Half Moon Under (Chapter 1)

1962


         The people of Salem, Massachusetts were not exactly the brightest, Jessica thought as the townspeople tightened the coarse rope holding her hands against the stake. In fact, she pondered, they were downright moronic. Somehow, when faced with the possibility that some of the women in town might have been evil entities that sold their souls to the devil for the sake of dark powers no mere mortal could comprehend, their reaction was to antagonize the everlasting hell out of them. Hangings and stonings seemed to be the general favorites. Pressing [1]was also a popular one that, to her, didn't seem worth the mess it left behind. Sarah, unfortunately, had been chosen to be dispatched of on a day when a few of the townsmen had a craving for barbecue, but the wares of meat had been little to nonexistent as of late, and decided to redirect their angst into a more productive activity.
          That was one of the reasons she was being burned, actually. The men had blamed her for the lack of game in the forest. Something about the butcher boy asking her out on a date a couple of weeks ago in a particularly aggressive manner that she promptly turned down. According to them, in her hysteria, she had cast a curse meant to deprive him of what he loved doing the most; dismembering and bleeding out animals. She should have seen it coming, really. The recent incidents of women being accused of witchcraft for no real reason in particular aside from the fact that they happened to be around when something bad happened. A stubbed toe, a broken ankle, the milk jar being out of milk first thing in the morning; any of these could be a reason for a good stoning[2]. Besides, the butcher boy was a little sociopath. He liked to fashion the heads of his game into small macabre puppets that he would use to try to entertain the children that frequented the shops with their mothers.

          Oh look, there was her own mother. Bitch.

          Still, she thought as the town priest made sure her ankles were nice and secure, how ridiculous it was that these people were trying to burn her at the stake. If she were a witch, and in this moment, she really wished that she were, then it would have been no small matter to get out of a few ropes or walk through a little fire. This was the forces of darkness they were talking about; Changing into wolves, flying, causing pestilence and plague-like a fucking horseman of the apocalypse. If anything, the fact that everyone who the town had gone after had since been gruesomely killed seemed to point more to the proof that none of them were witches and the people who were doing the accusing probably needed to take a step back and reevaluate the criteria they were using to determine who they murdered next. It was the least they could do, really. Perhaps even a small gift basket, though even Jessica had to admit that puritan gift baskets were lacking in imagination. Oh well, she thought as the baker waved to her from the crowd of town people gathered in front of her waiting to watch her execution. She wondered if he thought she was going to wave back to him. He was a very stupid man, honestly, and probably thought this was some sort of play or award ceremony. Bless his heart, she thought. This was about to get very traumatic for him.
          She stopped to consider why she didn't feel more fear in this moment as the priest grabbed his torch and held it to the kindling surrounding her. She had been terrified when the door exploded inward in the middle of the night, a procession of bloodthirsty townspeople on the other side. She had sobbed in grief as they tied ropes to her arms and dragged her to the town center in nothing but her nightgown. She'd seized in fear as she heard the chants of the people, she once considered friends and family, calling her a witch and begging for her demise. But now that she was settled in, arms snuggly tied, legs bound, and a pleasant heat biting through the cold that her nightgown had offered no protection against, she felt strangely relaxed. Docile, even. She wondered if this is what it was to come to terms with your own mortality and, if so, why had she not done it sooner.
          "Idiots", she muttered to herself as the first of the flames licked the bottom of her feet. Not enough to burn but enough to be a little bit uncomfortable. Like an aching joint, first thing in the morning that wouldn't go away no matter how hard she stretched. She thought about panicking again, of course, since there didn't seem anything else to do but wait around and that seemed incredibly dull. Besides, she was a lady, despite what these people around her thought. The least she could do was end her life on her terms. Or, well, almost her terms. She didn't have to cry about it, at least. Especially not with Jacob, the miller's son, standing in the front row. She'd always had a bit of a crush on him and, even now, his face contorted in hate and disgust, she thought he looked quite handsome in the new coat his mother had made for him earlier that winter. Would he miss her? The spittle below his lip as he screamed for her to burn indicated otherwise, but he was always one to play hard to get.
          She kept looking. It was interesting, looking at all the people she knew in her life standing in front of her. For a moment, she considered being a little angry that not a single one of them cared enough about her to try to help but she pushed that thought away. She probably would have done the same. In fact, she had about two weeks ago when one of her good friends had been accused of witchcraft and hanged just a little to the left of where she tied up now. Karma, she supposed, though she wasn't entirely sure what Karma was. The last thing anyone around here wanted to be was a hero, especially when you could be charged with an imaginary crime with literally no evidence but a sinking feeling when you saw a person you didn't like. No one ever considered that it might just be a little gas. No, obviously the devil was present because if the smell wasn't anyone in the room, or the sheepish minister trying to readjust the back of his pants, then it must be forces of the occult.
          There was her cousin, standing in the third row. Good view. Her uncle was standing right beside her with a lit torch. It's good to stay warm on nights like this. There was her school teacher, most of the kids from her class, and the farmers appeared to have gotten in late because they had been sequestered to the back of the mob and were trying to bribe the town elders with heads of corn to switch places with them. It was interesting watching all of these people interact in this circumstance as if nothing were really different at all. Her neighbors were standing off to the side in a warm embrace, as the two of them had most recently gotten married and couldn't bear the thought of not being in physical contact for more than the time it took for them to make the bed. Everything was the same, really, despite the acrid smoke now drifting up from the kindling beneath her, clogging her nose and stinging.

