t caught me I could be there by now, I could have fixed everything. And instead I’ve agreed to play puppet. I want to punch something. “You’re sure they haven’t moved him, that he’s still alive?” I take the Germiston road into Primrose, the one that curves over the ridge. I’ve never actually driven this way in the day, and if it wasn’t for the bloody power pylons that dominate the area it would be quite pretty. Golden rocks jut out between the indigenous flowers, and a swathe of cosmos flows down the hill side. I can even see the smog-blurred towers of Joburg over the suburbs, with Ponte like an ominous squat cylinder capped with the huge Vodacom sign, and next to it the flying saucer and spindle of Hillbrow tower.

“What are you going to tell him when we get him back?” I don’t say if.

“Tell him about what?”

I wave my hand toward his face. “About you, setting him up to get caught so we could take a run for it.”

“Ah,” he says. “Hopefully we won’t have to mention it.”

“And you assume I’m just going to sit back and watch you, and not say a word about anything?” I twist the wheel, and the Beetle jolts as we crest the ridge and head downward into Primrose. “That I’m not going to tell him that you’re a fucking cruel bastard who doesn’t give a shit about him, that you’re just using him—”

He puts one hand on my knee, pinning me with his white claw. “Of course, you’re remarkably adept at cruelty yourself.”

“What?” How dare he, I don’t even know what he’s talking about. I shove his hand off my leg.

“He loves you, you know, and one day, he’ll probably fuck you just to keep you.” He spits the words out. Hard little pebbles.

“I—I don’t—”

“Understand? Of course you do, Miss Kerry. He loves you, but he’s not in love with you. But you will keep pressing the matter.” He leans back, smiles his broken tainted smile. “You will,” he breathes in deeply, “persist in making him feel guilty.”

“Fuck you,” I say, and amazingly manage to keep my voice even. I hate that he’s right.

“Now, we both know that I wouldn’t do that.”

I take the last few turns in silence until we reach Caleb’s squat. I’m shaking with anger, skin cold. It’s better than fear though. Fear paralyses me, but anger I can use. I hold it close to my heart and think of all the ways I will break Caleb, the first chance I get

The beetle crawls to a stop, engine shuddering. “You sure he’s still here?” Under the morning sun, the old house looks normal. Just an abandoned house, nothing strange. No demonic creatures hiding under the overgrown plumbago.

The engine dies, and I sit there, my hands still tight around the braided leather of the steering wheel cover.

“We’re here,” he says. “What’s keeping you?” I notice he hasn’t actually answered me.

He’s right. I take a deep breath and let go. A moment later I am stepping out into sunshine. Rain is hopefully somewhere in the house, or near it, and if anyone is going to rescue him it’ll be me, not the psychotic ageing goth. “What about the Watchers. Are you sure they’ll be gone?”

“I didn’t say they’d be gone,” he snaps. “I said they’d be weaker during the day.” Gravel crunches under his boots “Now, follow me, and do exactly as I say.”

Oh hell no. I am so not taking orders here. And if Caleb is right, then what is there to be afraid of? Those Watchers might have been damn creepy in the dark, but really, they were the size of little kids. What exactly are they going to be able to do to me? A false bright hope fills my chest.

The genny is silent and the only sounds come from the distant rumble of the traffic on the main road, and the occasional kweh of a loerie. Go away, go away. How bloody appropriate.

I stride past Caleb and try the door. It’s unlocked and before he can say anything to stop me, I’m inside. The mirror shards are gone, the candles blown out. I have this sudden mental flash of Rain alone here in the dark last night, and guilt makes my chest ache. “Rain?”

A hand claps over my mouth. “Are you a complete idiot?” Caleb hisses in my ear. Jesus. I didn’t even feel him walk up behind me. I must be getting used to that weird cold buzz of his magic.

“What?” It’s muffled by the hand and I try twist my head out of his grasp but he just holds tighter. Which isn’t really a problem because that just gives me an excuse to bite down hard.

He jerks his hand back.

“What?” I say again, but this time I keep it to a whisper. “According to you the Watchers have no power during the day, so this should be a piece of cake.”

He shakes his hand. My teeth marks are deep indentations in his pallid skin. Good. “Are you purposely obtuse?” he says. “The Hunters were already on their way here last night.”

Oh. Shit. Irene, sometimes I doubt you have a brain.

Suddenly the quiet daytime noises take on a more ominous tone. Even the loerie has fallen silent and all around us I’m imagining the house is breathing, watching, waiting.

Caleb stalks forward, sweeping down the passage that leads to the back room. The walls have long peeling strips of paint, like flayed skin. Great that I notice stuff like this now. Absolutely freaking wonderful.

The door to Caleb’s room is closed. He stands in front of it for a second, paused, face creased like he’s listening hard. Then he nods. After me, he mouths. Slowly, he pulls the handle down. By some stroke of fortune, it makes no sound.

Inside, the makeshift curtains have been drawn, and the sleeping bag from Caleb’s fold-out camper-cot has been tucked into the curtain rail. It makes a solid rectangle of darkness. The only light comes in grey and filtered through the one side of the curtains that the sleeping bag didn’t quite cover. It’s dim, the once-white walls a greyish yellow. There’s a figure sitting on the bed with his knees pulled up, his head curled into them.

No-one else.

Relief washes over me and I rush forward. “Oh god, Rain, you have no idea how worried I was.”

The figure raises his head as I get closer. Flashes its fangs at me.

I stop in mid-stride. It’s the thing from Zeplins. The boy with the wings, with the teeth. Or one of them anyway.

“Hunter,” Caleb says behind me, and hums that guitar string sound. It doesn’t seem to have much effect this time. Not on me, and sure as hell not on that damn thing. The Hunter unfurls its wings, black leathery things like stunted dragon’s wings, and launches itself at me.

“Shit.” I duck and scramble, feeling the rush of air as it shoots over me. “Dammit! Do something!” I yell at Caleb, who shoots me a withering look just before he makes the sound again.

“Stop bloody singing at it and use some of your stupid magic!”

“And what,” he says as he jumps out of its way, “exactly,” he turns, kicks out at the Hunter, catching it low on one leg and making it stumble, “do you think I’m doing?”

The Hunter pauses, and looks from me to Caleb, head swinging with the hovery-fluid movement of a snake. It’s picking which one of us is the soft target, I’m pretty sure. It’s going to go for me. I’m already crouched down, and I shift the weight on my fingers, preparing to launch out of its way as soon as it moves.

The wings crack and the Hunter leaps. As it does I lunge towards Caleb’s little gas cooker. A three kilo gas bottle is going to make a wonderful sound when it bounces off that damn thing’s head.

Only, it doesn’t go for me.

In seconds it has Caleb pinned to the floor, teeth snapping in his face. Well, never let it be said I don’t take my chances when I get them. The gas bottle has a cooker top, which is just going to add to the thing’s pain.

I grab the bottle and slam it into the back of the Hunter’s skull. It makes a satisfying clang. “Gotcha.”

The Hunter pulls its face away from Caleb and turns to me. Blood stains its mouth. Ugh, I really don’t want to see what Caleb looks like. I swing the bottle down into its face and bones and cartilage make a sickening crack. Swallowing down the vomit rising in my throat, I hit again.

And just keep hitting until Caleb says, “It’s dead, Irene. Let it go.” His voice is nasal, like he’s got one hell of a cold.

The bottle drops to the concrete floor. Bounces with a hollow metal echo.

The Hunter is a mess. I catch a glimpse of jellied red pulp. My breaths come in gasping pants. “Oh god,” I say.” I’m going to be sick.” And then I am.

On my knees, with my face inches away from my own puke, is not the best place to start getting philosophical. Then again I have just killed someone—something, rather—and I’m too much of a coward to actually look. Suck it up, Irene, I tell myself. This is what you did. I turn my head enough to see the Hunter’s caved-in skull, the mess of brain and bone and blood and god-knows what else. It’s leaking a thin blackish ichor over the concrete floor.

“Well done,” Caleb says.

I push myself up into a crouch, and carefully stand.

Caleb’s holding one hand to his nose, blood pouring in rivulets down his chin. There are deep scratches down his cheek and I glance back at the Hunter’s clawed hands.

There are no claws. It’s just a human hand lying splayed on the stained floor. No. I make myself look. There are no wings, no claws. I can’t see the face for the mess, but the Hunter is about as human as I am. Albeit a whole lot deader.

“It’s a person,” I say. I’m going to be sick again.

“Was,” says Caleb. He drops his hand. Looks like his nose is broken. “Once, it was a child. A stolen child. It hasn’t been human for hundreds of years.” He wipes the worst of the blood off his face with the back of his hand.

“Where’s Rain?” I don’t want to think about what just happened. I want to find Rain and get the hell out of here.

Caleb doesn’t answer. He closes his eyes, concentrates. Picking up the spell-bond between them, most likely. “Somewhere in the house,” he says when he opens his eyes again.

“And aren’t you just the most helpful psychic ever to walk the planet?” I’m shivering. Shock.

“Not psychic,” Caleb spits. “It’s an art, and art doesn’t always work the way you want it to. He’s in this house. He’s alive. So let’s go find him.”

If I didn’t know better, I’d think Caleb sounded relieved.

—

previous/next

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Till Wednesday!

* You can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo. *

It’s okay to NOT

Write.

Seriously. It really is perfectly okay if you don’t write every day of the year. It’s also perfectly okay if you do.

Stephen King writes 2000 words daily and I think that is an admirable goal, especially if it keeps you in the habit of writing. But the idea that you’re not a real writer (is this like a fake geek girl thing? I dunno…) unless you sit in a chair every day and hammer out 500 – 1000 words is a very limited way of looking at creativity.

