#tddtm

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You know this one is different. It looks just the same as always. No heavier and no less ornate, but you know. This is the one you’ve dreaded.

The envelope is a genuine antique. Aged to the soft, crumpled yellow of old parchment, it arrived mysteriously in your mailbox unblemished by a sender or return address. The wax seal is plum-colored and misshapen like a bruise with a stylized flower stamped at the center: five tapered petals, a star of blushing indigo. You hesitate before you rip it open, unfolding five pages of vintage letter paper adorned with calligraphic penmanship. The formality is jarring spread across a cheap folding table.

“Child of Mandragora,” you are addressed in elegant cursive scrawl, “the time has come for you to return home.”

You should read it carefully but you don’t have the patience, skimming empty platitudes, stupid questions, irritating assumptions, flattery, poetic turns of phrase, hollow words from a stranger who claims to love you. You used to look forward to these. Used to believe, unquestioningly, everything they said. Love is the greatest wish of any child adrift and unanchored, no matter how strange. You never wondered how these letters made their way to all of your foster homes, or how they came like clockwork for every birthday, holiday and school year milestone. You only cared about the sweet words they held, the love they proclaimed and the promises they made.

Someone out there loves me, you always believed, no matter what happened. Someone will come and save me. 

Here, at last, after you’ve aged out of the system and clawed your way into a miserable life of your own, sitting in your shitty shoebox apartment with mold speckling the ceiling and generations of flies caught in the window screen, it finally happens. The letter you’ve always wished for arrives years too late.

“Everything has been prepared for your arrival,” it says. The penmanship gains an uncharacteristic messiness here, loose and oddly spaced as though the writer could not contain their excitement. “Your chambers have been furnished with the necessities, though I have left ample room for anything you would like to bring with you. The day of your return shall be one of feasts and celebration. The House will suspend official operations and all members shall be recalled so you may have an opportunity to become acquainted with your true family in your true home.”

That’s it, more or less. There are some weak apologies, some insistence that the wait was necessary, some more assurances that you are precious, perfect and more beloved than you could ever know, but no explanations. No acknowledgement of how long you’ve waited or what you’ve endured. A printed ticket is tucked between the fourth and fifth pages, informing you that you’re expected at the train station early tomorrow for a one-way trip to Belvedere Point. The flourishing signature at the bottom of the last page is illegible save for a capital “O.” 

You think about ripping it up and burning the scraps. Maybe you should. Maybe that’s the wisest decision; certainly the safest one. Decades of disappointment and the pangs of adulthood gave you the distance necessary to understand the freakishness of these letters. No faceless stranger should be able to track you so efficiently. You think it might be a relative. Your “true kin” from your “true home,” someone who thinks blood ties mean anything when you’ve always had to fend for yourself. Now they expect you to drop everything and come back.

But you don’t burn it. You don’t even shred it, or throw it out, or fold it up and put it away. You sit there and stare uncomprehending at words that another version of you, long dead, would have given anything to read, and you feel so many bright and blistering things at once that they turn to the muddy color of every paint on a palette mixed together, leaving you numb. 

What am I supposed to do with this? you think. 

You don’t go, for starters. Obviously, you don’t go. All that sweet talk and not a single question about who you are now, what you do, what you like, what you dream of. Just a ticket to a place you’ve never been and complete confidence that you’ll do as you’re told. You don’t know these people and they don’t know you, no matter what they say. So you won't go. It would be insane to go.

The ticket is an awkward email printout, full-page size. Extraneous information at the top, barcode at the bottom. It’s the page you look at the longest, imagining things that won’t happen and people you won’t meet, because you aren’t going to go. You know you’d only end up disappointed. 

You know that, and you still stare at the ticket, and an hour passes in indecision. 

Thunder rolls along the apartment roof and throttles the windows in their frames. You get yourself together. No time to worry about anything but getting to work before the downpour. The letter stays right where it is, spread across the table, the ticket off to the side. You give them one last look before you leave it behind.

Standing beneath the gray awning of a bus stop, you look up Belvedere Point on your phone. Just for fun. Just to see. It’s a place you only know in an abstract sense; a name with no face, letters on signs that point elsewhere. Seaside Chicago, they call it apparently, a consistent top three contender in Hidden Gems of New England listicles. It’s got art deco skyscrapers, Cape Cod houses, yacht-filled marinas, old churches, streets lined with lanterns that they wrap garlands and string lights around in the winter, blue skies and brownstone apartments and hilly boardwalks descending onto beaches. And you know there’s more to it, that it can’t all be pretty and pristine, but seeing it and thinking about handwritten letters on fancy paper gives you an awful feeling. 

The bus comes squealing to a stop in front of you, full of the languid sort of crowd that comes in the lull between lunch and the evening rush. People fidget nervously when you get on. The boldest inch away, abandoning their seats entirely for the more congested end furthest from you. They stare like caged animals. You look out the window and your weary reflection looks back. You wonder about the buses in Belvedere Point.