          Or, almost the same.

          She spotted a girl in the crowd. A young one, no more than eight or nine she would have guessed. There was nothing particularly striking about her in appearance or otherwise, but Jessica had never seen her before. That was strange. She had seen everyone in town; knew everyone. She had babysat for every household in the area and she had watched over the children after church when their parents congregated to discuss how to further avoid going to hell. Not only that, but she didn't appear to be joining in the festivities as all the other children were, happy to watch a woman being burned alive and being prodded on to participate by their parents[3]. No, this girl merely stared at her with deep green eyes that, somehow, seemed to imply that they were actually another color altogether.
          As the flames moved up to her skirt, Jessica realized that she felt no pain. She looked down and winced as she noticed her entire lower half was engulfed in the fire. It appeared she was, in fact, cooking alive. But there was still no pain. It could have been shock. She'd heard of that before when some of the hunters came back with some sort of egregious wound that looked like it should have toppled a buffalo, but they claimed it barely hurt at all. That is, until the shock wore off and those same hunters needed to be strapped down to their beds to keep themselves from breaking any bones as they convulsed. Somehow, Jessica didn't believe this was the same. She looked back into the crowd and found the girl, still staring at her intently. A small smirk forming on her face that looked as if it was trying to offer comfort but didn't really understand what that was. In fact, her face as a whole seemed... Off. But not in any way that Jessica could begin to describe, especially not now. There was no pain, but the fire was certainly doing what it was intended to do. It crept up her body and little by little she stopped feeling certain parts of herself that she had known since she was born. It was a bother, really. She had grown really attached to those feet and the legs really tied the whole package together.

          As her consciousness began to fade, she noticed that the girl had yet to break eye contact with her, and Jessica managed to form one final thought.

          What a creepy fucking kid.