And not everyone can manage it. It’s very easy to say, “oh if you really want to write, you’ll find time,” but I challenge you to be a parent (specifically the full time care-giver, as many relationships are not equal in the amount of child-care each parent provides) and have a job, and have a house to maintain, and a life to live, perhaps elderly parents to look after, and then still have the energy to sit down and carve out an hour of writing time every single day. It’s simply not always feasible for everyone.

And so you feel guilty, and you hate yourself, and you’re not a real writer because the internet told you so.

Fuck the internet. Fuck writers on the internet. Fuck well-meaning people on the internet who tell you how you personally should manage your creativity and time when they know nothing about your life.

What you need to do is find a writing routine that works for you, and for the book/project you are working on right now (each project can call for a different approach, don’t feel if one doesn’t work, you’re useless – pick another.) And not-writing is part of writing. It is idea-composting, it is real-life research, it is filling up your life with the fun stuff that make writing flow better because its informed and your brain is in a good place. Never feel guilty for recharging.

If you do feel you need daily writing to keep you on track, then my suggestion is to carve out your time in 15 minutes, rather than trying to find a whole hour to work in. (Unless of course you can, in which case enjoy that hour, :D)

One thing I’ve found that works for me is to set myself 15 minute word sprints. I set a timer, I open my Square Brackets of Absolution, and I write until the buzzer goes off. Sometimes I have a fairly good idea of what I need, and then it’s easy to get into it. Sometimes I need to write crap because that’s all I have. It’s okay to write crap. You gotta edit something, and it’s easier to fix crap than fix nothing.

Bam. 15 minutes = words. If you can squeeze in a few more sessions, that’s golden, but if you can’t, you can’t. It’s okay. You’re still a writer.

If you’re still telling yourself you need to be Stephen King, bear this in mind: I remember many years back watching a program about various Scottish people, in which Iain M. Banks made an appearance. Now I may be misremembering, but when they asked about his writing habits, he said he only wrote for six months*, and used the other half of the year to recharge/plan out works. Considering Excession is still one of my favourites, I’m happy to be a Banks rather than a King.

Find the place and pace and time that makes writing happen for you, and forget about what other people say is the right way to go about writing.

 

*eta: it’s been pointed out to me that Banks might have written for only 3-4 months out of the year, so there you go. If anyone knows what doccie I saw and remembers correctly, please let me know.

 

Shimmer and Glimmer.

Okay so let me tell you a long tale, one involving naivety, repetition, and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Shimmer Magazine started a decade ago. For those keeping record, I started writing more than a decade ago. (Though we shall use the word writing here in only the loosest possible sense. I was vomiting words onto paper with little understanding of what I was doing. These days I fake it better). I thought what I was writing was good. I also thought Shimmer Magazine would be a great fit because I like the stories they put out.

Shimmer and I had a gentle difference of opinion….

But I never stopped sending them work. Sometimes they would send me forms, sometimes an encouraging “submit something else”. We had a nice little relationship. I knew a few people working there, on and off, and we all stayed friendly because (and I cannot stress this enough – STORY REJECTIONS ARE NOT PERSONAL ATTACKS. They just mean that your story is not the one they’re looking for right now. Now let’s all eat cake. because cake is good.

mmmmcake.)

I was writing a story with another market in mind (for Short Story Day Africa’s Water Anthology, you can read about it here), and so, naturally enough, water was a prevalent theme. The story turned out to be too short for SSDA, so I wrote something else for them (we shall see what happens…) and sent this one to Shimmer because, well, it felt Shimmery.

Shimmer gently agreed, and much squee was squeed, because well. TEN YEARS, GUYS. TEN. YEARS.

But anyway, my short piece about running away from home, becoming water, and how families are connected is in the latest issue of Shimmer, alongside stories by Roshani Chokshi, Lavie Tidhar, and Erica L. Satifka. So that is pretty damn awesome. You should go buy it because besides cool stories it has beautiful artwork and you like beautiful art work and beautiful words.

Charm 10/22

(start here)

Watchers

It’s a while before I find my voice. “Why me?” I ask eventually. I have so many questions that this seems the best starting place.

“Because after he’s caught me, he’ll be after you.”

“Oh really?” I drawl it out, even though I have to wrap my arms around myself to stop the shivers.

“Really. The Watchers will find you, and Heinrich will want what you have. Your art.”

Heinrich. I have a name for my nightmares, for the thing in the dark who killed my mother

Stop it. She killed herself.

Except she didn’t. “Heinrich,” I repeat flatly.

“The eater of magic.” Caleb answers my unasked question. “Alone, I can’t fight him, but with you joining your powers to mine….”

Okay, magic or no magic, Caleb is clearly wrong on this point. He’s been dead for too long, and it’s warped his brain. I hold up one hand, palm out. “Wait up. Exactly what power is it that you think I have? The ability to do a mean portrait when I put my mind to it? Because if you’re expecting me to go and attack some random person with a paintbrush because you think he’s got strange dietary habits, then, no.”

Caleb frowns. “Your magic.”

“What fucking magic?” I’m yelling now, and Rain shifts back away from me. “Did you miss the part where I said I don’t believe in any of this.”

“You have magic,” he says, but I can hear the confusion. “I saw it in you. I knew there was another still in the city and I was looking. That moment I saw you I felt the golden art moving and so I followed you, until I was certain that you were like me.”

“I’m nothing like you—” Something trips in my brain. An image of a tall dark figure, watching me through the rain, standing under my apartment window. “Wait. That was you?” Okay, now I’m pissed. “You seriously stalked me?” This guy just keeps giving me more things to add to my list of reasons not to help completely insane, might-be-magic, very-probably-living-dead people.

He holds up one hand. “If the Hunters find you, it doesn’t matter what you think or believe, they will take you to Heinrich. We’re better off working together.”

There’s no way I’m staying to listen to this—I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want any of this to be real. “We’re going.” I whirl round and grab Rain’s wrist, pulling him after me. Caleb doesn’t even try stop me as we storm down the passage and I slam back the bolts on the front door.

“Irene….” Rain pulls his wrist free. At least this time he doesn’t attempt to punch me, so i guess we’re making progress. He’s been quiet, listening to the rubbish that Caleb’s been spewing, and I know it must have hurt him to hear that Caleb was just using him to get to me.

“It’ll be cool,” I reassure him. “Don’t worry.” Boot-steps echo down the bare concrete passage, but I don’t need to hear that to know that Caleb is behind me. I can feel him—whatever it is about him that makes him magic, it resonates with me, pulls at me. I jerk the door open.

Behind us Caleb hisses.

A mass of figures is standing in the gravel driveway, their green eyes reflecting back the candle light. They’re children, or at least children-sized, but there’s nothing childlike about the way they stalk forward, grinning. Despite their pasty cherub faces, there’s no mistaking these for actual humans. Their skulls are bare except for tattered clumps of hair that jut out like the fur of a decaying dog. They lurch, their arms swinging by their sides, fingers curled like claws.

Watchers. I know in my bones that these are the things Caleb was talking about it, know it like I know the sound of my own name or the shape of Rain’s occasional smile.

Their eyes are bright; the only bright things about them. They stare at us unblinkingly, and smile. Little children smiles with nubs of little teeth.

I had no idea there were so many of them out there.

Somewhere, faint on the night air, comes the thin sound of a whistle or a flute. The sound eats right into my marrow, chewing through my body and freezing me. I’ve been turned to stone, utterly rooted in place, entranced by the music.

Behind me, I hear Caleb stop in his tracks.

We’re both of us helpless, caught in whatever this is. It’s Rain who jolts forward to slam the door shut and slide the bolts home.

The faint music dies and the leaden freeze leaves my body, leaves my muscles feeling achy and numb.

Caleb takes a deep breath. “We need more light,” he says. He sounds frantic. “Candles aren’t enough.”

“What for?” I say numbly. “They’re already here, they can go fetch their little Hunter buddies any time—”

“Were you not listening, you idiot girl,” Caleb says. “They can only take us in darkness. Sunlight means we’re safe, and until the sun rises, we need another source of light—”

“The genny,” says Rain.

“What?” Once again, I’m totally left out of whatever little world they’ve got.

“I’ve a cannister of petrol.” Caleb rubs at his eye sockets with long bony hands. “But there’s no way to get to the genny without them seeing. And if they do, well, it looks like Heinrich’s given them some measure of his own art. They can hold us.”

They can hold us. “Wait a minute—what—what do you—”

“No.” Rain shakes his head. “I saw what they can do to you. Their…whatever it is doesn’t do anything to me.”

It takes me a moment to work out what he’s suggesting. “Oh, hell no,” I say. “Over my dead body will you go running out there with the freaky horror-movie kids.”

Rain just ignores me. Something scratches at the door, making me jump. Rain swallows, looks up at Caleb. “I can get to the genny quickly. Unscrew the burglar bars of the back window. I’m small enough to get through that and get to the generator before they even know. You and Irene can stay here, keep talking so they’ll keep to the front of the house.”

The scratching is growing louder, like those creepy children are actually trying to dig their way through the wood with nothing more than their fingernails. My throat is tight, and it’s hard to swallow. The itch is so bad now that it takes all my force of will to keep my hands at my side.

The sound of fingernails biting into wood, the splinter as they tear out more and more chunks to get to us. It’s horrifying. I stare, almost unable to move, my brain throbbing with ideas, all of which are completely useless. But it seems the sound is enough for Caleb to make up his mind. He nods at Rain. “They know for sure we’re here now and the Hunters will be here soon. We need the light.”

