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a mouth that seemed to hold a neat hook of scorn in its corner.
“You and I have always been very simpatico like that,” Angelina said. Jagvi laughed. That old teenage thrill ran down Angelina’s back; she was used to ignoring it by now. She didn’t want to impress Jagvi anymore, but sometimes her body forgot.
For the first time, she understood the concept of a swoon, as though her consciousness, her sense of sanity, might shake its head and make for the exit. That’s enough for me, folks.
At first Angelina and Patrick had both called her The Dog, and then as allegiances formed, she became Your Dog (Patrick’s preferred usage) or My Dog (Angelina’s).
Deep down Patrick was as conservative as the others, wanted a wife and a household and bright-eyed kids to call him Papa. But he’d had a fascination with nonconformity since he was a kid, and a sympathy for female outcasts that he’d never been able to shake.
or the lone woman from the city acquiesced when Angelina suggested a game of whose hand is bigger, raising her palm to press it flat against Angelina’s.
Instinct was the right word. Her desires felt obvious and natural and feral, as though all the straight people in her life were tamed and housebroken creatures and Angelina alone prowled through her town, wild and hunting.
She’d wanted to know more about Jagvi’s anger; she couldn’t imagine living like that, hidden inside a cold high tower of fury.
had reached the level of coolness that a sixteen-year-old confuses with invulnerability.
Almost worse than all of it was the expression on Jagvi’s face, hot and devoted, so taut with desire it was nearly angry, and the way that expression warped into shock and shame when she turned her head and saw Angelina.
“Sorry,” Angelina repeated. “I had a bad dream last night, it’s put me in a mood.” Gemma’s expression softened. “Were you smoking Ricky’s hash? Because last time he gave me some, I thought I saw a gnome in my parents’ kitchen and started screaming but it turned out just to be my gramps.”
Nothing spoke and nothing tried to touch her. Why do I even assume it’s gonna do that, she wondered. Because I Can Speak. Because I Have Hands. Sheer terror pulsed through her; it hurt, her limbs flaring with heat and chest seizing with panic. Angelina howled, and the thing behind her snatched her voice out of the air before it could get far.
And while she worked in a humming, appreciative crowd, the thing rummaged through her head. Flickering images paired with the sensation of moist hands digging deep into her cranium, hands that wouldn’t stay solid and kept dripping, like wax or sweat sliding down folds of gray matter, making her stomach drop and heave. The glass of whisky she clutched steadied her a little, made her able to bear what it was doing to her, and bear it, the thing said, she must.
Oh Hey, What’s This? “Fuck off,” Angelina said. “That’s private.” More Private Than Anything Else? Interesting. In Angelina’s memory, Jagvi moved against the girl on the bed in vivid color. Fascinating! What A Betrayal.
Her mind reeled with alcohol and cruelty, and she couldn’t think how to fight it off. She hoped she was drunk enough that it wouldn’t hurt too bad, whenever the thing finally grew bored and moved on to its true purpose. She hoped the liquor would muffle her terror as the thing tore into her abdomen like it had torn through her brain.
Jagvi watched Angelina lick the foam off her fingers, lips parted with disgust.
are we sure this is disgust. are we sure
Before Angelina was Cadenze’s endless blue sky, ready to fold itself around some new horror.
Terror felt close, so close Angelina could reach out and stroke it.
Insults didn’t sink in, not when Angelina did not belong to herself. Pain did not sink in either. She knew her ankle hurt badly, but her brain could not make the knowledge anything real. It was like reading about pain in a book. She knew she was afraid, but the thing would not let her scream.
accepted visitors, accepted gifts, accepted favors, like a hungry black hole had set up shop on Big Joe. She was not the golden girl but something that took and took. Her family’s care began to feel shameful, like she was tricking them.
Angelina did not have to relax: the fear lapped around her ankles, climbed higher, the ocean roar of terror not so far off now, but she stayed loose all through her spine. She knew now that tension made no difference, except that maybe it hurt a little more when it climbed in.
her trembling, bloodstained hands jerking like trapped birds in her lap.
On the ceiling, the mold shifted into a design half-decipherable: G O. “Go where?” Angelina said, and pointed. Jagvi’s voice dropped low. “Get out? Is that what it—” But the mold wasn’t done. Curling, languorous letters. G O O D G “I’m feeling targeted,” Angelina said. G O O D G I R L, said the mold on the ceiling. “Let’s try another room,” Jagvi said.
and second, they don’t like you because they think you’re an associate of the devil, not because you’re a lesbian. This time, anyway.
A few summers ago she’d heard a regular describe a gay tourist as “one of Angelina Sicco’s lot,” and maybe that taunt was also a gift, handing Angelina possession of the queer population in all the queer places she’d worked to carve here, in her home.
not like the weeks right after the cave, when Jagvi’s arm was still in a cast and Angelina was a seething delight and Patrick waited until they were out of his sister’s earshot to say, “I watched her try to eat you.”
Angel moved a little differently now, swarming across the ground like she had more legs than she should, though when Jagvi looked down it was just the same two long ones with the neat curve of ankle that fit perfectly into Jagvi’s palm. But her grin was the same, cocksure and bratty as she crossed the distance between them and dropped herself into Jagvi’s lap.
Those eyes were like deep chasms into the earth, something hungry and mad living there, something that wanted to eat Jagvi up. Frightening, sure, but nothing new; Angelina had looked at her like that for years.