1



          Wren woke up, rather unpleasantly, to a sharp pain in her side that had been amplified by the fact that her body was, literally, completely unprepared for the sensation. Her eyes shot open and her body jolted upright to find the culprit but, as she had just woken up, they hadn't started working properly and everything was a blurry haze. In addition, her sense of balance had not returned yet and she had found that bolting upright was a very good way to find herself toppling out of bed and to the floor, where brand new sensations of pain echoed through her body like a sadistic canyon. As she wrestled with the sheets that had wrapped around her like a five hundred thread count prison, she heard a malicious chuckling in the background.
          "Lizzie, you jerk," Wren said through gritted teeth as she finally managed to free herself and crawled back on to her bed.
          "Are you finally awake, you little lemur?" Lizzie asked. She was standing over Wren's bed rubbing her elbow slightly as if polishing a weapon.
          "Did you elbow me in the ribs?" Wren asked.
          "I did what I had to."
          "And you had to because?"
          Lizzie cocked her head to one side, a blaze of shoulder red hair bouncing with it, and then pointed to Wren's bed where she noticed a dark ovular stain decorating the center of her bedding. She wiped her forehead with one hand and felt the sweat dripping off of her palm.
          "You were screaming in your sleep again," Lizzie explained, "I figured it would be better to just put you out of your misery."
          "How long was I doing it for?" Wren asked, trying to recall the whatever nightmare she had been having and coming up blank
          "About an hour.
          "And you waited that long to wake me up?"
          Lizzie shrugged, "It's not like I had anything better to do. The power went out and it's not like I could sleep with you screaming like some howler monkey. Might as well pretend I have National Geographic, right?"
          "You're an ass," Wren said.
          "I even made popcorn," Lizzie said, pointing to a bowl of steaming popcorn she had sitting pristinely in the center of her bed.
          Wren sighed and finished untangling herself from her sheets, making her way to the dresser for a change of clothes. She stripped off her wet pajamas and tossed them in a corner where they landed with a heavy thud before putting on a fresh pair.
          "Do you really have to change in here?" Lizzie asked, averting her eyes.
          "We're twins, Lizzie" Wren replied, "Just pretend it's you undressing in front of yourself."
          "Everyone knows I'm the hot twin. If I'm going to imagine anything, it's going to be Channing Tatum[4]," Lizzie said, closing her eyes. A small smile crept into the corners of her mouth and lingered
          "I don't think I have the figure for that," Wren replied.
          "Shhh, Channing. Don't speak."
          Wren collected a pillow from the ground and hurled it across her room. She knew that id if she tried hard enough, she would hit her mark and she was right. Her aim was true and the pillow collided with her sister's face with a force she hadn't intended but was not upset about.          "I don't interrupt you when you're fantasizing," Lizzie pouted, rubbing her face.
          "You don't have to since I'm not a little perv. Now help me with my sheets."
          "Gross."
          "Think of it as the least you can do for assaulting an unconscious woman in her own bed," Wren said.
          "You really have a talent for just making everything sound awful, don't you?" Lizzie asked, conceding, and helping her sister remove the soaked sheets. She set some towels down across the infected area of the mattress and then spread another layer of dry sheets on top. It wasn't the best-executed job in the world, but it was the middle of the night and they were both tired.
          "At least warn me next time before you start going all one with nature in front of me again. I don't need to have some sort of incestual police charge on my record," Lizzie groaned as she jumped back into her own bed. She had forgotten about the bowl of popcorn she had placed on it and sent the bowl flying through the air, scattering popcorn behind it like a buttery comet.
          "Crap," Lizzie sat motionless for a moment, held captive by the new mess she had created and lamenting every second she was going to have to be on the floor cleaning it up.
          "I thought you wanted to pretend we had National Geographic."
          "Yeah, National Geographic. Not fucking MTV[5] Presents. Now, help me clean up all of this popcorn."
          "You mean the popcorn you made while I screamed myself into oblivion in an unconscious haze?" Wren asked.
          "The very same."
          "You mean the popcorn you made just before you took your elbow and inserted it between bones in my body?"
          "I feel like you're taking my elbow out of context"
          "I think I'm good."
          "Dude, I helped with your sheets."
          "And now, we are even," Wren replied, settling herself back into her, now, dry bed and getting herself comfortable.
          "Next time, I'm just going to let whatever fever demon you dream up finish eating your scalp," Lizzie grumbled as she proceeded to pick up each kernel off of the floor, one by one, and listlessly tossing them into her bedside trash can.
          Wren held in a laugh. She didn't like to admit it out loud, but she enjoyed her sister's company. Sure, Lizzie could be abrasive, insulting, and an all-around sarcastic twit but she was Wren's sarcastic twit and it was hard not to get along with someone who essentially looked just like you. From the ringlets of red hair, to the length of it, to the glittering emerald eyes, their less than impressive height, and even the smallest crook on the right side of their noses; They were the same in appearance, even if not personality. They had never developed a secret language or anything else that other people usually thought when they met them. They weren't telepathic, yet only with each other, and they didn't feel pain when the other pricked their finger on something sharp. But, as they liked to tell people, you didn't have to be creepy to be close to someone.
          "How long before morning?" Wren asked.
          Lizzie gave a shrug. She had already given up on cleaning the rest of her mess and had crawled back into bed, cocooning herself in her thick blue blankets. Her eyes were already flickering with sleep and Wren saw her chance. She inched towards Lizzie's bed with her elbow ready. Just as she positioned herself over the bed to deliver to blow, there was a flurry of blankets, a blur of red, and then another sharp pain in her side. Wren stumbled back onto her own bed and collapsed, clutching her side and cursing any God that would listen.
          "Set and match," Lizzie said, delivering a quick wink, before disappearing back into her nest of blankets.
          Wren let out an audible huff and then curled herself back up into her own blankets, letting the vengeance she swore upon her sister rock her back to sleep.

          Saturday mornings were a bitch.