“Can’t you just, I don’t know,” I wave my hands, “magic the bastards away?”

Caleb pauses. “It’s not that simple.”

Of course. Nothing in my life ever is.

#

“How long should he take?” My voice comes out all choked and scared, but I don’t look up. We’ve decided not to stay near the front, but rather to guard the window Rain used. Without the bars, it’s too dangerous to just leave it. The floor here is stained, and rough semi-circles of ridges in the concrete catch flickering shadows as the candles gutter and spit. I rub my hands up and down my arms, over and over and over. Why couldn’t it be me who went? Maybe it was a mistake, that whole bit where I froze—just…terror. Not magic.

Never magic. My eyes burn. Oh god, Caleb…Caleb’s right. And I hate it. Hate him. “This is taking too long,” I say again, like repeating the obvious is a magic all of its own, and it will change the world. Time will constrict because I say so, and Rain will be back. Right as Rain.

Caleb shifts, and his coat makes that particular smooth sound that old leather makes, a sound of skin. He’s standing at the small window, watching the tangled garden. Rain is already outside. He slipped through easily as a thief, and now he’s out there in the dark. I hate this; I can’t believe I let him go. I scrunch my shoulders higher and curl one hand over my cramping stomach. It’s fear. Now I know what they mean when they say gut-wrenching. One long breath through my nose. And another. Counting the seconds until Rain comes back.

The generator roars to life and light floods on around us. The weak glow of the candles is washed away in a light so bright it makes my eyes sting and water. My head jerks up. Caleb is wide-eyed.

The Watchers won’t have missed that. They’d have to be blind, deaf and thick as two planks to not work out that one of us is out there right now. Unless by some stroke of luck they have no idea how generators work. That would be nice. I’m holding on to threads here. “Oh god,” I moan, and scramble to my feet, to stare out the window. It’s just about impossible to see anything out there now that the lights are all on, but I catch a flash of pale hair as Rain runs from the shed at the bottom of the garden, straight towards us.

He’s only a couple of metres from the window when the first one comes hurtling from the shadows and knocks him to the ground. I don’t have a clear view of it—all I really see is the white streak of Rain’s hair as he’s knocked sideways. Then it’s gone.

“Rain!”

Caleb’s already pulling me back from the window as I’m screaming, and forcing the bars back into place.

“Are you crazy?” I yell, trying to wrestle the bars out of his hands. “They’ve got Rain.”

He shoves me away. Hard enough that I fly back and hit the floor, the concrete and my head making an audible thud as they connect. The taste of vomit sours my mouth and I try to stand, but I can barely see and my head is one big ball of pain. “You bastard,” I manage to say between the sobs, clutching at the back of my head.

I don’t see him kneel down next me, just sense the way the air seems to change as he comes closer, the cold sting of his magic scratching at my skin. “There’s nothing we can do right now,” he says. “All this has done is given us a breathing space. The light will hold the Watchers back, but it won’t do much to stop the Hunters.”

He lied to me. Caleb let me think that the light was going to save us, that we’d be safe here until sunrise. His fingers tighten on my arm, hard enough that I’m sure I’ll be left with bruises and he pulls me up as he stands, his hand a vice around my upper arm. The touch makes me go cold inside, makes the itch under my skin so bad that I can barely breathe.

“You killed him for what?” It comes out harsh, like a scream gone raw. “For nothing? To buy a little time?” There is no way in hell I’m ever going to help him. Ever. Let him die again, let him lose his magic. Let Heinrich or whoever get him. Let them come after me. I don’t care. My face is slimy with tears and snot and I wipe my free hand across my cheeks.

“He’s not dead.” Caleb sounds so sure of himself and I twist in his grip and land a sloppy punch to his face. It doesn’t connect properly.

All he does is shake me, almost jerking my arm out of its socket. “Pull yourself together,” he says. “We need to get out of here, now.” Caleb strides out the room, pulling me so that I’m stumbling after him, dragged to keep up. “They’re distracted. We’ll use your car.”

The realisation hits me so hard I stop breathing. The callous bastard. “You knew they’d get him.”

“Get your keys out and be ready to run.”

I’m still processing this when he grunts in frustration and shoves his free hand into my jeans’ pocket and pulls out the car keys. Then the door is open and Caleb looks down at me, deep lines made deeper by the bare light-bulb.

“Run,” he says.

I tell myself I have no choice. Grit sprays under my feet, making me skid, but Caleb keeps his hand on my arm and drags me with him. I can’t hear anything over the pounding of blood in my ears even though I’m straining to catch a sound that will let me know that Rain is still alive, that Caleb’s right.

He lets go of my arm, turns the key, and then wrenches the old car door so hard that it bounces on its hinges. “In. Now.” He shoves me across the cracked red leatherette of the seats, over to the passenger side. My tee shirt hooks on the hand break, but Caleb just climbs in after me, shoves again, and the shirt rips.

The roar of the old Volksie engine brings the Watchers running. Seven of them come racing after us, their legs pumping as Caleb puts his foot flat and guns the Beetle down the road, the tires sliding on the loose tar.

“Ow,” I say softly. Twisting in my seat, I look back to see the figures of the Watchers gathering in the road. They’re standing still and not bothering to chase us. “They’re not following.”

Caleb doesn’t even acknowledge me.

My head is aching, and I’m too dizzy to think straight. Around us trees and buildings and street lights flicker past while I fight the urge to throw up again. Gingerly, I feel the back of my head. I have an egg-shaped lump, tender as a water-filled balloon. We speed through the suburbs, and I feel lost and terrible. I have no grasp on what just happened, like I’m in a nightmare and everything is running under dream logic. Rain is supposed to be here with us, and now he’s not, and I try process this.

It’s not working. I’m not dreaming and none of this is right.

Finally, we turn up into Shamrock Road, and head over the ridge toward Edenvale.

“Where are you going?” And what about Rain? I can’t make myself say the words when I’m as guilty as the bastard himself.

Caleb slips the car left, down the on-ramp and we glide onto the mostly empty highway. “You tell me,” he says. “Somewhere the Watchers won’t think of looking for you. You can’t go to your home, or your family’s. Heinrich’ll have found those addresses out by now.”

My stomach jolts. This isn’t happening. And how the hell did this end up being my life? All I wanted was one stupid boy, one stupid chance at getting into art college, one stupid normal existence. “There’s nowhere,” I say and my face is crumpling, and I hate that more than anything else. “Nowhere is safe—wait. Pull over.”

He glances at me, then pulls the car into the emergency lane. The engine sputters dead.

I twist in my seat to get a good look at him. He’s pale and sweaty, hands locked on the steering wheel, knuckles like yellow chess pieces breaking through the skin. “I need the truth. What’s going to happen to Rain?”

“He should be fine, as soon as they realize he has no magic. They’re not interested in humans.”

“Should be,” I echo. My hands are shaking as I move, but Caleb’s fear of the Hunters is real, palpable, and although it kills me to do this—to trust him, Caleb’s the only person I know who has any understanding of magic, or what exactly is going on.

“There’s somewhere I can take us where no Watchers will think of going. But.” I glare at him. “I’m driving.”

“This isn’t a scenic journey,” Caleb says. His breath is whistle-strange like he’s biting down on all his anger or fear.

“I know that. But if you want me to trust you even the slightest, you need to give me this,” I say. “Or I get out of this car and I walk straight back, let the Watchers or Hunters or whatever the hell is out there find me. Boom. Game over.”

“You’re an idiot child,” Caleb says, but he’s unbuckling his seat belt.

I go calm inside. Let Caleb think I’m doing what he wants. I’ll go back for Rain myself. My movements are mechanical. Unlock, swap seats. Click the seat belt. I have to concentrate on every little thing, because if I start thinking I’m going to scream and not freaking stop.

—

previous/next

—

Till Wednesday!

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Charm 9/22

Threads that Bind

I know what I’ve been doing wrong with the painting. I was trying to make Rain mirror Caleb, so that the two would stare at each other across the respective empty landscapes of their canvases. But it’s not really like that, is it? Rain’s like one of those fairy tale princesses lying in a glass coffin, waiting for someone to drag them back to life. He’d kill me if I told him that. So I paint Rain in repose, horizontal on a vertical canvas, so that all you actually see are his shoulders and face, eyes closed like he’s asleep or dead. One can never tell in the old stories.

It’s kinda creepy how well I know every line and shadow in Rain’s face. I just have to close my eyes and he’s there, clear as a photo. I know the exact way his brow gets a fine wrinkle when he’s deep in thought or a bit nervous. The way his bottom lip is almost always chapped. Something about finally committing him to canvas, to putting him down brush stroke by brush stroke actually begins to make me feel better, like a fist clenched around my lungs is letting go and allowing me to breathe properly for the first time in ages. It feels good. I should have done this years ago. Sometimes I forget just how powerful art can be.

I work through the day, getting the shadows just right, then darkening and deepening them with raw umber. Paint gets under my fingernails, and the turps turns my hands raw and dry and wrinkly. Not good for my skin, but I don’t care. This is more important. When I finally step back to get a good look at what I’ve achieved with the structure of the two paintings I notice something wrong.

Not with Rain, but with Caleb. Where before I had painted him with a curl of a sneer, his expression has changed, ever so slightly. Long shadows stream across the room, and I put it down to the bad light. Because, from this angle, in this faded twilight, Caleb’s eyes are darker, the beginnings of a frown just tugging at the corners of his mouth. He stares at the prone image of Rain, and he looks worried.

“Aren’t we all?” I say to him, as I put the paintings at the far end of the room, so that if I wake in the night I can see them. Somehow, strangely, it’s reassuring.

