Miscreated Page 8

  “I didn’t lose it,” Carmin said, cutting his little sister’s ham into child-size pieces. “I just don’t know where it is yet.”

  “Dez isn’t visiting you at all?” Grandy said.

  “No.”

  Well…

  A couple of weeks ago, Jimi had awoken in his mom’s house to find his bed covered in fairy blue ovals as big as his hands. Transparent and thin as onion skin, the same kind of material the bodice of Dez’s costume had been made of. Dozens of the things all over the bed, sticky with semen, like Dez had visited while he was sleeping and…

  But that wasn’t the sort of thing he could explain to anyone, let alone Grandy, and certainly not during the holidays.

  “No,” he repeated and shoved his mouth full of turkey.

  After a long while, when most of the Belroses had pushed away from the table and waddled into the living room, Jimi sat amidst the Thanksgiving carnage of bird bones and reddish, unidentifiable smears staining the snowy table cloth, scraping the last bit of pumpkin pie from Grandy’s good china when Carmin came bounding into the dining room.

  “Look what I found.”

  He was wearing the fuzzy red caterpillar of a scarf Dez had knitted for Jimi years ago.

  “My scarf!”

  “Told you I’d find it; it was here at Grandy’s the whole time.” He wrapped it around Jimi’s neck. “Merry Christmas!”

  “It’s Thanksgiving. You’re supposed to say Happy Thanksgiving.”

  Carmin pushed his little brother away by the face and sat next to Jimi. “You wanna douse it now? I can go get water.”

  “Here’s some.” Carmin’s little brother dumped a pitcher of water over his head.

  As Carmin chased his little brother into the living room, César said. “That’s the last thing, isn’t it? I’ll wake Giselle.”

  “No, let her sleep.” Grandy added another glass to the pile of crockery expertly balanced in her arms. “Pregnant women need sleep. Besides, by the time Alexis deigns to grace us with her presence, Giselle’ll be wide awake, possibly along with Jesus himself. In the meantime, what we should do is call up the de la Vegas. They’ll want to be here. And Sister Judith—I’d better phone her right away.”

  While César helped Grandy carry her burden of dishes into the kitchen, Jimi slipped out of the house, sure he wouldn’t be noticed for quite some time since everyone was too busy planning his life. As usual.

  He unhooked his sunglasses from his shirt and put them on. He’d taken to wearing them recently, but never indoors, like some dork trying way too hard to be cool. He wished he could be that much of a dork, though, because these days, any light hurt. Even the dull overcast light that met him outside dug needles into his eyes.

  The cold air was startling and perverse, a freak thing that was only supposed to happen for a little while in January and February before traveling the hell back north where it belonged. Jimi wasn’t used to shivering in November. Since he didn’t want to risk going back for his jacket, Jimi had only the scarf to shield him, but nothing could ward against the sharp stabbing pain in his back.

  Jimi ignored it as best he could and grabbed Grandy’s bike from the porch, an old white and powder blue Schwinn that clashed horribly with Jimi’s sleek Thanksgiving finery. But it was either ride or walk, and his last interlude in Fountain Square being chased by winged men had cured him of his need to travel by foot.

  He creaked off on Grandy’s Schwinn and made his way to nearby Portero Park.

  After a time, Jimi realized he was following the scent of something-like-peaches-but-not-quite. His nose eventually led him to a sweet olive tree near a pond, manmade, mirror smooth and teeming with handsome green-headed ducks.

  Portero Park had been designed to be picture-book pretty to offset sharing a border with the dark park, where hideous nightmares vivisected pretty things for sport. Portero Park, fortunately, was rarely home to anything more sinister than ducks.

  Jimi parked Grandy’s bike and hunkered down by the pond, which smelled stormy and fresh, like the rain barrel in his tito’s backyard in Santo Domingo. The handsome ducks quacked at him as he unwrapped Dez’s scarf from his throat, but when he held it over the water, the ducks hurried out en masse and rushed him. Jimi froze, wondering if he was going to have to throw down on a bunch of ducks, in Portero Park of all places, but they had no interest in brawling. Only snuggling. The ducks crowded right up against Jimi and settled down, watching the dangling scarf inquisitively.