          At least, that's what Wren told herself as the alarm next to her bed blared with the power of a thousand moons and less than gingerly screamed her soul awake. Five days out of the week, she was expected to wake up at the crack of dawn and scurry off to school but the procurement of her job not too long ago had taken that pain and extended it to the weekends. Saturday was just the first day of the hell that she had come to know as being part of the working class.
          She rolled herself out of bed, patting herself down to make sure that she hadn't sweat enough to fill another basin, and began her morning routine; namely taking a shower, cursing at the shower for not having enough hot water, brushing her teeth, cursing at her toothbrush for making her tongue bleed, putting on her clothes, cursing her clothes for not being more interesting, then meticulously pouring over her extensive selection of cellphone cases in order to find one to accurately display her mood.

          No luck. She had no phone cover to convey mildly despondent and semi-homicidal.

          After she was done with all of this, she would leave her sister sleeping in their bedroom and make her way to the front door, circumventing every floorboard she knew would creak in an effort to not wake her sleeping mother. Every morning she considered stopping by the kitchen and making herself a quick breakfast (nothing special, maybe just toast and a little bit of jam) and every morning she willed herself away from the magical food room lest she made too much noise or leave too much of a mess behind her. She wasn't a messy person, but even she overlooked things on occasion and she wasn't willing to take that risk with the way her mother had been these days.
          Eleanor Reid, the matriarch of the family, had been working harder than usual these days. It wasn't by choice, or even for the sake of furthering her career. It was out of necessity as her husband, and the twin's father, had passed away just the year before. It had put the family in an unforeseen financial hole as Eleanor had opted to not work for the majority of their marriage. She hadn't been a stay at home mother, as people so often liked to assume, but had instead taken to her artwork in the backyard where she sculpted everything from sheep to men with different fruits instead of genitalia.
          It hadn't made much money as Eleanor was not very good by any definition, each of her sculptures looking like they were calling out to anyone who would listen to just give them the nudge that they needed to end it all. But, after his death, she had managed to get a job at the local grocery store and had begun working double and triple shifts in order to make the payments left on the house and bills. Wren's parents were not wealthy before the death of her dad by any account, as he was the co-owner of only a moderately trafficked bookstore, but even the meager amount that he had pulled in always seemed to be enough somehow.
          The emotional devastation that he had left in his wake had been substantial as well and, for a while, had made life at their house seem dark and dreary. It was only accentuated by the fact that their father had built the house himself with several friends from college, so even the floorboards reminded the family of the man they used to love. Lizzie had taken it especially hard, seeing as she and her father had been particularly close. It wasn't like she was his favorite or anything, Wren knew, they just had more in common; a dark sense of humor and a refusal to admit that their pranks could be considered assault in the eyes of the law. The news that he was gone had only been made worse by their mother's refusal to tell them how he had died. Even his obituary in the paper had been exceptionally vague with only a few kind words, what he did for a living, and the people he left behind. Here lies Stuart Reid, Wren thought, he was there.
          As much as they wanted to curl up into balls and mourn, their feelings needed to take a backseat to the responsibility that he had left behind. That and a trunk full of old magazines that their mother wouldn't let them look in. They had scoffed, knowing it was most likely porn and wondered why their father would keep it in magazines in a trunk. Old people, they had figured. But it would have been interesting to see if their dad was some sort of freak.
          Wren had gone out and gotten herself a job in order to help her mother pay the bills and Lizzie, feeling the weight of the guilt of being the only person in the family who wasn't contributing, followed soon after. Wren could not imagine the type of job that would hire her sister, especially after the interview she was most likely to give. She couldn't be sure, but she was almost ninety percent positive that Lizzie had terrified the hiring manager into giving her the job, lest their car wind up in a ball of flames in the very near future. All that said, Wren decided to forgo breakfast that morning, hoping that there might be a street vendor somewhere along the way who was selling anything of the doughnut variety.
          Wren stepped outside into the cold January air and took a deep breath, letting the smell of brittle frost fill her lungs before setting down the street towards the heart of Salem. The walk to the bus stop was maybe only twenty minutes but the cold made it seem like a thousand years of Dante styled torture. Every breath she exhaled produced a mammoth cloud of fog in front of her face thick enough to obscure her vision and her fingers, even though she was wearing gloves, were beginning to ache with the cold. More than once, she slipped on the ice and ripped her clothing on the many wayward branches that spilled precariously into the walkway. She wished she had a car like the other kids in her class did. Sometimes she would enviously watch them pile into some friend or another's car in front of the school and drive off screaming like the world wasn't just waiting for them to graduate so it could promptly inform them that they weren't special. She wanted that. Really, just friends would be nice. She wasn't unpopular or anything but she was very often looked over for the sake of someone else who always appeared to be sitting exactly next to her. If she couldn't have a car or friends, it would at least have been nice if her parents hadn't decided that living in the woods, far away from any convenient means of transportation, was a great idea.
          But he had thought it was a good idea and they had built the house, one board at a time as their mother would say. He had gotten special permission from the city, found a clearing, and gotten to work over the course of two years. In his defense, it had turned out to be a beautiful house. Five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a kitchen, a large and spacious living area, two home offices, an attic, and a basement as well. Everything had been hand-carved and expertly put together, a feat their father said could only have been accomplished by his friends from college who had helped him every step of the way. He was a popular man like that. This, and the acre wide front and backyard were enough to make people believe that her family was sitting on a small fortune.
          It would bring them closer together, she remembered her father saying.

