An Acorns Flash Fiction Feature
By: Jake Stein
I called him by the waterfront, where the black river reminded me what I loved about the city and hated about the world. “I’m sorry for doing… what I did,” I said, between vaping my chemicals.
(Yeah, they were the bad kind of chems, but not the really bad kind.)
“Relax about it,” Beo said over the phone—always over the phone these days. “Nothing to apologize for.” And I could hear his wolfish grin, almost see it.
Almost.
I walked through the night alongside restless waters, puffing clouds. I chose not to check the reflection of my new haircut in a passing store window. “Well, just know… I won’t ever say those magic words again.”
“Never?” Beo sounded disappointed. “It’s not bad for me, at least.”
The spotlight of a streetlamp crawled past on the sidewalk, and I gazed down at the fading “X” on my wrist—an entry stamp from the last time Beo was in town, when I went to see his karate competition. But I couldn’t stare at that “X” on my skin, couldn’t think about what it meant, or I’d start crying again. “I just hate being this far away. I miss your face, and your hair. All of your hair—”
Ahead, someone stepped out of the shadows.
“Speaking of hair,” said this big stranger, who was attempting to block my path, “I really like yours.”
First off, I’m quick. You better believe I skirted around him, no problem.
Keep walking, keep walking.
But his footsteps grew louder. He was coming after me.
“Something wrong?” asked Beo, still on the line.
“Same old crap,” I muttered, picking up my pace. A glance over my shoulder told me Mr. Creep was fully giving chase, barreling through a cloud of his own chems—which, judging by the smell, were the reallybad kind.
“Get out of there,” Beo said, but I was already running.
“Didn’t you hear me?” the creeper called after me. “I love your hair! Can’t you take a compliment?”
Inhaling my chems, I turned onto a main street and waved down a cop, but he drove past. Probably figured there was no point in wasting his time on some chemmed-out low-life.
“Hey you!” This asshole was whistling and everything. “Don’t even turn around, I love how you look when you’re running away!”
Beo was panicking in my ear. “Talk to me. What’s going on?”
I didn’t answer, too focused on escaping this lunatic. Tearing along the waterfront, through an intersection, cars honking. No matter how much I tuned out the shouting behind me, I couldn’t tune out the footsteps, getting closer…
From thousands of miles away, Beo said, “The magic words. Say the magic words!”
I knew he was right, but as I swung around a corner, I blurted, “I can’t. It hurts me.”
“Hurts?”
“I mean, to only see you for…” But I was lost now, shooting through dark alleys, the kind where people don’t exist, only echoing sounds like the sound of the creep gaining on me.
He called out, “Don’t make me hurt you!”
And yeah, that was it. I took Beo’s suggestion.
Spinning on my heels, I dragged my chems, filling every little pocket inside me with sweet vapor—and released the cloud in my pursuer’s direction. In that split-second I felt like a dragon; I felt amazing. For once.
Before he even knew what hit him—or should I say, who—I spoke the words. The incantation I’d stumbled upon; the spell which was, I hoped, about to save my life.
The voice which fell from my lips was not my own, but the voice of a thousand sorrows, the not-sound before a car crash.
“I don’t want to call you my ex.”
For a second, reality refused to break. My cloud merely floated past my assailant, dissipating around him. No spell.
Backpedaling, I found myself up against a wall. This alley was a dead-end.
The big guy was close enough that I could smell his wheezing dumpster-breath. He had that chemmed-out look of a festered turd with raggy skin, and his bloodshot eyes were crawling all over me. “Don’t wanna call me your ex, huh? That’s skipping a few steps. I haven’t even told you I love you yet…” But he trailed off, glancing over his shoulder.
My exhaled cloud was reappearing, expanding to fill the alley like fog. From those vapors a shape emerged, taking humanoid form. The eyes appeared first, yellow and leering. Then came the snout, the ears, the whiskers. The lean-muscular body covered in hair. He was standing on two legs, tail whipping angrily, drool hanging from snarling lips. He looked even more like a monster than usual.
My monster.
“What the—” And that’s all this creep could say, as Beo emerged from the mist.
I don’t think it would have taken more than two punches, but Beo gave him three. Beo, the wolfman I’d met in a different city where we both used to live. The black belt who’d been waiting for this moment his entire life.
I didn’t blame him for taking the third swing.
It was enough to send the creep off with a limp and a trail of blood. Darkness swallowed him, and in that instant it was like he’d never existed. A passing shadow of a night which could have gone so much worse… a night which would probably never leave me. But I would pretend—until arriving home, locking the door behind me, and stepping into a hot shower—that this attack had been nothing more than a nightmare, no more real than this version of Beo standing before me.
Beo’s mist-copy turned and smiled, massaging his fist. “Funny, it stings like I’m actually there.”
“Thank you,” I managed, and that was all. My throat knotted with tears. Looking at the doppelganger of my boyfriend was like poking a raw wound inside me.
Always hurts to see someone you love when you know they’re about to disappear.
Indeed, Beo’s cloud was already beginning to fade. It never lasted long. “Hey, don’t cry,” he said, even as he evaporated. “I’m gonna call you right back, okay? This won’t be the last time I see you.” And his vicarious presence wrapped his arms around me.
But I felt no embrace, only condensation.
“I do these chemicals to fill the space between us,” I said suddenly, shocked by the truth of it.
“We are too far away, I agree.” His voice was becoming quieter, quieter. “But I can’t afford to move out there, and with your mom, you can’t come out here…” And the cloud finally dispersed, those last wet tendrils of my breath-spell slinking away.
Eventually I found the river again and followed it. Beneath a streetlamp I studied my hand, trying to find the “X.” But the ink seemed to have completely faded now, like my chem vapors had washed the stamp away.
Beo called me, but I didn’t answer. I was thinking about how he hadn’t mentioned my haircut. Maybe hadn’t noticed.
I took another hit of my chemicals, the bad kind, and kept walking.
About the author:
Jake Stein’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Lightspeed Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Aurealis.
