Constance Estela sat up in a bed that she knew well enough, but still considered strange. She turned over to see exactly what she'd expected to see, a bit of the bald head peeking out from the covers. Vinny's studio apartment reeked of alcohol, a mix of drinks from The Invisible Scorpion and his own collection of bottles with guys' names on the labels.
Her head didn't hurt, which was both a blessing and a shame. She nudged the body lying beside hers.
"Vin," she whispered, as if his parents were just outside and might not approve of him having a girl over.
No response. The life of a barkeep was a nocturnal one. She wondered what time it was.
She got out and walked to the ottoman, that curious piece of furniture, equal part footrest, coffee table and storage. Evidence of last night's debauchery stood atop it: paper cups, bucket of what had been ice, cans of coke, bottle of Jim with a quart left.
And the TV remote. For a moment she was tempted. Would all the channels be flooded with coverages by the hour? Man gone missing, search party out in woods still.
"Connie, you are queen of all that's obscene," Vinny had panted in her ear as he collapsed automatically into his position as big spoon, near-delirious from the way she'd spent him.
Sweet of him to recognise her status as royalty, even if it was maybe the 20th time she'd heard him deliver the exact same line. But she hadn't rocked his world yet again simply because she wanted to feel something hard pushing in and out of her.
Last night she desperately wanted to forget the sound of a slaughter, and the vision of a shadow that couldn't have belonged to anything human.
After fixing a wake-me-up drink, she reached in her pocket and pulled out a square marble tablet. The size of a poker chip, it was a simple talisman, but it was priceless. She turned it about in her palm, admiring, not for the first time, how something so plain could magnify her abilities so much. There were no inscriptions, nothing to hint at its occult properties. But it had allowed her to keep her eyes on her nephew all night with him being none the wiser, and later, helped her restore calm to all the patrons of the Scorpion.
But what a surprise that had been, showing up and seeing him nursing a mug, his face cut out from the crowd. All by his lonesome at first, to be joined later by that kid who used to dress in drag. A heartfelt reunion as the two of them could summon. She almost hadn't recognised him, thanks to the dreads. She remembered the terrible music they made though. Sipping her bit of Jim with lukewarm coke, she wondered how much Ryan had shared, and how much the kid already knew. There had been too much understanding etched on that face, no matter how he tried to mask it.
Was he one of us? Or them? She already knew who she'd be dropping in on later in the day.
Behind her Vinny groaned, talking to some dream phantasm. The blinders were opened slightly, admitting shards of light that trailed over the covers.
She walked over and in a quick snatch severed their entrance into the room, submerged it once again in total darkness. A soft moan of thanks escaped Vinny.
When the lights of the Invisible Scorpion went out, the reaction was similarly ecstatic, an uproar of applause and hooting.
"Play 'Blackout,' Vinny! Blast it!" shouted one of the bikers, pointing to his Scorpions tee. The sleeves were torn off.
"Hell yeah!" belched one of his entourage. They were still tickled by the antics of one of their own. He had dashed into the trees earlier, where no paths led, and the boughs above and thorns below conspired against easy entry.
They wouldn't have been so merry if they'd seen it, just standing at the opening of the woods. Constance did, rather she had felt its grimy presence, and could only watched, frozen in place, as the oily apparition slowly drifted up to the patio. It was clad in shade, imagine a flame of black opal, with no discernible features. It had moved right past her nephew's table, straight for the bikers. There it stood and waited, she guessed, until it had made its selection.
Then it slowly returned to the boughs and the thorns, its chosen one in tow.
"The speakers are out too, you drunk fucks." Let it be recorded here for posterity's sake that the barman of the Invisible Scorpion, O Vincent, most righteous knight, had not faltered in his oathbound duty to restore order by assuring the patrons and keeping them grounded when perilous times threatened to prevail.
"Aw, shiet."
Then we all heard it, coming from the woods where the madman had gone. It sounded like the baying of a dog. Sing-song like. It might've been a coyote yipping somewhere up in the hills. No. Reality, cruel and depraved, wasted no time in dawning upon us all.
"Oh my god, it's human. It's human! Somebody's screaming from the woods!" said a woman who started wailing in unintended harmony with the faraway violence.
That's when the party ended. Call the cops, right? Reception was out, so the bikers took off for the station.
Constance Estela felt sick, and crawled back into bed. The talisman she gripped tightly in her palm. For all its power, compounded with her own, it didn't ease her helplessness.
It had looked right at her, the upright shadow with a wolf-shaped head. Only for a moment, as it passed by Ryan and his long-lost friend, but the message was clear. It knew her, and it wouldn't have given a second thought to switching targets.
* *
I was in a building, like a dormitory? Communal housing for factory workers, I think. It was cold. The lumbering machines trailed on just beyond the walls, where the outer limits of blinding fluorescent glow overhead gave the false impression of dawn, or that we were in heaven, and somehow still had to work. I was wondering around this place, hating every step of my bare feet on the gritty ramshackle floor. On every level I found men with their shirts off, or wrapped in towels, all scampering about, rushing for their rest. I climbed on. Reaching the top floor I entered one of the rooms, where numbers of them were squeezed. No furnishing other than the rusted frames that looked like salvages from long-haunted hospices, not even paint on the walls.
There were three women lying on the floor, propped up on their elbows. Fully dressed, in picture-perfect repose. They were glowing in the dark, and looked about them, at me, at the men, without any trace of reservation. They could've been hookers, but I doubted it. Even in dream consciousness I knew it was the single most out-of place image I'd ever witnessed. They were dressed bright, mystical.
Then I got a funny feeling, like the place was going to blow, and I ran down.
I heard it before I saw it, the sound of a bicycle clinking its way to me. I got out from behind a pillar and spotted it in the distance. No one was on it. Then a friend, I think, but not too sure, as the timer went off.
A bird was chirping by the egress window. I knew I was home, in the same life. My eyes opened slowly as awareness spread throughout my body, and again I knew the changes were still there.
That was some dream. A bizarro summary about my anxieties, I don't think. Job search, creative pursuits or lack thereof, shifting identity, all boiled into a gelatinous resin and sprinkled with all kinds of undecipherable symbols and dream logic. That ending though. Tick tock, tick tock.
Usually I would've gotten up and scrambled to the desk for my journal. Jot everything down before it slipped away into the thrash can of the ether. There was a lot of material in dreams that I found made for great lyrics, great story ideas.
I remained where I was, unmoving. Not necessarily because I was afraid to make a move and discover that my head hurt like hell. But, I don't know, it felt nice to just lie here. I felt cosy. And I was on the verge of remembering more, the reason why I had ended up walking the grounds of the dorm in the first place.
I must've still been drunk, that was the only viable explanation. Otherwise, I would've been quicker to realise that I wasn't alone in the room. Fuck that, I wasn't alone in the bed.