          Like hell it had.

          But at least she had the job and her manager had been kind enough to pay her under the table so that she didn't have to worry about taxes or any of that stupid stuff that made her bank account go from irrationally poor to exceedingly broke. Of course, it could also have been that she was only fifteen and trying to cover his own ass. Either way, that meant she was free to bring her whole seven dollars an hour home to her family to pay for a few more hours of heat and electricity. She was happy for the job, really, though she couldn't say that she particularly enjoyed wearing the bonnet or the stiff black dress that had been supplied to her as her uniform. She also wasn't thrilled about having to speak as if she had read a dictionary once and hadn't understood that it wasn't a work of fiction. Mostly, she just sat on an old replica of someone's front porch and pretended to churn butter, changing the technique from the approved and historically accurate version to one that would be less likely to have creepy tourists approach her with their phone numbers at the ready. She had applied to the Salem Witch Museum but had been turned away because they already had a waitlist so long that the DMV would sully their pants in a combination of explosive jealousy and unbridled rage.
          So, she had found a place lesser-known: Salem's Stories, a tourist attraction that had decided to focus less on the history of witches, which only made up a small fraction of Salem's history, and more on the everyday life of the people who had lived in the area. It was not a hit, but it did well enough to stay in business, which she realized could be said the same of a strip mall massage parlor.
          Wren finally made it to the bus stop after what felt like hours of undeserved self-reflection and congratulated herself on getting the timing almost exactly right this morning. The 450 bus pulled up and she felt the heat from the engine wash over her body like a Chernobyl summer. It was almost pleasant enough to make her forget that she was about to spend the next twenty minutes probably sitting next to an unruly child who was miraculously both sticky and slimy at the same time with an unknown substance that she would end up praying was chocolate. She paid the fare out of change she dug from her coat pockets and then headed to the back of the bus.
          The bus ride was actually more pleasant than she had first assumed. Yes, there was an unruly child but, luckily, its hands were pretty clean so she could focus on the book she had brought rather than the small child incessantly pulling her pant leg like it was going to gush candy from every irritating tug. The bus pulled up to her stop and she got up, "accidentally" kicking the small child in the shin in the process. As the tears welled up, she leaned down to whisper an apology for the "accident" and hurried off before the mother of the beast could chastise her.
          Work was still three blocks away and the weather still felt like Chuck Palahniuk had gotten a hold of the story of her life. Her heavy coat only protected her so much from the Massachusetts winter and the three layers of leggings she had put on under her jeans had really only served to make her gait seem unnatural and post-life ancient Egyptian. She saw one street vendor on the way but they were only selling the doughnut's inbred cousin; the bagel. Deciding to just fuck all of that entirely, she proceeded on to work where she was determined to be hungry and take it out on the customers in a way that only the pastry starved could.
          "Look what we have here," Jason said, as she approached the main kiosk.
          Jason was a tall, thin, boy with greasy brown hair that stuck to his scalp like wet paint. His nose was beaked which, on its own, wasn't entirely unpleasant but coupled with his thin, but inappropriately red, lips that nestled beneath it made the experience of looking at him like accidentally grating her finger when all she wanted was cheese. His eyebrows were thick and coarse like a sailor's rope and they were always furrowed in, what she could only describe as, derision. He had only just started working at Salem's Stories the week before but for some reason, only known to him, he had figured that he was her boss. The fact that he was the same age as her and in three of her classes where she regularly outperformed his C- average did nothing but fuel the rage she felt welling deep inside of her every time he pointed out that she was wearing the wrong soled shoes.
          "Late again?" He continued.
          "I'm five minutes early," Wren sighed, moving past him and towards the lockers where she kept her uniform. It was important not to touch him, she thought, lest his grease touch her skin and slowly take over her body like a trans-fat parasite. The motivation supplied her with the surgical precision in movement required.
          "A good employee is always at least fifteen minutes early," Jason replied, "You would know that if you'd bothered to read the manual."
          "I've been here for seven months and the manual was written by four guys in the back room who were both drunk and high. I think it's safe to say that it isn't the authority on workplace etiquette."
          "The missing ten minutes would beg to differ," Jason said, an air of absolute superiority seeping from his very pores. Wren resisted the urge to connect her fist to his nose, noting that would mean having to touch him, and instead made her way deeper into her labor prison to find the changing station.
          "I'm just going to put a note here in the calendar next to your name," Jason called after her, "Don't let it happen ag-"
          She heard a large snap, a muted thud, and a series of small whimpers as she could only assume that the chair he was sitting on had broken and set him careening to the floor. She thought briefly of holding in her laugh out of respect but thought better of it.
          "It's not funny!" he screamed.