The rain’s coming down in sheets by the time you get to work. There’s a bad storm brewing and the sky keeps getting darker. You fight the wind to keep your umbrella open, pushing towards the superstore glow at the end of a strip mall where Chateau Chic looms over its own stretch of sparsely occupied parking lot. You’re greeted by a reluctant coworker whose name you should really know but you won’t be here long and you both know it.

“How about this weather?” he says.

“Sure is something,” you say. And then he wanders off, pretending that something needs doing. Chairs pushed closer to tables. Bedspreads rearranged, retucked, refolded. Anything to be elsewhere. There’s just a handful of you on second shift and they all make themselves scarce when you show up. It’s no different than the people you see on the bus; downtown; in line at the grocery. You lasted a couple weeks at the front of the store before your boss put you in the back handling inventory instead. 

The kinds of customer complaints you generate are nonspecific and unactionable. “Just kind of creepy,” people say, but no, you didn’t say anything off, and no, you didn’t really do anything wrong, and well, no, actually, you weren’t the one aggressively pitching a five year warranty on couch springs and upholstery like a used car salesman, but that doesn’t matter. Sometimes you’re elsewhere in the store entirely, putting another fake plant on a shelf full of them, and a couple looking for new patio furnishings will feel the need to ask for management to make sure you’re supposed to be there, doing that. 

Your boss pokes her head out of the office in the back. She wants to talk, she says. Just real quick, she promises. It feels a little too soon for the shaky excuse of position cuts but she’s around you more often than most of your bosses and has gotten wary even faster. You slip inside and she hurriedly assures you that you don’t need to close the door behind you, and really, don’t worry, this won’t take long. You pull up a chair and she leans back further in hers. She’s smiling like she’s got a gun to her head and you think this is probably it.

And then the power goes out. 

It all quits at once. The vents stop humming. The music dies, one last squeal of melodic synth fading into an echo. Total darkness consumes the store, too sudden for your eyes to adjust. A few people shout in surprise. You fumble for the flashlight on your phone. Your boss is half out of her chair by the time you can see anything again, looking alarmed as she rises to her feet.

“Everyone alright?” she calls.

Someone says, “Yeah.” Someone waves across a sea of heavy vintage bookshelves and king sized beds. Little phone lights come on across the store. It’s pitch black everywhere but the very front where it’s only dark gray, the rain casting slithering shadows on the windows. 

“Door’s stuck,” somebody calls from the front. 

Someone else screams, and then stops screaming just as fast. Shock holds everything frozen in its grasp for an agonizing moment and then all hell breaks loose. 

“Oh god—oh my god!” shouted and echoing, and running and tripping and scrambling, chairs toppling over and ceramics shattering, shelves teetering and wood splintering in a panicked rush to get out. And someone—a man; a stranger, not a coworker, not a voice you recognize—someone saying something, and saying it again louder and angrier and too close to where you are. Your boss is gone and you’re not going to look for her, stumbling your way to the wide double doors that lead to the warehouse.

You don’t get that far. Someone snags you, catches your arm and drags you to a bruising stop, manhandling you closer and saying, “Listen to me, listen, don’t fight, I need you to listen—”

You twist and lash out and that makes him angry, makes him have to wrestle you around and drag you to the floor with him, and you know you’ll die if he gets you still. You know, in flashes, in heartbeat flashes of lightning, that he’s got a gun or a knife or something gray that glints that can hurt you, so scream and flail and you bite when you get the chance. He’s got gloves on, leather from the smell and the creak of it when he tries getting a grip on your windpipe, but you latch on like a wild dog anyway and find flesh where his sleeve rides up. You taste skin; sweat; blood; meat. He screams and kicks you in the head.

It’s all in and out. Nothing, then everything, then ears ringing. Pitch black and then shadows and shapes. Vertigo, and then you’re crawling, one arm, the other, dragging yourself behind a heavy, angular something that you can’t quite see in the dark, dropped your phone and can’t remember how, when, where. You curl up on the floor and wait for the hurt and the throbbing to stop. You fade and then you snap awake, jolted out of a daze by voices breaking the quiet. It’s eerily, hauntingly quiet except for two people talking.

“…really fucked that up.” 

“Looks fine to me. No witnesses.”

A sigh. “No intel, either. You even ask anybody?” 

A scoff. “Yeah, and what fucking difference did it make? Nobody knew anything. Let’s go.”

“Can’t leave yet. We’re supposed to confirm—”

“He’s supposed to confirm. Look at him go, he’s doing it now.”

“You’ve never done a Styx job, have you? They’re not gonna like this.” 

“Why? We did everything—fucking shit, goddammit!” A pained hiss and then movement; leather peeling off, a sleeve pushed out of the way. “Fuck, what the fuck! Shine a light over here, I think I’m bleeding. Hurts like a bitch.”

“Bleeding?” 

“Got bit,” through gritted teeth. “Fuck, it really hurts. It’s burning all up my arm.”