  Jimi’s back was on fire, but he ignored it, knowing it would be fine in a second or so, as soon as he vomited Dez out of his system. He still didn’t like the idea of drowning, but he was ready for anything now. Past ready.

  He checked the sky, but saw no one swooping down to stop him. Just Jimi and the friendly ducks, who were giving him dude, what’s the holdup looks.

  Jimi took a deep breath, outstretched arm beginning to tire. He thought about making some beautifully heartbreaking speech, but he was past that too. “Goodbye, Dez. Goodbye…forever.”

  A hand reached out of the pond and clamped tight on Jimi’s wrist, snatching him into the water.

  The same endless sensation of falling into darkness that he’d felt after tumbling from his bedroom window, but this darkness was wet and slimy. Not completely dark. That direction over there was full of light. So he sped toward it, sliding as if across ice. When he surfaced, Dez’s scarf was wrapped around the lower half of his face, his throat. He clawed free of it as a wall of white foam crashed down on his head and shoved him under again, only to spit him out moments later onto a beach full of glassy green rocks instead of sand.

  Jimi had fetched up against the feet of three men. Those same men who’d chased Jimi out of Fountain Square. He could see the landscape through the bloody filter of their scarlet wings.

  So awful to see them up close, see their eyes, sewn shut with black, wiry thread, bruised and swollen either from the stitches or the cataclysm that had made the stitches necessary. They were bare chested and pale as though they lived underground, but what good were wings below the earth?

  The one on the right had a broken right arm. Hideously broken, twisting into an almost spiral shape. If his arm gave him pain, he didn’t show it; he looked almost drunk with happiness. “You’re a genius.”

  The middle one, who had an eye tattooed in red below his throat, looked ashamed. “If I were a genius, you would be whole, and we wouldn’t be here.”

  “I’ll feel it later, but not now. I don’t mind being here. Such a rush, isn’t it? Sliding across worlds.”

  None of those words were in English, but Jimi understood them. That language was one he dreamed in sometimes, the way he dreamed in French and Spanish.

  Insanity, except Dez couldn’t control him anymore; the scarf was the last thing. It was doused. It was done.

  So what the hell?

  “He shall be my burden,” said the one on the left. “You need only concentrate on getting us home.” He hauled Jimi to his feet as he spoke, guiding him out of the thick, Paleozoic water. They moved along, caravan style: the middle one in the lead, the left one and Jimi following, with the broken one bringing up the rear.

  All three were taller than Jimi, who’d grown used to not having to look up. While their lack of sight didn’t affect their rapid progress, Jimi constantly stumbled over the slippery things and snapping things that were after his bare toes. The ocean had stolen not only his scarf, but his shoes and sunglasses, as well, and the salty sea air stung his eyes almost as much as the sun, an egg yolk in a silver sky.

  So much light, but the sea was oily and dark. Islands dotted the horizon, similar to the one he’d been dragged onto, rimmed with the same green rocks. Even if he ran, he’d still be wherever this was.

  Further down the shore, Jimi spied a broad cluster of seaweed-plastered houses set well back from the tideline. The green houses were triangular, like the kimbap he’d bought once at a convenience store in South Korea while on a buying trip
with Alexis. People lived in those houses—smoke wisped from the chimney tops and mule-shaped animals were hitched to wagons or carts out on the glassy green road.

  But such flimsy houses. Jimi thought immediately of the Three Little Pigs, or in his case, Three Huge Wolves. The winged men would have no problem extracting Jimi from a house made of leaves, assuming the residents decided to offer him sanctuary instead of blowing him away. Did they have guns here? One of the glassy rocks destroying his feet would make a great weapon. God, he needed a weapon. An opportunity.

  “Can you lift him?” said the broken one. “His feet are bleeding.”

  Jimi didn’t know how the broken one knew his feet were leaving bloody tracks along the beach, unless they were seeing with some other organ. It was too bad; eye gouging, an excellent self-defense tactic, would be wasted on them.