          "It really is," Wren called back, opening the door to the changing room and shutting it behind her. She locked it too for an extra layer of protection. Ever since she had started working there, she had found that the other boys her age had a bad habit of walking in on her as she was changing. They were generally too late, either walking in when she was already dressed or moving in before she even had a chance to unzip her coat. They would always stumble and shuffle awkwardly as they pretended to not know that anyone was in there, turn around to leave, and then inevitably try to barge their way in again a few minutes later. She had learned her lesson and always made sure that they never even got the chance to crack the door.
          She slid off her shirt and, as if beckoned by an angel, heard someone try to open the door. The handle jiggled lightly as if someone were trying very intently on opening the door without being noticed. After that didn't work, the handle jiggled a little more violently, then a little more so, and then finally came to rest with the heart-breaking knowledge that it may never turn again in its life. The would-be intruder cursed audibly and walked away with heavy, hormone-induced footsteps, leaving Wren both annoyed and pleased at the same time. She had brought the problem up to her boss, Mr. Gildrey, more than once but he always shooed away her complaints with the infamous "teenage boys will be boys" saying. It wasn't that he didn't care, she knew. It wasn't even that he believed that boys would be boys, since being a boy didn't mean that you had to be an absolute shit of a human being.
          He had a daughter of his own, one that he would speak about at length if ever given the opportunity. No one ever gave him the opportunity anymore. Though, even without a small girl to raise, Wren was pretty positive that he had been quite the gentleman in his youth and would never think to rush in on a changing girl. One reason that she figured this was that the first time she had told him about the boys trying to sneak a peek, he had gone very quiet for a very long time. Then his quiet appeared to overflow and explode into a shade of crimson that reclassified his face as a fruit that everyone really knows is a vegetable. He called a staff meeting, marking the first mandatory meeting that he had ever called.
          The boys had gathered around, as they do during meetings, and he then told them how unacceptable it was to treat a woman the way that they insisted on treating Wren. The term sexual harassment was used more than once and the words fired and sued were emphatically acted out with a banana and a pair of handcuffs. The only problem was that Elliot Gildrey was a mostly meek little man and as soon as the adrenaline had left his body and his face had lost all hints of vegetation, he suddenly found himself at the mercy of a crew of young men that he had hired who had little to no respect for him as a person. They ridiculed him mercilessly afterward and broke whatever will the man had managed to retain during his tumultuous life. He had lost all will to fight since that day. He couldn't stand up for himself, let alone her. It didn't matter that he was their boss. He was a frail and small man who had the stage presence of a dormouse so his self-confidence, when surrounded by healthy youths, was generally taken behind a shed and shot to keep the family safe. He didn't even chastise the ones who came in late anymore.
          She had finished getting dressed and put the bonnet around her head, feeling as foolish as ever, when she heard a knock on the door.
          "Wren, are you in there?"
          It was Mr. Gildrey. She went to the door to unlock it and opened it to a small man in his late fifties standing just outside. He was wearing a pair of brown rimmed glasses that leaned more to the left because of his crooked nose, the exposed skin on the top of his head shone in the light, and his mouth was buried in a sea of burly hair that pretended to be a beard, but Wren knew was really a small dog in desperate need of water and a good grooming.
          "What do you need?" Wren asked.
          The question was a simple one but even a simple question was enough to give the man a complex array of emotions. He squirmed as he tried to stammer out the words.
          "J-Jason s-says he hurt his b-back when he fell off of his c-chair. H-he says he n-needs to go home."
          Wren tried to suppress a smile when she thought of Jason in any amount of pain that would cause him distress but was also aware that he was probably just using it as an excuse to get out of work early. Jason, miraculously, always appeared to have a date lined up with some poor suspecting girl at the school who hadn't yet realized that his teenage mortician vibe was not an act of satire. Most likely, he had found such a gullible girl and had forgotten that he was supposed to be at work that day, seizing whatever opportunity he could to take advantage of the fact that his boss wouldn't ever do anything about it.
          "So, what do you need?" Wren asked, praying that it wasn't what she thought it was going to be. She liked her little butter churn area. All she had to do was sit, churn butter, and listen to music with headphones under her bonnet. It was not a gig that she was keen to give up.
          "I-I need you to r-run the cash register," Mr. Gildrey said.
          Her heart sank. She hated the cash register. She had no problem handling money or giving correct change, or any other nonsense that hiring managers seem to believe is a difficult thing to learn if given the opportunity. There was one talent that was impossible to learn and that was the ability to speak to people who automatically assumed another person was less than human, purely because that person was hired to take their money for a product. Wren was not great at that. Sure, she could smile and laugh and indulge an individual to the point where bile rose in the back of her throat, but It killed her soul every time she did it. She feared that if she did it too often, she may find herself in the news as the most prolific serial killer on the eastern seaboard without any recollection as to how she became that or where she had buried the bodies.
          She wondered where she would keep her trophies.