#

Two days later I’m at work when the cellphone I am most assuredly Not Allowed to have in my apron pocket begins to vibrate, so I duck into the empty alleyway behind the kitchen and crouch down on one of the delivery crates. If anyone sees me I’m busted. Management have been firing people like crazy for the stupidest things. The phone is still vibrating and I flip it open; it’s a crappy ancient Motorola with a dicky screen that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. This time I can’t see who is calling. “Hello?” I say cautiously, really hoping that it’s someone I want to talk to.

There’s a crackle of static and then the connection clicks back. “—een?”

God, it’s Rain. He better be calling me to come fetch him because Caleb dumped his sorry arse. “Yeah?” Or not. Because I am Over Him. I have painted him out of my heart.

The line clicks again, buzzes. The phone goes dead. I jiggle the hinges a bit, as if that’s actually going to help. “Hello? Hello? Dammit.”

Trust Rain to do this to me. Now I’m going to be worried the rest of the evening. If I’m lucky and it’s quiet, perhaps I can get off shift. I snap the phone closed and sneak back into the bar. David the manager is at the front desk, annoying the pretty, vacant girl they’ve got to work host. I could always fake a cramp.

“Uh, David?”

He tears his gaze from the vacant one’s breasts.

“Is it cool if I leave early—if it’s quiet?”

Already his head is swinging back so that he can stare at her chest some more. “No,” he says. “Work your damn shift, Irene.”

“It’s important—”

“It’s always important. I’m so sick of you bloody waiters and bar staff coming to work and then deciding to go home, like you can waltz on and off shift whenever you bloody please.”

The girl smiles, showing off all her teeth like a shark. David warms up now that he’s got an approving audience and he swivels back to me. “If you want to leave so badly, Irene, then go. But that’s your job. Don’t expect to be able to work here again.”

This is not what I need right now—David throwing his weight around and being the general dick-head that he is. A few of the waiters have overheard the exchange, and they sidle closer.

Cold anger rises in me, and makes me move slowly, deliberately. First I fish out my cell phone, then untie the ridiculous butcher’s apron they make us wear and drop it at David’s feet. “Fine.”

David stares at me, and shuts his mouth with a snap. “You still have customers,” he says.

“So? You serve them.” I push past him to the small set of cupboards where the staff bags are kept. “I don’t work here.” With my bag slung over my shoulder I head to the door, not looking back at my ex-coworkers.

Oh, Rain, you better be in trouble, ’cause if you’re not I’m going to kill you myself.

#

The taxi drops me off close to my father’s house and I let myself in to the empty house. The Beetle’s keys aren’t in the drawer. I slam it closed and rifle through the mess of papers on the entrance hall desk. Nothing. Even Dale is nowhere to be seen, he’s probably off doing whatever it is he does with his pack of friends, so all that’s left is for me to flick on the television and numb my brain with reruns of Oprah. My concentration is shot, all I can think about is why Rain was trying to call me. My dad can’t get back from work soon enough.

An hour later he blunders in looking rumpled and distracted. I stop jittering my legs.

“Irene,” he says, in a tone of surprise. “Is something wrong?”

“Nah.” I don’t see the point in telling him I just got fired or quit my job or whatever the hell just happened. “I wondered if I could borrow the car, I want to go check on Rain. I’ll fill it up,” I add, which is a lie because I currently have no job. This is Tomorrow-Irene’s problem.

My dad nods and hands me the keys. He was the one that called Child Welfare on Lily, when I finally told him what was happening. They put him with foster parents, and after three days Rain ran away. He was fourteen. They found him a week later living in a squat in Hillbrow. Only, a lot can happen in a week.

You just don’t wander into Hillbrow and not get hurt. I mean, this is the part of the city that celebrates New Year’s by throwing their fridges off balconies. I never asked Rain what made him snap, why he ended up in the hospital. It’s not the kind of thing you can just randomly shunt into conversation—“So, mind telling me why you went off the deep end?”

My theory is that he’ll tell me when he’s ready, and he’s not ready. I can live with that. In the mean time I just have to make do with being a good friend. Except I’ve been slacking. Maybe it’s because I’m jealous, maybe I’m waiting for Caleb to figure out just how much trouble he’s getting himself into with Rain, waiting for him to give up.

God, I’m a bitch.

The keys jangle in my pocket as I play with them. Nerves, I guess. It’s already close on seven and I’ll have to drive to Caleb’s shitty squat in the dark. Why can’t we be like Cape Town where the sun only sets at nine in summer? At least now I have the route there imprinted in my brain.

It’s a half hour drive in good traffic and by the time I reach the long tree-shaded road, the Highveld sky has turned the ugly yellow and blue of a bruise.

Caleb must be in. His monster car is in the drive, dripping oil. I park next to it and clamber out. A breeze ruffles the overgrown grass, brushing the yellowed stalks together. The sound makes me jump, makes my heart slam in my chest. I have this sudden fear that there are things in the bushes, in the rank undergrowth, and they’re watching and waiting for me to falter. One misstep, and they will tear me apart. I shudder, and race to the door. This time it’s locked, so I rap against the wood and wait.

Someone shuffles inside. “Who is it?” Caleb’s voice; salt-rough, dark as imported molasses.

“Irene. I’ve come to see Rain.” I guess it’s fairly obvious, but I want to let Caleb know that I don’t give a shit about him.

Latches clink, bolts rattle as they are drawn back. “Get inside, and move it,” Caleb says. He’s opened the door just wide enough for me to squeeze in. I have to step over shards of broken mirror laid flat on the ground. Caleb shuts the door, and bolts and locks it again.

Rain stands in the passage way, his arms crossed on his chest. “Hey, Reenie,” he says, like this is all perfectly normal.

“What the bloody hell is going on? Are you guys in some kind of trouble? The police?” Then again, if the police were looking for them, Caleb would at least have gone to the trouble of hiding that eyesore of a car.

Caleb strikes a match, and I smell sulphur. He lights a row of candles on the mantel over a boarded up fireplace and the room is cast in their yellow glow. An emergency light is wired up, but I know those things only have about five hours light in them before they die.

Light reflects off broken mirror. The room is lined with them, the window ledges too. It reminds me of my mother, and a cold stone sinks in my stomach.

Caleb shrugs when he sees me looking at them. “The Watchers,” he says. “It confuses them.”

“All right.” I drag out every word, slow and toffee-sticky. “Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

Rain steps out of the shadowed passage in to the candle-lit front room. The yellow catches in his hair, makes him glow. He looks angelic, or he would, if his mouth wasn’t quite so sinful. A fallen angel, maybe. “The Watchers are looking for Caleb,” he says. “They’re worse at night—during the day the light hurts them, so they tend to stay under the bushes.”

My skin itches. The Watchers. I know they’re the things that have been following me. I know it like I know my own name. I remember my mother’s voice, panicked in the dark. I remember being small enough that fairy tales were real, and dark and strange and terrifying, and she said, “The Watchers will find us.” The fragment of memory slips away, and I wish I could remember who she was talking to, and why she was so scared.

I turn to Caleb, blustering to hide my fear. “What the hell drug is he on—what did you do to him?”

“Calm down. Rain’s perfectly sane.”

I glare. “Yeah, right, and just what the hell are Watchers, anyway? Maybe you think I’m some stupid little kid you can frighten with some candles and mirrors and woohwooh noises, but for the record—”

“Irene,” Rain says, “Just, for once, just listen. No-one’s bullshitting you. I swear.” He crooks his littlest finger like a primary school kid. “Pinkie swear.”

“What are you, five?” But the rage has been sucked out of me. Rain hasn’t done pinkie swears since we were midgets, and it’s so odd and yet so how he was before. I want to go back to that time. I want all of this to go away.

Caleb steps a hand span closer to Rain. “I promise you, Rain hasn’t started hallucinating. The Watchers are creatures of magic. As strange as it sounds, they are real, and they are out there.” He bares his teeth, but he’s scared, I can tell. And that makes me scared too. He’s saying all this like it’s normal, like we’re standing in the Spar discussing which potatoes are better for mashing.

My brain is all static and sparks. This is straight out of my childhood; caught up in stories and believing that they’re real, that something really is waiting for me under my bed, and that’s why I have to tuck the blankets in tight around my feet and keep my head down, so they don’t eat me. NOT NORMAL, I try out-screaming my thoughts, but they circle and shine, and Caleb keeps talking.

“—think of them like low-level demons,” he’s saying. “They know I’m here, they’re watching me —hence the name. Now that they know where I am, it won’t be long before the Hunters gather.” He raises his hands, almost apologetically. “I’m not really equipped to deal with them.”

This is so dumb, I shouldn’t be buying into this crap, but I’ve seen them. “These Hunters,” I hear myself say. “They wouldn’t by any chance be winged and fanged, would they?”

Caleb’s face goes still. “They’ve seen you already?”

This is madness. I am not having this conversation. Hunters and Watchers and boys in clubs with wings folded over their backs.

“Irene, I need to know—have they seen you?”

Not have I seen them. He knows I have. I nod, warily. Whatever is going on, Caleb knows. He’s part of it. And I still don’t trust the bastard.

“You can get us out,” says Rain. “That’s why I called.”

My head is spinning.

“The Watchers aren’t terribly bright,” Rain says. “They’re watching Caleb’s car.”

“And?”

“So, we wait till dawn, then when they go back under, we leave in your car.” Rain smiles, and we’re all pretending this is a perfectly normal conversation. “Wanna stay the night?” he says.

Like I have any choice when he asks like that. “Right. Fine.” That, and I have a few questions to ask that gothic bastard.