  The left one tsked and said, “How delicate he is,” before maneuvering Jimi’s feet atop his much bigger ones.

  Jimi had a sudden memory of standing on his dad’s feet when he was little, of clomping around the house in his dad’s shoes. He felt as he did then, helpless and small. Imprisoned in the muscular cage of the left one’s arms.

  “Do you think he’s hungry?”

  “He’s one of us, isn’t he?” said the broken one. “I know I get hungry when I leave the world.”

  What language was that? Quick and swirling, the marimba-like trills.

  “Maybe we should—”

  “Here,” said the middle one. He’d come to a stop, trembling with a mix of exhilaration and exhaustion. “Here feels right.”

  “Is it painful?” asked the left one, squeezing Jimi’s arms extra tight in his excitement, watching the middle one’s throat tattoo flare white hot.

  The middle one’s hands fluttered over the tattoo, but didn’t touch it. “Very. That’s how I know it’s right.”

  “A pain only you can bear,” said the broken one. “You’re so brave to have taken this on.”

  The middle one turned to face the sea, uncomfortable with the praise. He patted the air, mime-like, until his arm disappeared to the elbow. “Here,” he said, pulling free of the nothingness.

  The broken one said, “I could go first again and pull him through.”

  “And break your other arm?” said the middle one. “I wouldn’t dream of it. Besides, it’s not without risk either way.” The middle one turned in Jimi’s direction, eyes roaming like tigers behind the cage of stitches. “He’s slippery.”

  “As an eel,” said the left one. Into Jimi’s ear.

  “We can’t risk him dragging us to another place like this.” The middle one brought his hands together, as if in prayer. “My way is surer.”

  The middle one’s tattoo blazed, the light supernova intense. So intense, Jimi felt his eyes had been ruined beyond repair. Even with his eyes closed, the sharp, white light remained.

  “Do you feel it?” said the broken one. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  Jimi did feel something other than intense eye pain: something electric and alive and crawling over his skin, biting him, but there was nothing marvelous about it.

  Until the world tore with such violence that Jimi was knocked free of the left one’s clutches, was sent skipping like a stone back from the sea.

  When Jimi’s breath and wits returned, he sat up and gingerly opened his eyes. Jimi’s vision wasn’t ruined after all, but he almost wished it had been.

  A long, jagged line hung in the air before the sea, red as a wound. The middle one had torn a hole in the world.

  “Masterful,” said the left one. “Simply masterful.” He noticed Jimi down the beach. “Are you okay?”

  “He’ll survive,” said the broken one. “Like us. But look at them.”

  Far down the beach, the triangle kimbap huts had shredded into coleslaw. The mules raced down the road, the wagons careening and rattling behind them. People ran in circles and screamed at the sky. As it fell.

  Dripped, actually. Like rain. Yellow drips from the sun and silver drops from the sky that sizzled as they hit the boiling sea. The glassy beach rocks were melting; Jimi’s hands were stained green, and everything in his field of vision blackened and sizzled along the edges, like a photo that has been set ablaze.

  “You’re taking it well, at least,” said the left one. “Not many could watch the world end without going mad, even if only a little.”

  Happy thoughts. Happy happy happy.

  “No matter. We’ll be home soon. I think.” He turned to the middle one. “How’s it going?”

  “Slowly,” said the middle one, widening the tear with his own body. The toxic heat blasted Jimi as the middle one used his wings on the tear like a hydraulic spreader, straining to pry it apart, open it wider, expending a Herculean effort to reveal a world Jimi knew. The chasms of magma. The impossibly tall fleur-de-lis trees. The purple sky.

  The hell world.

  “Is it wide enough? Could you carry him through?”

  “I’ll need at least another six inches. Don’t blame me,” the left one protested at the look the middle one shot him. “Is it my fault I have such magnificently broad shoulders?”

  “Dinner’s ready!”

  The broken one flapped their way, his good arm dragging something that wrote a swoopy signature of blood and melted rock down the beach. Jimi couldn’t tell what the corpse had been ten minutes ago.