         Almost every tourist came expecting the attraction to be free, as if they were used to going to places and having people tell them that they cost nothing. They would ask what the prices were and complain about them from the moment they found out, to the moment they paid, to the moment they left, making snide comments about highway robbery. She always told them that they didn't have to come in, but it never seemed to lessen their thoughts that it was she who had opened their wallets for them, stolen their cards, and paid for tickets for them and their families with only the most nefarious intentions in mind.
         Plus, it didn't help that the ticket booth was open to the elements and the only thing to keep her warm was an old space heater that struggled, and failed, to warm the place faster than the cold could freeze it.
         "Can't Patrick run that cash register?" she asked, fully aware of the desperation in her voice.
         "N-no. He's leading t-tours," Mr. Gildrey said, rubbing his head and looking genuinely apologetic.
         "Anthony?" she asked.
         "Toilets."
         "Crystal?"
         "G-giftshop."
         "Randall?"
         "He's in the t-tech room."
         "Do I have to?" she asked, hoping that maybe there was an option he had forgotten and he would magically change his mind and slap a bit of money in her hand for the emotional inconvenience. Instead, he shook his head slowly, turned, and shuffled down the hall to his office to monitor the surveillance cameras. She knew that he would take the register himself if he weren't so bad with people, which was the only thing that kept her from burning the whole place down to the ground as she willed her feet to walk back to the front.
         "I hear you're taking over while I'm gone," Jason said, smirking as Wren once again entered the den of the unholy.
         "I hear the zipper to your skin suit broke and now you need to go home and fix it before people realize you're just a walking, talking, pile of moldy cheese," she said, pulling an intact chair from the corner and seating herself in front of the window.
         "This is how you sit down, by the way," she said, making a show of organizing all of the informational pamphlets in front of her.
         "You think you're funny," Jason said, sneering.
         "I do," she said, clearing the junk food off the desk that he had left behind, "I really, really do."
         "Well, you're not," he said, lingering in the doorway. She wished he would just leave already, but he really was like a fungus, minus any sort of noticeable body hair. His arms and legs were smooth, like a baby's testicle, she had noticed.
         Wren gasped loudly, grabbed her forearm, and threw herself to the floor in a pained lurch.
         "Oh God," she cried, "Your opinion! It hurts!"
         Jason's face only got nastier.
         "Please," Wren continued, crawling towards him in pained movements, "I... I don't think I can recover from this one."
         "You're on thin ice," Jason said.
         "And the ice! It doesn't soothe like it's supposed to! It's too thin!"
         "Keep laughing, funny girl. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with Jacquelyn Weldin," he said, leaving the kiosk.
         As he departed, Wren felt the air clear as if a toxic smog had once occupied it. She was pleased that he was finally gone but still felt disgusted at the knowledge that he actually was going on a date. With Jacquelyn Weldin too, which was absurd in itself. She was one of the most attractive Sophomores at Salem High and the idea that she had agreed to a date with Jason was nothing short of a bastardization of this thing she called reality. Jason was the type of high schooler most would think spent his free time alone in a dark basement with nothing but a tube of lotion for a friend and a small pillow with a report to file with the local precinct. For a moment, she considered letting Mr. Gildrey know about Jason's plan, but she knew it would make no difference. He'd be asked to not lie, Jason would snort derisively at his boss, scrape the grease from his forehead with a rusted knife and then he would do it again the next week and repeat the cycle. Shrugging it off, she rearranged her costume, got off the floor, and stood in front of the teller window awaiting her first customer.




