Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight) (11 page)

“Fuck,” she said abruptly.  “Some
of these stories outright conflict with each other.  Folklore makes me want to
rip my hair out.  It always has some kernel of truth, but it’s heavily laden
with red herrings and distracting details...”

Sandy kept reading a little
longer.  Then she looked at her hand.  “My ring.  It’s made of iron.  Why would
he...?”

“What?  Tell us!”

“It says here,” she said,
returning to the book, “that fairies are weak to ‘cold iron’, which could mean
anything.  Weapons, wrought iron, steel.  Most accounts hint that it’s any kind
of iron.  This book was written before steel was widely available outside of
industrial settings.  So most likely wrought iron, or maybe cast iron.  Why
would S.A. give me an engagement ring that looked like gold but was actually
something that could hurt him?”

“He did say this was a game. 
What kind of game would it be if we didn’t have a chance?  Maybe he gave you
the iron and the book out of a sense of fairness?”

“Or to make it more interesting. 
Like a fucking cat letting the wounded mouse run a few feet.”

Sandy flipped through more
pages.  Silence passed.  The two on the couch listened to the sounds of distant
music that they realized had been there all along.  A phonograph someplace
deeper in the house scratched out a snappy old jazz tune.  It freaked Jina out
a little, but Lewis seemed undaunted by it.  He tapped out a beat with
invisible drumsticks.

“You a drummer?” Jina asked.

“Yup.  Damn good too.”

“In a band?”

“Not anymore.  Lookin’.  Was,
anyway.”

Jina caught his eye and scooted
in a little closer to him.  “My band could use a drummer.  If we get out of
here, that is.”

Lewis smiled while Jina took a
sip of coffee.  Something fell from above and landed in her cup with a soft
splash.  Another something immediately followed, and left a deep red drip trace
down the side of the ceramic.  It froze.  Wax.

Jina squeaked in pain and rubbed
at her arm.  Lewis jumped and curled himself into a trembling fetal position in
the corner of the couch.

Sandy looked up.  Liquid wax was
beading along the cracks in the ceiling.  The pastries on the table were
already covered in wax, like display food.  Strangely, no wax fell on her,
though Jina and Lewis weren’t faring so well.

“Stand next to the fireplace. 
There’s no wax over there.”  Sandy leapt up to follow her own advice.  At that
moment, a book hurled down from a shelf and landed in front of the fire.

Orange flickering light drown
Pride
and Prejudice
.

A draft fluttered the book open. 
It sped through some pages, while on others it slowed, as though it were
looking for a specific paragraph.

The pages stopped moving near the
center of the book.  Sandy leaned in to read the page, looking for some kind of
meaning or reason.  Before she could see a single word, the center of the book
began filling with red.  Not wax this time.  Blood.

The blood seeped upward from the
center, absorbing into the white paper and crisp black words.

“What, did you get a little bored
you sick fuck?” Sandy shouted at the ceiling.  “Decided it’s time to play
again?”

There was no answer.  Instead,
the edge of the pages, untouched by blood, began to rot.  They crumbled with
age, as though the book were bio-degrading before her eyes.  The blood-soaked
portion remained unchanged.

Yet the blood continued to flow. 
It now pushed away brittle bits of paper.  Dirtied and thickened with dust, it
oozed gently onto the floor.

“We’ve done something wrong,”
Lewis whispered.

Sandy smelled something dead.  An
acrid, nose biting smell.  She looked up and around, sniffing, trying to find
its direction.  Jina had moved to her side, firelight shining on her face.

Sandy looked back at the book and
Jina screamed.  The body of a green salamander twisted back and forth as it
walked off the edge of the cloth binding.  Tiny footprints of blood trailed
behind it.

“Let’s go. 
Now
.”  Lewis
pulled Jina towards the door.  Sandy followed close behind.  She turned to look
back.  A full grown crocodile grinned at her from the couch.  Crooked, dirty
teeth framed its smile.  It slid to the carpet, and Sandy slammed the door.

T
hey found
another room, down the hall, calm and nearly empty.  A waving swath of
transparent linen hung from the ceiling, dividing the room almost in half.  A
brass oil lamp lit the room from a small table by the door.  A writing desk sat
next to a closet door behind the linen.  It was adorned with five unlit
candles.  A yellowed piece of paper lay between them.

Sandy approached the desk.

“It’s a poem,” she declared. 
Slowly she read the scrolling handwriting.

Faerie

Silver drapes in agile threads

Crystalline shells lay quiet
their heads

Glistening, shimmering, blinding
with light

Her hands pluck the harp string
to chase ‘way the night

Too thin to be seen, iridescent
in hue

Defiantly strong, holds captive
the dew

Crafted in beauty, magic conveyed

Deftly she falls, black spider to
prey

She softly laid it down to let
the others read it, and neared the next door.

The lamp flickered for several
seconds, and then went out.  Darkness surrounded them.

“Not fair,” she heard Lewis say. 
“I didn’t get to read the poem.”  All she felt was a sickening panic to get
out, to find light.