Rain hugs me tight and whispers in my ear. “Thanks, Reenie. I owe you one.”

He owes me more than that, but who’s counting. “So tell me, Caleb, what’s going on—what are these things, and why are they after you?” Why were they after my mother? I don’t ask. The memories are there. Her face in the dark, the candles lit around her, the broken glass glued onto ribbons and set into the windows, “to confuse them,” she’d whisper to me. That’s what made me believe. Rain, repeating her words. Like he was there. I remember the Watchers. They watched my mother, and they brought the Hunters to our door. Cold eats its way into my bones, and the evil eye burns and burns and burns.

Caleb lights more candles, stalking the room and bending to each one until the room is shiny as the inside of a pearl. “The light will hold the Watchers back, although it won’t do terribly much to stop Hunters.”

I just nod. I’ve heard this before. “You need to hide, Irene,” she’d say. “Under the bed. Don’t let them find you. Wear this, and hide.” My hand goes to the cold burn at my chest. The candles flicker to life one by one, turning the gloom into living warmth.

When Caleb is done he sits in the middle of the floor, and pats the ground, beckoning us down.

Rain sits close, and leans back on the palms of his hands, relaxed. “Sit, he won’t bite you.”

“I’ll start at the beginning,” Caleb says.

Well, I guess we have time enough. “What’s that—Genesis?”

“I have the golden art,” he says, simply. Like I’m supposed to know what that means.

“Great,” I say. “Good for you.”

“There are very few of us who can use the golden art and charm people and things with magic.” His face is very serious. “And not all of us are nice.”

“Tell me about it.” I hope my sarcasm is showing because, really. I remember how she screamed, while I lay under that bed, hidden.

“Some of us are dangerous.” He sighs, leans back. “All you need to know is that one of those dangerous and not-nice people is in Joburg right now, and that’s why I’m here. He has something I want. I was in Egypt when I heard the rumour that he had risen here again and that he was using the Watchers and the Hunters to look for someone, and I came down. For a while, I had his scent, and then I lost it.”

“What happened?” The room feels unreal, the walls distant flickering shadows. We could be in another time and space altogether.

Caleb shifts, the smoke clouding around him, obscuring his face. “The most prosaic of endings,” he says. “I’d been back here a week when I was hit by a taxi.”

It was him. He surprises a choked laugh out of me. “I thought you have this golden art thing; couldn’t use it to step out of the way of a hurtling mini-bus?”

He draws on his cig. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“So you were dead,” I prompt. Under my shirt, the icy pendant seems to be sinking right into my skin, burning a cold hole all the way to my breastbone. “That must have put a damper on your plans. What are you now—a zombie? Let me guess, you ate your boyfriend’s brains and now he’s a zombie too. Except,” I glare at Rain, “slim pickings.”

Rain just flicks his middle finger at me, lazy, unconcerned.

“Don’t be a fool,” Caleb snaps. “I was saved.” He says nothing else, just pulls on the last of the cigarette and hides in the veils of smoke. Rain is looking up at him in a sickening puppy-dog way.

“By who?”

“By what.” He stubs out the cig. “Does it matter?”

“Yes, it bloody well matters. And who was this dangerous-and-not-so-nice guy looking for, anyway?” I don’t trust Caleb, and he sure as hell isn’t telling me everything. “I want to know.”

“Do you really?” He smirks again. “I don’t think you do, Irene Eleni Kerry. Not when it just confirms what you’ve known all your life, when it makes real all those things you pretended didn’t exist.”

“Yeah?” I stand, brush ash from my thighs. “And what’s that, freak-boy?” I hate the fact that he’s just used my full name, and I shoot Rain a how dare you tell him that glance.

Rain shrugs and looks between us, like he’s seeing us both for the first time.

“Magic.” Caleb’s voice growls in the still room.

“Okay, I listened to your cute little story, now you listen to mine.” I lean forward, and speak slow, each word separate and clear as a bell chime. “I don’t believe in that shit.” I don’t. I don’t. I don’t.

He stares at me for so long that I break out in a cold sweat. He’s looking right into me, pulling out every dark secret I’ve kept inside. He opens his mouth, and I start talking before he can.

“I’ve never believed in magic and guardian angels and…and bloody crystals and all that crap. You can ask Rain, that whole thing is more Lily’s vibe. It’s a hoax, a crock—”

“You saw me,” he says, breaking the flow. “That night in the Red Room, weaving magic. I know you did, you watched my hands all night.”

“Bull.” That damned itch is under my skin, and I shove my hands under my armpits so that I won’t start scratching. My mother flickers, hands dancing, magic flowing gold from her fingertips. I blink. And it’s gone.

“Do you know what I was doing?”

Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear and I shake my head.

“I was using a charm to bind Rain to me.”

“What?” I blurt out.

Rain scrambles to his feet and goes to me, watching Caleb from over my shoulder. His heart is hammering against my back. I can feel it, almost in time with mine.

“Irene.” Caleb sighs, and holds his head in his hands for a moment before he looks back up at me. “You have no idea how it pains me to say this, but I needed you, and the only way I could see of convincing you was to use your—” He pauses, “was to use Rain. I thought if I bound him to me, you would be forced to help.”

It’s not an apology.

“Help you with what?” I spit the words out.

“Help save me.” Caleb grins, flashing his long teeth in the yellow light. “Help save yourself.”

 

—

 

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Till Wednesday!

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Charm 8/22

Dreams

Dale’s in the car with my dad, sitting in the passenger seat and staring blankly out the side window. I clamber into the back of the dark grey Audi and the smell of new car leather and wintergreen air freshener envelops me. My brother looks back over the car seat at me and frowns when I explain that Rain is missing.

My dad has this grim expression that he only gets when he’s really upset. He has a bit of a soft spot for Rain. “Do you know where he is?” he asks. Nothing about the Beetle.

“Possibly. He’s in a squat with some guy.” I hope.

My father’s reflection in the rear view mirror thins his mouth. Luckily Dad doesn’t ask me why I left Rain alone with some guy in a squat, just drives me back to my flat. “You’re going to go get him,” he says. It’s not an order, he just knows us. Me. “Do you want me to come with you?” he asks as he pulls up at the small apartment block.

My dad has a throw ’em in the deep end and see if they swim policy with us, so him offering to help means he’s really worried. I shake my head. “I’ll be cool. Thanks though.”

He doesn’t pull off, just stares at me, frowning as he thinks. I can practically see the inner battle he’s having. Since Mom died he’s brought us up to be independent and take care of ourselves, but he’s also not overly keen on anything really bad happening to us. “Take Dale with,” he says.

Dale hops out the car. I’m outvoted before I get a chance to say anything.

We go upstairs to get the keys for the Beetle, which is still parked in the visitors’ parking. There’s another nasty note under the wiper. I throw this one on back seat as we climb in.

“You still need to get Mom’s stuff,” Dale says.

“Not now.”

“Yeah.” He shrugs. “Just saying.”

I ignore him and try to remember where it is exactly Caleb’s squat was. Somewhere out past Edenvale, toward Germiston. The East Rand is not an area I’m overly familiar with, but Dale plays navigator and hauls out my dad’s ancient out-of-date map book. Luckily, I don’t get lost. My hands are sweaty on the steering wheel, but I drive with determination, ticking off landmarks in my head. I might have driven this route drunk as a skunk but I’m sweat-cold and sober now, and I recall every bush and house with a terrible frightened clarity.

There’s the BP garage, there’s the mine dump, the bridge.

Dale has his window rolled down and the map book open on his lap. He never speaks when he’s in a car, just drifts off to a place in his head, or sleeps.

I swing left, down a road littered with old houses, their windows boarded. Gardens are tangled and overgrown. Banana trees drop tiny rotten fruit onto the cracked tar paving. Bougainvillea wind up the telephone poles, spraying paper petals like red scabs. Funny that it looks more menacing in the daylight. Empty Amasi cartons, crisp packets, silver pie tins, and plastic bags gather in drifts under the trees, caught in the long brown grass and the blackjacks. Morning glories seem to be the only thing flourishing in the heat, their trumpet flowers a splash of pink and purple against the Vibracrete walls. We pass a woman balancing a huge sack of flour on her head. Even though this back road feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere, it’s crowded with people walking.

There it is. About five hundred meters around the corner from an abandoned petrol station. The finned, horned low-rider sits in the driveway. Cold sweat beads my forehead as the car judders to a stop.

“This the right place?” Dale asks, a note of concern under his usual lazy tones.

My head nods, mechanically, like someone else pulls the strings.

“Right.” Dale gets out and slams his door shut and walks around to my side. He’s stocky and wiry at the same time, and I feel a little safer knowing that he’s got my back. Something silver glitters in his palm.

“What the hell is that?”

“A butterfly knife. Check this.” He flicks it around a few times, snapping it open and closed.

“For god’s sake, put it away,” I hiss. Does he think this is a rerun of some dodgy kung fu movie?

Dale scowls, but slips the offending item into his pocket and we walk together up to the front door. It looks rotten and lonely like an old man’s last tooth. The door is unlocked, and I push it open to reveal a dusty unlit front hall. There’s a passage, and if I remember correctly, Caleb was using the room on the last door to the right. The house is ominously silent. Motes swirl in the thin slats of light coming from the boarded windows.

The floor is uncovered concrete, rough, with traces of under-felt still here and there. We walk down the passage, footfalls silent. The door to Caleb’s room is closed. I’m still deciding whether to knock or just barge in when the door swings open.

Dale stumbles back in shock and I’m frozen in place, my hand half raised in a loose fist.