         It was a hole in the woods, some would say if they saw it. Truth be told, it was only an almost hole because, technically speaking, it didn't exist. Not really. Yet, if someone were to see it, they would automatically assume that it was a hole. That was only if someone could see it, though. Very few people could and, of those very few people, even fewer would be able to see what was at the bottom. As the sun poured into the almost hole, it moved. Its muscles tensed and coiled as its blood began to heat and stir it from its dreamless sleep. It let out a small mew, and stretched out as far as it could, basking in the sun. The hole shimmered and contorted, blinking in and out of existence, as things of that non-nature do when a twig snapped in the distance.
         It sat up, alert, straining its neck as it listened. Another twig cracked under pressure and leaves rustled in a consistent and deliberate pattern. Its stomach rumbled as it contemplated the noise. Something told it that there was something else that needed to be done but it was groggy, and the thoughts weren't forming right. It was a lot to ask of something that had just woken up to recall relevant and potentially important information. It was cruel, really, if one were to really think about it. That said, it was really an act of justice if one were to disregard said thing entirely and just go on about its business, right? It continued that thought process for a moment before it decided that, no, something was telling it that what it was supposed to do was not something to be ignored. Its stomach rumbled again, louder this time, shaking the almost walls with the vibrations. It shrugged to itself as it hooked one long claw into the wall after the other, beginning its climb up. The figuring could come later. It was always easier to think on a full stomach.




         "I'd like one ticket please," Lizzie said firmly, pushing a small dirty wad of money across the surface in front of her. She smiled as genuinely as possible, showing off every single one of her teeth.
         "I hate you," Wren replied from the other side of the counter.
         "That is extremely unprofessional," Lizzie frowned, "I guess I need to take my patronage somewhere else."
         "Go away."
         "No, no you're right. Where else will I be able to find such fine people in such authentic garments? You've convinced me to give you all of my money."
         Wren wiggled on the other side, trying to tuck in whatever could be tucked in, unsuccessfully.
         "I'm so bored and no one told me my shift today got swapped with Erica's so I'm stuck here," Lizzie said, leaning backward over the counter and staring straight up at the sky. It was chilly but Lizzie didn't mind the frost as much as her sister did. She wore a jacket, but it was light and didn't really do much to separate her skin from the wind and temperature.
         "Then go hang out with your friend, what's his name. You know, the weird one who doesn't leave his room ever."
         "Teddy," Lizzie said, holding up a stern finger to indicate the offensive nature of Wren's forgetful attitude, "Is, as we say, busy."
         "Everyone says busy. You guys aren't the only ones who say that."
         "It's a saying," Lizzie said.
         "It's stupid."
         "Whatever," Lizzie huffed, "He is otherwise preoccupied with his job."
         "What kind of job could Teddy possibly get with a name like Teddy?"
         Teddy was a streamer of video games; one of the lucky few who had asked themselves, Who would just sit down, watch me play video games, and pay me for the right to do it? To everyone's amazement, including their own, the answer was one metric fuck ton. Of course, being a streamer wasn't as easy as most people liked to believe. They assume that all one does is sit in front of a computer playing games like your virginity counted on it, but there was really a lot to it. It involved a lot of self-marketing in order to get the viewership that would eventually lead to people wanting to advertise on your stream. It required a lot of animated activity, or witty comments with all else failing, in order to make people ok with sitting there watching you for hours on end. And, above all, it required an ass with the pliability and durability of an Elon Musk style proposal for a candy wrapper. Teddy had the ass. Now, he just needed a market. Streamer after streamer popped out once they realized that they could make an obscene amount of money doing what no one wanted to pay them to do before. It had saturated the market to the point that Teddy was having a difficult time finding an audience. Lizzie liked to remind him that all Teddy played appeared to be farm-oriented games where he was either growing, picking, or selling crops. Teddy insisted that this was just a gimmick to attract people to something weird and that he too preferred the gameplay and deep unabating story of FIFA.
         "How?" Wren asked, truly perplexed.
         "Doesn't matter. The point is that he's home making, in his words, mad bank, then he called himself a leet [1]and I'm pretty sure he screamed something vaguely racist at a small child over his headset. But he said he'd call me later and until that later comes, I am bored and I have chosen you to be the one to relieve me of this curse," Lizzie said, spreading her arms across the counter and hugging the freezing metal with her angst.