Caitlin Kiernan - Alabaster

"Where you goin', sport? I thought you wanted to see my panther?"

"Let go of me. I told you I ain't got three dollars."

"Hey, that's right. You did say that. So that makes this sort of like stealin', don't it? That means you owe me somethin'," and he spins her roughly around so she's facing the cage again. The thing inside has changed so much that there's hardly any trace of the cowering, filthy woman left; it paces restlessly, expectantly, from one side of the cage to the other, its burning, ravenous eyes never leaving Dancy for very long. And she can still hear its animal voice inside her head.

You were supposed to save me, it lies. You were supposed to set me free.

"Big ol' cat like that one there," the old man says and spits a stream of Beech-Nut onto the concrete, "she'll just about eat a fella out of house and home. And seein' as how you owe me that three bucks-"

"Do you even know what you've got in that cage, old man? You got any idea?"

"Near enough to know she ain't none too picky in her eatin' habits."

"You don't hold a thing like that with steel and locks," Dancy says, matching the monster's gaze because she knows this has gone so far that it'll be worse for her if she looks away.

"Oh, don't you fret about locks. I might not be old Mr. Merlin at the goddamn round table, but I can cast a binding good enough. Now, tell me somethin', Dancy," the old man says and shoves her nearer the cage. "How far d'you think you'd get after that mess you made down in Bainbridge? You think they were gonna just let you stroll away, pretty as you please?"

And she reaches for her grandfather's straight razor, tucked into the back pocket of her jeans, not her knife but it's plenty enough to deal with this old wizard.

"You think there's not gonna be a price to pay?" he asks, watching the thing in the cage, and he doesn't even notice until it's too late and she's folded the razor open. The blade catches the dull, cloud-filtered sun and shines it back at her.

"Whole lot of good folks out there want you dead, sport. Lots of folks, they want you fuckin' crucified. It's only a matter of time before some ol' boy puts you down for what you done."

But then she slips free of his big, callused hands, and before the old man can say another word, she's slashed him twice across the face, laying open his wrinkled forehead all the way to the bone and slicing a three-inch gash beneath his chin that just misses his carotid artery. The old man yelps in pain and surprise and grabs for her, but Dancy steps quickly to one side and shoves him stumbling towards the cage. He trips and goes down hard on his knees; the wet crunch of shattered bone is loud, and the thing that isn't a woman or a panther stops pacing and lunges towards the bars and the old man.

"Yeah, that may be so," Dancy says, breathless, blood spattered across her face and T-shirt and dripping from the razor to the cracked grey concrete. "But you won't be the one to do it."

And then the thing is on him, dragging the old man up against side of the cage, its sickle claws to part his clothes and flesh like a warm fork passing through butter, but he only screams until it wriggles its short muzzle between the bars and bites through the top of his skull. The old man's body shudders once and is still. And then the thing looks up at her, more blood spilling from its jaws, flecks of brain and gore caught in its long whiskers.

"Well?" it growls at her. "You gonna do what they sent you here to do, or you just gonna stand there all damn day with your mouth hanging open?"

Dancy nods her head once, wanting to tell it that there's no way she could have ever opened the cage door, even if she had the key, even if the angel hadn't told her to kill them both.

"Then you best stop gawking and get to work."

And Dancy wipes the bloody razor on her jeans, then folds it shut, and she runs back up the steps to the cluttered porch and the noisy screen door and the shadows waiting for her inside the little store.

It doesn't take her very long to find what she's looking for among the dusty shelves and pegboard wall displays, a cardboard box of Diamond kitchen matches and a one-gallon gasoline can. She takes out a handful of the wooden matches and puts them in her pocket, tears away the strip of sandpaper on the side of the box, and puts that in her pocket, as well. Then Dancy gets a paper bag from behind the cash register and also takes some of the Campbell 's chicken and stars soup and a handful of Zero bars, some Slim Jims and a cold bottle of Coca-Cola. While she's bagging the food, she hears thunder, and at first she thinks that its the angel, the angel come back around to check up on her, to be sure she's doing it right. But then there's lightning and the tat-tat-tat of rain starting to fall on the tin roof, so she knows it's only another thunderstorm. She rolls the top of the paper bag down tight and tells herself it's not stealing, not really, that she's not taking much and nothing that she doesn't need, so whatever it is, it isn't stealing.

Over the staccato patter of the rain against the roof, she can hear the noises the cat thing in its cage is making as it tears the old man apart. She thinks about looking for a key to the cage, no matter what the angel has said. The old man might have it hidden in the register, or somewhere in the clutter behind the counter, or in an old snuff tin somewhere. She might get lucky and find it, if it's even there to be found, if she spends the rest of the afternoon searching the Texaco station. Or she might not. And anyway, there would still be the binding spell, and she wouldn't know where to begin with that.

"It's just another monster," Dancy says, as though saying the words aloud might make it easier for her to believe them. And she remembers her mother reading to her from the Bible about King Darius and Daniel and the angel God sent down to shut the mouths of the lions in the pit. Would it even be grateful, the thing in the cage, or would it try to kill her for setting it free? And would her angel shut its mouth, or would it let the thing eat her the way it's eating the old man? Would that be her punishment for disobeying the angel's instructions?

Then there's another thunderclap, louder than the first, loud enough to rattle the windows, and this time the lightning follows almost right on top of it, no seconds in between to be counted, no distance to calculate, and Dancy takes her brown paper bag and the matches and the gas can and goes out to the pumps. The screen door slams shut behind her, and she finds her duffel bag right where she left it with the old man, beneath the corrugated tin awning. The rain's not coming down so hard as she thought, but she has a feeling it's just getting started. She opens the duffel and tucks the paper bag inside with her clothes and the carving knife, then Dancy shoulders the heavy duffel again and steps out from beneath the cover of the awning.

The rain feels good, the soothing tears of Heaven to wash her clean again, and she goes to the pump marked regular, switches it on, and fills the gasoline can to overflowing. Then she lays the nozzle down on the ground at her feet, and the fuel gushes eagerly out across the gravel and the mud and cement. Dancy takes a few steps back, then stands there in the rain and watches the wide puddle that quickly forms around the pumps. She wrinkles her nose at the fumes, and glances up at the low purple-black clouds sailing past overhead. The rain speckles her upturned face; it's cold, but not unpleasantly so.

"Is this really what you want from me?" she asks the clouds, whatever might be up there staring down at her. "Is this really what happens next?" There's no answer, because the angel doesn't ever repeat itself.