Caleb smirks. Behind him, Rain is getting dressed, pulling on his tattered jersey. “Shit,” Rain says when he sees me. “I forgot to phone.”

“I’ll kill you.” My voice is back. “Your mother called me at work, freaking out.”

“About me?” He looks happily surprised as he slides one arm around Caleb’s waist and peers out from behind him.

Anger makes me nasty. “Well, no. She was somewhat more concerned that you’d stolen her cash.”

His face falls, and I feel like a shit. “So why are you here then? Come to take me back?”

“I was—” Worried. Can’t really say that in front of Caleb. He catches my eyes though, and shows me his teeth. Yeah, we understand each other. The bastard.

Now that I’m no longer terrified, I take a good look at Rain. He seems happy, calm. Even the thing about Lily hasn’t really upset him. It’s not quite normal, him taking it so easily. I squint, hoping to pick up some trace of the golden magic I saw at the Red Room, some proof that this happiness is unnatural. Nothing. Actually, he just looks well-shagged.

Dammit.

“So everything’s okay?” Dale says. “Rain?”

“Huh? Yeah.” He shuffles.

“Okay. Well, we might as well give you a lift back then.”

“Oh,” says Rain. “I’m not going back.”

“You’re crazy,” I say. “Rain, you don’t even know this guy.” I glance at Caleb. “No offence.” Which is a lie, of course. “You can’t just stay here, I mean, there’s not even a working toilet.”

Rain pales, holds Caleb tighter. “Don’t tell me what I can or can’t do. Jesus, Irene, you sound like Lily.”

God, he always knows the worst things to say to me. “Fuck you.”

Rain seems to remember last night with a sudden shock, because he hangs his head and shifts so that he’s hidden behind Caleb. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “I am staying though.”

“So what do I tell her?” I’ve lost him. Unexpectedly.

“Anything you want.”

It was supposed to be me who saved Rain.

#

Without Rain, I’m lost.

The painting of Caleb stares at me.

It’s been two weeks since I left Rain in the squat. Two weeks of filling my time with work and the painting and now it’s finally complete. It’s eerily accurate, and the only thing that stops me from destroying it is the simple fact that its the best thing I’ve ever done.

Making good art is painful. It sucks you up. I can feel how I’ve dried up inside, like a prune or a raisin, withered before my time. It makes me feel old and invisible. The tip of my brush kisses the canvas, adds a final fleck of Windsor blue to the shadows of Caleb’s face. The painting is life-size and it looks as if he’s searching for something, staring across the frozen wastes of his empty canvas. There should be another, a diptych. If I don’t paint it, then this one will be eternally unfinished. All the reasons I give myself not to do this second painting are squashed by the thought that this just might be the only way that I can keep a piece of Rain for myself. That second canvas is a taunt, and a promise of benediction. I need to do it.

Mind made up, I throw myself into painting so that I won’t think. Which never actually works because good art dredges up all the things that lurk at the bottom of your soul—the terrible pale deep water fish—and dissecting them. It’s one of the reasons I’ve never painted Rain before. It felt stupid, like tearing out a chunk of my own misery and putting it up for everyone to look at. I just couldn’t do it; say, “this is me, this is how I see you.” That kind of love-sick shit is for bad movies. And now I’m doing it anyway, even though there’s no-one left to see. It will be the most difficult thing I’ve ever attempted, catching Rain in oil, but I have to at least try. I work on a rough sketch to plan Rain’s portrait. I’ve finally gotten the planes and angles of Rain’s face right when my phone rings.

It’s Dale. “Dad wants you to come over for a braai.”

“What? Has the old man finally lost it?” I step back from the painting as I talk. Even with just the rough outline down, it’s easy to see who I’m drawing. I’m never letting Rain see this. Not in a million years, so help me god.

“Nah, He’s on some family bonding mission.”

I sigh. It won’t be too bad; I’ll get out of my flat, and I’ll get a decent meal. I’ll escape the two people I want to run from but can’t. “Cool. I’ll be there in a few.”

I drive through to Norwood, and Dale opens the door even as I pull the Beetle into the driveway. He’s wearing the skankiest trousers I have ever seen, and he’s carrying a new Zildjan cymbal in the one hand. He tings it against the wall.

“Hi.” I slip past him into the passage way, and Dale follows me as I duck into his room. Posters of bands even I’ve never heard of leer down at me from the wall. A tree just beyond the window sill flutters its narrow leaves in the breeze. I flop down on the unmade bed and Dale drops down next to me. He flicks one finger along the brass of the cymbal.

A brand new drum kit has pride of place in the one corner, stuffed with pillows. Of the old, much-battered kit he started on, there’s no sign. “Dad must love this hobby of yours,” I say. “Where is he?”

“Out back, playing with fire. Come on, old man’s waiting.”

My dad has a little coal braai set up in the small back garden, in the space he can eke out between the plants

Dale, whose secret passion is horticulture, is responsible for the mini rain-forest exploding from pots and well-mulched beds. His friends probably don’t know about the gardening habit, although I remember when I still lived here, how he’d creep out early in the morning to water and fertilize them. Of course, he’s managed to sneak a few ragged-leafed dagga plants into the mix. My dad just turns a blind eye.

“Looking good,” I say. There’s a delicious monster under a bottlebrush that looks ready to eat someone. We have to fight our way past the huge leaves in order to reach the braai area. Someone, presumably my dad, started the fire earlier, and the flames have burnt down to coal and ash. The air above the grill is shimmery with heat.

There’s beer to drink while the meat sizzles on the grill. The dry taste of Windhoek complements the smoky flavour rising on the air. Fat sizzles, making the coals spit. I smoke and stare at nothing. Fleetwood Mac plays on the lounge stereo, Stevie Nicks singing about loss. My mom used to love this album; she played it non-stop. Never Dad though. He never played this. I feel sad and small inside, thinking about how much he must miss her.

“Dad?”

He looks up from brushing more marinade on the chicken, one eyebrow raised.

“You remember Mom.” It’s a stupid start, and I know it. Of course he remembers Mom. He did marry her, after all. “I mean, really remember her, because I don’t—” Liar.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

“What’s this about?”

I clasp my hands together in my lap. “Did she, was she—” I breathe deep, smell the smoky comfort of the braai. “Was she okay? I mean, did she ever, you know….” Was she okay? Seriously, Irene, she killed herself, she was not okay, She was as far from fucking okay as it is possible to get.

Wow, this is not going to go well, I can already see it in his face. I blurt out the last part. “Did she ever see things that weren’t there?”

“Little green men?” he says, and his tone is jovial, but his eyes aren’t.

“No, I mean—never mind. It was nothing. I’m being stupid.”

“Ah.” My dad turns his attention back to the collection of meat sizzling on the grill. “Heard from Rain?” he asks as he flips the boerewors over.

I shake my head.

“Hmm.” He changes the subject. “How’s your art coming along?”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?”

“Just fine.”

There’s silence, broken only by the spit of dripping fat and the rustle of mousebirds in the loquat tree.

“I’ll get Dale to pack those boxes in the car for you,” he says and perhaps he does know something about my mother that I don’t understand. After all, there are things in those boxes I want to see. I’ve been putting it off for as long as I can, trying not to think about my her or the stories she would tell me when I was little. Stories about people who stole magic.

My mother was small and wild, with her hair loose, fey-tangled. She had sloe-dark eyes and a wide, frowning mouth. Thick eyebrows accentuated the intensity of her gaze. She used to read to me from her special book, and every time she opened it, it told a new story. As a child I thought that was normal.

I need to find that book, to see if what I remember is real.

#

The afternoon darkens as the clouds gather, and my dad burns the meat. Thunder rumbles in the distance, and lightning flickers across the blue-black sky. “It’s going to rain,” my dad says, blinking up at the sky. “I’ll give Dale a hand with those boxes and give you a lift home.” His way of saying: I want the car back. Ah well, it was good to have, but at least this way I won’t be worrying about it getting stolen or smashed.

“Sure. Mind if I drive though?” My dad has this habit of driving at seventy no matter what the speed limit is—completely freaks me out.

With the back of the Beetle loaded down with my mother’s stuff we rattle down the road, and the first rain drops spatter the dust on the windscreen. The lone wiper screeches. It doesn’t really wipe the rain away, only makes a pie-shaped smear that’s just barely clear enough to see through. Although it’s not much more than a ten minute drive to my flat, the rain is getting heavier, and I have to go slow. The Beetle is a death trap in rain and wind, as my father has said for as long as I can remember.

Something flashes across my line of vision, a large dark shape like a leaping buck. I slam the brakes and jerk forward in my seat, winded by the unyielding nylon strap of my seat belt. It feels like a horse kicked my chest.

It’s hard to make out much in the slanting rain, but there’s a hunch-backed shape, too familiar for comfort. The outline of the wings is obvious. God—I’ve had maybe two beers the whole afternoon, not enough to blame this on.

“I thought I paid for driving lessons,” my dad says.

“Did you see that?”

“Hmm?” My dad peers through the rain-pebbled windows, as if he can see anything through the sluicing water. “See what?”

“Nothing,” I say. “Someone’s dog is loose, or something.” I take a long route back home, driving through a network of streets until I’m sure I’ve lost the thing. There is no thing. I tell myself this, and in my head, my mother smiles at me, her face hard with some knowledge I don’t have, her hands full of stories. I need to exorcise her from my life. Sort out her things, keep what I want, burn the rest. I press my hand to the little hidden charm. That too. I’m driving myself mad.