Coarse laughter. “What, was one of ‘em rabid?” A faint glow. Then a primal, choked sound of disgust. “Oh Jesus.”

A little louder now, “What is that? Is it blood?” 

Louder, “It’s your fucking skin. You’re—god, it’s falling off, man!” 

Screaming, “What do you mean it’s falling off what the fuck do you mean!”

Your head’s still spinning, pain still radiating from the bruise on your scalp where he hit you, but you have to get out of here. Have to try. It takes everything you have to roll over and then lay there, nauseous with pain and catching your breath, staring up at

eyes.

Your pulse starts thundering again. That’s not—that doesn’t make sense. It’s too dark. But there’s someone standing over you and you can see their eyes in the dark the same way you’d spot an animal on the side of the road, a glinting leer from the ditch as your headlights sweep past. You can tell they move. That they come closer, crouching beside you. That they lean in and take loud, audible sniffs of the air and shut their eyes, those twin silver gleams hidden for a moment before they shine bright again. Fingers, tipped sharp like claws, caress your cheek.

“Aren’t you peculiar?” the thing murmurs. Human after all, or something close to it. Its eyes grow distant again, looming high above. It looks over the back of the couch you tried to hide behind. “Is this the one that bit you?” it calls.

The men are still panicking when they come rushing over. One shines a light directly into your eyes and you wince, squeezing your eyes shut. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t fucking know,” one of them babbles. “Maybe? Yeah? I guess, yeah, I didn’t finish the job. Look at my fucking hand. What am I supposed to do?”

The light shuts off. You can’t see anything but spots for a minute but the dark smooths into silhouettes eventually. Two men and one thing pretending to be a man.

“You die. Within the hour, ordinarily, but this one hasn’t been eating properly,” the thing muses. “The Ferrymen offer their sincerest gratitude for your service. You have been tremendously useful, albeit through sheer incompetence.” You can’t tell what happens, only that it’s swift and comes without warning. Both of the men cry out in pain and then they crumple at the thing’s feet. Puddles of blood spread like ink across the floor.

You try to move. It doesn’t stop you. But it follows as you twist around and start to crawl again, walking beside you like a wolf trailing a limping rabbit. 

“And now you,” the thing says, sounding intrigued and furious. “What am I to do with you? What else can I do but what the lords have asked of me?” It lowers its voice to a soft murmur, something almost tender. “Don’t they know what you do to me? The mere sight of you, the scent of your poisons, however diluted, on your breath, it’s…” You hear a long, trembling sigh and then you’re rolled onto your back again, pinned in place with the thing’s weight settling on your hips. It wears something leathery and form-fitting, coarse and flexible material that clings to slopes of solid muscle. It feigns humanity in ways you weren’t at all prepared for, a distinct bulge of arousal twitching against your core.

Its hips jolt in a short, involuntary movement and it chokes back a moan, a claw pinning your shoulder to keep you down as though it fears coming any closer. Its breath comes in quick pants and it works itself into frenzied anger again.

“And they call my master ‘mooncalf.’ You are an abomination. A bastard, only half-formed and undeserving. You…you…!”

You’re going to die. You don’t have a fucking clue what’s happening, what this thing is, what shattered your entire world tonight, but it’s going to kill you. You feel its muscles tense, the air shift, its eyes lunge closer, and then it’s gone. Something else stirs the shadows and drags it away. You don’t wait to see what awful thing might happen next. You crawl, and then you shove yourself up to your knees, and then you limp, and stagger, and run. Hands in front of you, feeling your way through a lightless maze, you keep moving until the sounds of animals snarling is far behind you.

You don’t know how you get out. You aren’t thinking, aren't feeling the bruises and scrapes you get blindly throwing yourself forward into coffee table corners and sofa frames. You just keep moving until you’re standing in the rain, under the halo of the parking lot lights. It’s shockingly cold and that snaps you out of your fight-or-flight adrenaline haze long enough to realize you're tired, afraid, and hurt all over, and you don't know when the next bus is coming. 

Someone calls your name. 

You turn around and he’s right there. You’d scream if you had the energy. You didn’t hear him coming. He’s one of them, a monster with eyes that shine in the dark, but he might’ve fooled you in the light. You see some kind of bodysuit, the kind of dark, elegant garment that thieves and assassins wear in fantasy movies. Dark hair trimmed to the nape and bangs slicked down with rain. An angular jaw; a smile. His eyes are silver even beneath the shine, the irises a stark, striking color like the steel of a blade. He looks at you the way you have always wanted to be looked at—warmly, wanting, full of love—and you are even more afraid.

“Hello,” he says. He almost sounds breathless.

You don’t say anything. You don’t think you could speak if you wanted to.

“It’s wonderful to finally meet you.”

You stare at him. It takes a couple tries, swallowing, wetting your lips, taking deep breaths, but you manage to force out your voice. “I don’t…I don’t understand. I don’t know who you are or what you want.”