Her wish was answered.  A match
hissed and flared.  Lewis’s hand lowered it to the tips of the candles.  When
he was done lighting them all, he leaned over the desk and read casually.

“You’ve got matches?” Jina
exclaimed.  “Damn, I’ve been nic-fittin’ for hours.  Wanna light me?  I’ll
share…”

“I’m beyond nic-fitting.  I was
forced to quit cold turkey.”

“You poor thing.  You need one
for sure now.”

Jina fished a pack of Newports
out of her gym bag.  Lewis lit hers and then lit the one she had given him.

Sandy just shook her head at the
nasty habit and put her hand to the doorknob to the next room.  The light
flickered again as a draft pressed down on the candles.

“Hey,” Lewis looked up from his reading. 
“Get away from that door.  S.A. doesn’t want us to leave yet.”

Jina shrugged in the middle of a
French inhale.  “So what are we supposed to do, wait around in this room until
we get attacked by a giant spider?  And
then
we can go?  I’d rather let the
lights go out.”

“So you’d rather stumble around
this house in complete darkness?”  Lewis whirled at her.

“Umm…  No.  I don’t like that
idea either.”

Lewis finished reading, and
sighed contentedly with his cigarette as he sat on the floor and leaned up against
the wall.

“So what are we going to do?”
Jina asked.

“Sleep,” said Lewis simply.  He
pulled one more drag and snuffed the embers out.  Then he closed his eyes and
adjusted his head, trying to get comfortable.

Sandy started to yawn, thought
better of it, and shut her mouth.  Since the subject had come up, she realized
that she
was
pretty tired.

Jina continued to protest.  “Well,
I can’t sleep.  I could stay up all night.  And what if something happens while
we sleep?”

“We set a guard.  Jina, you had plenty
of coffee.  You keep watch while Sandy and I rest.”

The thought of curling up on the
floor seemed very inviting.  Sandy found a spot on a small Persian rug in the
corner and satisfied her craving.

Lewis was already asleep.

Jina pouted.  Then she glanced
over at Lewis.  He didn’t look comfortable at all.  Poor dear.  She opened her
gym bag and dug out some clothes.  She eased Lewis to the floor, put a rolled
up shirt under his head for a pillow, and covered him gently with the sweater. 
She covered Sandy with her jacket.

Boredom struck after making
everyone comfy.  She dug around in her gym bag until she found a joint.  The
floor squeaked slightly as she pulled a dusty chair up to the desk.  She lit up
using a candle, took a few puffs, and idly rifled through the desk drawers.

In the top drawer there was more
parchment paper and a fountain pen.   She doodled for a while and smoked until
her phone vibrated.

Out of habit, she reached for it
and looked at the text.

It’s your turn now

Don’t take too long.

For me and Sandy

Write us a song.

Jina showed the phone her middle
finger.  It flashed back at her.

The song’s for our wedding

Do what you should

Write about love

So long as it’s good

Jina looked over at Sandy.  She
saw a rainbow from the diamond shining on the wall. 

“I’m not playing the game
anymore, S.A.,” she said to the desk.

Yes you are. You will write.

The candles flickered, and Jina
looked at them.  Wax crawled down the nearest one to pool at its base.  But it
wasn’t wax, and it didn’t harden.  It fell from the pool above to form another,
filling the base of the candlestick.  When it dripped to the desk, it was
clear, perfectly clear.  Like water.  Like a tear falling from her face.

Drops splashed on the parchment,
staining it.  A doodle streaked.

Her phone vibrated again.

Write.

Jina hesitated.  She remembered
what Sandy had said.  Staring at the candles, she whispered, “You can’t control
me.  I will this to stop.  You’re just a fairy, a fake, not real.  Those are
normal candles.”

I still haven’t hurt you yet.
Only Lewis knows the wounds I can inflict.

“Why did you stop rhyming?” Jina
mumbled.  “Fucking fake bastard.”

Your mind is soft and squishy. 
So. Easy. To. Control.

Another candle, further from her,
flickered.  The melting wax flowed like a river down its side.  Like the
previous candle, the wax did not freeze at the base.  It poured from the
candlestick to the desk, sluggish, white, still liquid wax. 

Like white hot metal, it rolled
towards her.  The riverbed wound through the scattered items on the desk, past
the snuffed out roach.  She pushed her chair away.  S.A. would not make her
play his game.  “You have no power over me!  Or something!  You aren’t real!”

Her belly began to ache
slightly.  A vague and familiar weakness crept over her.  As the ache in her
abdomen increased, the pain spread to her upper thighs.  She doubled over with
cramps.

“The wrong time of the month,”
she whispered into her lap.  Another wave stuck her.  And another.  With the
fourth, she nearly fell to the floor in pain.  “Ok,” she relented.

Shakily, she picked up the pen. 
The wax had frozen into smooth ice hills between the pages.  Jina began
writing. 

Relief came, but the pain still
gnawed at her through the words.  She’d have to memorize the tune.

At the end of the first verse and
chorus, the light was noticeably dimmer.  She quickened her pace.  The next
verse would be easy.  The pen slowed as Jina relaxed.

The lights flickered again.  She
looked up.