My dad walks me up to my flat, carrying boxes, then leaves. I watch the yellow car pull away through the grey sheets of rain. The road is empty, not a soul in sight. My heart is hammering against my ribs and I’m wired.

There’s no way I’m going to be able to sleep now, so I work on stretching Rain’s canvas instead, and drink a thousand cups of coffee while I wait for the coats of acrylic to dry. The wind tears through the treetops, and I keep seeing things out of the corner of my eyes, things that turn out to be nothing more than the waving shadows of branches. It’s almost midnight before I start sketching. Bad to work under electric light, I know, but I have this feeling that I won’t sleep unless I’ve at least managed to get the basic shape of him down. Give Caleb something else to look at while I sleep. Between the painting and the boxes, I’ve penned myself in. There’s a saying about being caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. I’m not sure which is which. Is my mother the devil? Caleb? Rain.

Maybe I’m the devil.

In the end, I scrub out the sketch again and again, washing the blue oil paint away with turps. The room stinks, giving me a headache, and finally I crawl into bed half-high on fumes. On the empty canvas there’s just a pale stain of blue where Rain’s face has been obliterated, over and over.

I toss under the covers, waiting for sleep to come. I keep thinking about that thing in the road. The wings on its back. Finally, I sit up and drop my head into my hands. “Irene,” I tell myself “Please stop it.” I throw the covers off and pad across the industrial grey carpet. This is what it’s all about anyway. Not stupid things I imagine seeing, but about facing my other and her life, and her death. My mother’s boxes are sealed with that brown tape that basically takes the strength of seven bulls and a very sharp knife to get through but I’ve nothing better to do with my time—it’s start sorting through this lot or lie down and dream about satanic things hunting me.

The tape finally gives. Inside are a stack of ancient children’s encyclopaedias that I last looked at it when I was about five. Damn. My dad packed everything. I don’t even know where I’m going to put all this crap.

Burn it.

Under the encyclopaedias is a small book that I haven’t seen for a very long time. An invisible spark jumps from the cover to my fingers as I brush it, and I swallow hard before pulling it out of the box, dust falling from its edges. Cold races into my belly and I lean back on my heels, the leather-bound book in my hands. This is what I wanted to find.

It’s filled with fairy tales, I know. Old ones, full of blood and mayhem and people getting what they deserve. I flick the book open to the first illustration plate. It’s the Pied Piper. Red and yellow blur under my fingers and I slam the book closed. I hold it against my chest for a moment. Part of me wants to just throw it back in the box and never look at it again. Instead, I slip it into my shoulder bag. This can wait for morning, I’m going to sleep.

I’ll take bad dreams over bad memories any day.

 

—

previous/next

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Till Wednesday!

* You can buy the complete book at smashwords, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or kobo. *

Charm 7/22

Hit So Hard

Caleb’s place turns out to be a room in an empty squat with no running water. The house is surprisingly okay despite that. He has a gas ring to cook on, and Caleb says he gets water from the petrol station. There’s a small genny out back that can provide light for a few hours, but with the price of petrol what it is, Caleb’s content to run off gas and use candles.

Not a way I’d choose to live, really, but whatever floats his boat. We drink Crackling from a two litre bottle, passing around the sour fizz, getting steadily drunker. There’s no wine in the world that compares with Crackling for sheer nastiness. I’m pretty sure that if there’s a hell, this is the drink they’re serving to the unfortunate dead. I manage to take a few sips from my enamel mug of piss-flavoured piss, then decide that life is not worth living if this is what I am reduced to drinking. I get myself water from one of the large blue cannisters in the corner, and drink that instead. It’s flat and plastic-tinged, but still better than cheap “wine”.

Caleb has chucked his hat on a neatly made-up camper bed, and we’re sitting on the floor. Rain is almost in Caleb’s lap, he’s sitting so close. It has never taken Rain long to get where he wants to be. The reality of my rejection is rubbed in my face. But it’s not rejection, despite everything. I knew it was always going to be like this.

I should sober up, get a life, get a better job, get a better obsession. “Coffee?” I ask Caleb.

He shows me where to find his little tin of Ricoffy and his powdered creamer. It’s almost as bad as drinking the Crackling, I think, but with the added benefit of sobriety. At least, I think that’s a benefit. I’m not sure it really is. Caleb has a little gas cylinder and I use that, boiling the water up in a battered old kettle. A more-drawn out process than I could ever believe possible.. I put out the mugs. There are only two. Caleb and Rain will have to share. I take my mug and sip at it before curling my lip in disgust. The coffee tastes bitter, sour. It tastes like all the things I can’t have.

When I look up again, Caleb has tipped Rain’s head back, and they’re kissing. I’m fascinated by their tongues. Like a ghost, I sit with my knees curled to my face and watch them, watch their fingers and mouths, while I slowly become more invisible, my gross coffee cooling between my palms. Their coffee sits abandoned on the floor.

Time passes—slow or fast, who knows. I drop my forehead to my knees. There are sounds outside, things crawling through the bushes and the grass. I can hear them like little flickers on the edges of my imaginations skin sliding on skin, voices speaking in sibilant whispers.

If I concentrate, I can even hear what they’re saying. “Caleb,” they whisper. “We found you.”

I shake my head, willing clarity back. The feeling fades a little, and the voices with it. There’s no point in staying here and letting myself fall deeper into a mire of self-pity. “I going to have to leave pretty soon,” I tell Rain. Opening shift tomorrow, and although Sundays are kinda slow and quiet, I still need to actually get to work on time and in a reasonable state. Well, as reasonable as can be expected. My manager’s a prick—like all managers—but we’ve had a few drinks after work before. Also I know enough dirt on him that hopefully he won’t just fire me. After all, I don’t actually do lines of coke in the back office. “So you need to break it up a little.”

“Oh.” Rain looks at Caleb, then smiles uncertainly back at me. “I think I’m just going to crash here.”

Irritation bites through my cotton wool shield. “I thought you were going to stay at my place?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I mean, at least it’s not Lily’s, right?” Like that makes it okay.

I glance at Caleb, who’s leaned back against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. A slow smile spreading like he’s the Cheshire cat and he’s just been given all the cream in Wonderland.

Irrational anger hits, but I’m too tired to even argue. Without saying anything, I grab my bag and walk to the front door. I’m digging through the mess and junk for the car keys when I hear Rain behind me in the passage. Just him, unless Caleb is a ghost.

“You’re pissed with me?”

Dammit. Yes. No. I don’t know. Pissed with him, with Caleb. With myself and all the stupid shit that’s happening around me. I shrug.

“Reenie.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be mad. I’ll be fine.”

Except that right now, I don’t really care about him being fine, I care about me, about being thrown away like a used tissue. I love Rain, but I know he’ll never love me back the way I want him to, and that’s the part that hurts more than I can possibly say. I can cut my hair, I can dress in jeans and tee shirts and trainers, I can be Rain’s best friend. But I’ll never be the one he looks at. What’s worse is knowing that as blind as Rain is to everything, Caleb isn’t, and he saw the jealousy inside me, and he grinned at me because he’d won.

All the night’s scattered moments of feeling pushed-aside are roiling together inside me, making my face hot and sweaty. It’s rage, but it’s mixed with salt-angry tears and a yawning pit of hopelessness. I will not blink and I will not scream. And if I don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to do both. I grab Rain’s wrist and pull him with me as I lurch for the door.

“What the fuck, Reen?” he says.

“You are not staying here. God only knows what could happen to you here with the walking corpse, but I’m not leaving you here to find out.”

“Christ!” He pulls out of my grip, and I feel my nails scrape skin. “What is wrong with you? I mean, do you think you’re my mother? That I can’t cope if you’re not there watching over me like I’m a bloody child?”

Well, yes. “I know you can’t cope,” I spit, jealousy making me all acid and nasty.

He cradles his wrist against his chest, and there are fine red lines beading on the white skin. “Fuck you.”

“Great, Rain—do whatever you like, see if I care if the next time I see you it’s in a psych ward because this whole thing turns into a repeat of Hillbrow.”

And I’ve crossed the line. I know it, even as the words tumble out of my mouth, and Rain goes so white he’s practically grey. I expect him to start crying. Instead, he lunges forward and punches me. He’s not much of a fighter, but the blow catches me on my cheekbone, and it hurts. A part of me is snarling that at least he’ll have hurt himself worse—I don’t think Rain’s thrown a punch in his life.

“Irene.” He’s gone blank and still, his arms crossed close against his chest like he’s restraining himself. “Jesus, Irene, I’m sorry.”

It’s not the apology I wanted. I fumble with Caleb’s front door and lurch out into the night. Cool air strokes my skin, making me shiver. The car looks far away—a yellow pustule on the skin of the road—and I start walking toward it. Around me, small animals rustle in the undergrowth on the side of the driveway, stirring a sewer stink of sulphur and shit.

Rain follows me, his soles crunching on the gravel.

“Call me tomorrow.” I pull the door open with too much force, not wanting to turn back and look at him. The car door bounces on the abused hinges, and the drive home alone looms before me. I should probably also just crash, tell Caleb that I can’t drive. But I also don’t want to see them, spit-sticky. Don’t want to walk back in there and see Rain twining himself around Caleb like a stray cat begging for food. “Get your decrepit new boyfriend back there—”

‘He’s not my—” Rain begins but I just keep talking over him, louder and louder.

“Your boyfriend to take you home, and give me a call when you’re back.”

That stops him. “What, at work?” He knows I’m not allowed personal calls. It’s this big thing at my job, like getting a personal call is on par with spitting in the food or something. I don’t know, it’s stupid, but that’s what it’s like when you work for stupid people. And sure, I’ll get a warning if he does call me, but right now, I don’t care. I hate him, but I still need to be sure he’s okay. “Yeah.” At least I manage to get my seatbelt on, and remember to switch on the lights “I mean it,” I say over the grumbling chatter of the engine. “Call me, you prick.”