  “Eat this.” The broken one awkwardly snapped off a foot and tossed it into Jimi’s lap, the tibia splintered and oozing marrow.

  Jimi didn’t touch it.

  “Don’t be shy.” The broken one squatted before him. “The trip home will be short, but the toll on your body immense. Eat. Gather strength while you’re able; it will only be taken away once we’re through.”

  “Is this wise?” said the left one, joining them. “It’ll spoil him for—”

  “This will be his last taste of something savory and substantial. Don’t be ungenerous.” The broken one gave Jimi an encouraging smile. “Go on. Treat yourself.”

  Jimi squeezed the foot, squeezed it tight, and jabbed the exposed bone into the broken one’s eye, popping the stitches. Jimi straddled him when he fell backward, jabbed the bone into the broken one’s face a second and third time. Almost a fourth, but as Jimi raised his arms, his back split apart.

  He screamed, more in anger than pain. Snapped his head around, sure the left one had cut open his back, sure it would end for him here on this dying beach world and no one back home would ever know what had become of him.

  But the left one was only staring in shock at the broken one, who was now the dead one.

  The worst of the pain passed, but Jimi’s back felt so wrong, wide open, gaping, stuff spilling out of it. It didn’t hurt. On the contrary, it felt amazing. He’d been in pain for so long that its sudden absence was euphoric. Until he saw the wings.

  On either side of his body. Fairy blue wings.

  He scurried backward on his hands and knees, but couldn’t out distance them. As disturbed as he was knowing the wings were attached to him, had exploded from his own body, it felt so good to stretch them, to shake off the pins and needles, to warm them in what was left of the sun.

  “Grab him and bring him forth!”

  It was the middle one, struggling in the widened tear, sweating. He looked as if he had been yelling for a while at the left one, who was busy holding the dead one’s head in his lap, petting around the foot sticking out of his face. “Bring him forth for what purpose?” said the left one. “He’s dead.”

  “Not him. Jimi!”

  They knew his name? How could they know him, these things?

  The left one kissed the dead one’s forehead and stood, as in a daydream. He reached down and took Jimi by the arms again, but not gently. Not this time.

  “You shouldn’t have hurt him.” Tears seeped between the black thread zigzagged across his eyelids. “You shouldn’t hurt kin.”

  “He doesn’t know better,” said the middle one.
“He’s impure from living in that place for so long. With those people. Now bring him! The world is dying!”

  “So it is,” the left one told Jimi. “So will you. Soon. When you do, kin or not”—he brought them nose to nose and hissed—“I will grind your bones between my teeth.”

  The left one’s pale upper arms had developed two new adornments. Filaments thin as licorice whips, and as cobalt blue as Alexis’s prized glassware collection. Blue filaments attached to Jimi’s lower back, well below his wings. Then a sensation, like taking a piss but in two different directions and out of the wrong hole. Holes. As bizarre as that felt, it wasn’t nearly as bizarre as understanding what was happening. Jimi had latched on to the left one with those blue things and was filling him with something.

  The dark blue stingers detached from the left one, who toppled to a ground that was no longer rocky or a beach or much of anything really, punctured arms shiny and swollen, like overstuffed, undercooked sausages. Tongue too thick for his mouth, protruding obscenely.

  The stingers—they were stingers; he was venomous—hanging limp and shriveled down Jimi’s back were delicate but tipped with wicked barbs like rose thorns. Jimi touched the lone alien drop leaking from one barb; it smelled of almonds and left an oily heat on his trembling fingers.

  The middle one was trapped within the tear, arms and wings in a painful clinch, muscles too slack from surprise, exhaustion, something, to keep it wide enough to travel through.

  The only light in what was left of the world came from the tear, and Jimi stepped toward it, instinctively, and the middle one twisted and wriggled in a panic, as though Jimi was the monster. As though Jimi was something to fear.

  The middle one gave a great heave and fell backward through the tear, and the hellish world disappeared with a loud pop.

  The seascape burned itself out of existence and there was only a gray nothingness above and below, which Jimi sank into gratefully. He held his hands before his face and couldn’t see them. He was okay with that. He didn’t want to see himself.