As I reverse, I glance to the front to see Rain outlined in the Beetle’s brights.

He raises one hand in farewell.

I grit my teeth and drive off. If I just aim between the lines, I’ll be fine. My cheek aches, and when I’ve left the house far behind me, I let myself cry.

#

I do manage to get back home in one piece, even if a few trucks try to take me out on the N12. I barely know the area Caleb lives in and I had to rely on a numb brain to keep track of all the landmarks. I trudge up the stairs, each step an exercise in endurance. There’s a note on my front door, held in place with sticky tape on the corners. “No,” I say. I cannot deal with more crap right now, but l rip it off anyway and read the message bitching about me using the visitors’ parking.

“Screw you,” I say to the note. Since there’s nowhere else for me to park the Beetle, I just crumple the note and shove it in my pocket. It’s not like I can hang on to the car forever anyway. At some point my dad is going to want it back. In fact I’m surprised he hasn’t already called and crapped on me from a dizzy height for using it. He must be saving up all his rage for a spectacular Kerry-sized meltdown.

My apartment feels even more cramped than usual, thanks to picture-Caleb glaring down at me from across the room. I flip him the bird. Stupid painting. I don’t even know what possessed me to paint it in the first place.

Once I’ve shucked my clothes, slapped steroid cream on everything, and crawled into bed, I press the ache of my face into the soft cotton pillow case. The faint ticking of my bedside alarm clock keeps me from sleeping. That, and the fact that all I can do is worry about Rain. I’ve never just left him like that, never. It goes against everything in our friendship: Rain fucks up; I rescue him. What I don’t do is leave him at some weirdo’s house, especially when I’m pretty sure that there’s something very wrong with said weirdo. People do not get hit by taxis and then wander about the next day like nothing bloody happened. And apparently I have finally flipped the lid, because now I’m convinced. That was him dead on the road. My stomach starts doing a rumba, and my eyes are burning up in my sockets

I’m wrapped in a fuzzy mess of emotions that aren’t mine. Despite all the things I could blame this on—the drinks, the long night, my stupid emotions—I’m finally certain that things are not what that they seem, and that Caleb is, in some incredible way, magical. Maybe he’s magicked me, the same way he charmed Rain. I close my eyes and take several deep breaths before I open them again.

“Go to sleep,” I say to the empty room. “And talking to yourself is a sure sign that you’re losing it, Irene.” I glance at my bedside clock even though I don’t need it to tell me that it is already morning. The sun is shining through my cheap curtains, and the sparrows are already screeching at each other. Five am. Wonderful. and I have to be on shift by nine. I groan.

The next thing I know the alarm is buzzing in my ear and I’m trying to put my groggy thoughts together. I shower and dress in a daze. I don’t trust myself to drive my dad’s car feeling the way I do so I call Memory for a lift, and just make it downstairs just in time to catch his banged-up Golf.

“You, girl, look like shit,” he informs me.

I manage a grunt in response. Memory is not stranger to a long night out, but somehow he’s been blessed with remarkable recuperative abilities. Maybe he’s some kind of Uber man with a secret identity who goes around saving people.

“You need to learn to pace yourself, ne,” he says, as my head spins. “Line your stomach with milk before you drink.”

I do not want to think about milk or stomach linings right now. Memory is obviously not a hero, more like some kind of arch villain who has discovered my secret weakness.

Work is a freaking mess. My hands have the wobbles, and I drop more glasses than I can count. Memory keeps bringing back my drinks orders wrong. Jeez, Irene, get a grip. I pause to bow my head, try centre myself. I need a god-damn cigarette.

“This was meant to be a margarita.” Memory slams a glass of what looks like curdled dead baby chick on the counter.

“Er.” I stare at it. “What the hell?” I made the damn thing, and I’ll be buggered if I can tell what it is. I think my cheek is starting to bruise, because Memory and the others keep giving me funny looks, although no one actually says anything. David the manager is staring at me, like he’s about to come and tell me to leave early, and then thinks better of it.

“I have no idea. Come on, Irene, get it together.” Memory’s long face goes even longer, and he scrunches up his brow. “If this is something to do with that idiot not-boyfriend of yours, don’t tell me, girl. You know my thoughts.”

I groan. “I’m not saying anything.”

“You need a new obsession,” he says. “Are you going to make this again?” He taps at the glass.

“Yeah.” I haul out the tequila. “I need a new life. Seriously.”

“You said it.” He taps a sweating can of coke on his tray with a wrapped straw. “Faster. Some of us have actual jobs to do.”

“Serving the maggots.”

He snorts. “The maggots pay for my studies—that whole future plans thing I have.”

“Gah.” I shove the completed drink at him. “Go.” Thing is, he’s right. Memory knows what he wants out of life, and if he has to work a crappy job to get it, he will. His mother works as cleaner, and she made damn sure he never messed about and wasted his time. I mean, I don’t even know if his dad is even around. Look at me—rich daddy, wasted life.

Wasted heart.

Except knowing that doesn’t make me stop worrying about Rain.

#

“Irene.” My manager glares at me from the office door. “There’s a call for you. Make it snappy.”

My heart unclenches, I’ve been in a state all day. I can’t believe the little bastard waited for the late rush to phone me. I think of a million ways to kak Rain out, but in reality, I’m just glad he’s actually bothered to call.

“Thanks.” I take the phone from David, wait until he backs out the office and then lift it to my ear. “You are so dead,” I say.

“Irene?”

Lily.

I can’t breathe. Please. Please don’t be phoning me to tell me that they found Rain’s body in a ditch somewhere. I close my eyes. If Caleb’s hurt him, I’ll track that son of a bitch down to the very ends of the earth and feed him his own liver. My hand clenches on the phone line, my fingers twisting in the cord.

“Irene, Rain’s run away, he’s missing.” She doesn’t sound scared, more like she’s angry, waiting for me to confess that I whisked him off into the night and stole him away from her. Jesus, Lily. He’s not twelve.

“I—I don’t know anything. We went out last night, but I dropped him off at home.” It’s easy to lie to Lily, but under that calm bit of misdirection, my heart is pumping cold blood, and I’m feeling dizzy and scared.

The line crackles, but Lily doesn’t speak.

“Lily?”

“He stole from me. He’s run away.” Her voice is petulant—she’s a child, focusing only on how things affect her.

I still remember when my dad found Rain in a Hillbrow flat, dragged him out of there, barely coherent. Neither of them have ever told me what happened to him, and I have never been able to make myself ask. Whatever it was, it broke him, it made him ugly on the inside.

But I also remember how happy Lily was because now Rain had a real problem, and she could play at being the concerned mother. I grit my teeth and make myself speak to her. “Call the police?” I offer, although inside I’m thinking god, call the hospitals, the morgues. Why hasn’t he phoned, why isn’t he home—surely Caleb could have given him a lift back already?

My knees are shaking and I collapse bonelessly into the manager’s chair. Caleb’s face flashes in my head, his long fingers on Rain’s arm, his cynical smile. The coldness of him, the deadness in his eyes, the way his fingers drew a net of gold around my best friend. I’m an idiot. I knew better than to leave Rain with that bastard. I was being a jealous little prick and I left him there because of it. If anything has happened to him, it will be my fault.

“Can you get off the bloody phone, we have customers out here—” David peers in. “Irene?” He steps into the little office. “Irene, are you okay?”

I think I nod, but my face feels numb. Even the dull ache of my cheek has faded away. He’s dead, he’s been raped and tortured and…god knows what else. I don’t want to think about it. A hand on my shoulder makes me startle.

“I think you should go home,” Dave says. “You look like you’re about to vomit.” Probably doesn’t want me upsetting the customers. Or worse, throwing up on them.

“Uh.” My brain swims groggily. The Beetle, I didn’t drive it in today. “I need to catch a lift with Memory.”

“Call your dad, have him come pick you up.”

Okay, I must really look terrible, because not only am I being sent home, I’m allowed to dial out on the office phone. My fingers hit the right buttons, but I’m barely aware of talking to my dad, asking him to come fetch me. I think I’ve crashed. Rain is probably fine, he could be sleeping it off, tangled in the indigo blankets on that little camper bed.

Yes. That’s it. He’s fine. Like all things in my life, if I just tell myself something often enough, it will be true. He’s fine. I think I’m mumbling it aloud, because Dave raises one eyebrow and backs out the office. “You sit tight,” he says. “I’ll give you a shout when your lift gets here.”

I wait for my dad, my hands pressed between my knees, and do my best to will the itch back down.

 

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Till Wednesday!

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First Drafting

 

First drafting.

The place where I give up.

I am so much better at taking an existing first draft and threading new bits in and rearranging and fixing and rewriting, than I am at getting that first draft down.

And I pretty much always stop at 30k. I have A LOT of books that have hit thirty thousand words and are waiting patiently for me to return to them some time this century. Because, for me, making up those first weird and wobbly bits is the most unsatisfying and difficult. It is the part where it feels the least like something worthwhile or book-like. It feels, in short, like a mess.

The problem with giving up before the first draft is done is that I am essentially quitting before I’ve even started. A first draft isn’t writing a book any more than an artist’s preparatory sketches and studies are the final painting hung in a gallery.

A first draft is not the finished product, and expecting it to look like one is another step on the downward stairs to the cold and lonely cellar of self-rejection.

Basically, don’t let your first draft overwhelm you. This is not the place for perfection.