Christopher Buehlman - The Necromancer's House

And there she is, rolling around at an LGBT mixer in a wheelchair.

“How did you get paralyzed?”

“UTI.”

“Urinary—”

(She cuts off her imaginary interlocutor, who looks strangely like Shelly Bertolucci.)

“Unfortunate Toilet Incident.”

She doesn’t know how long she stands looking at the toilet (which could use a brushing), but a timid knock shakes her from her reverie.

“Just a minute.”

“No problem,” a girl says.

Wherever she is, they’re nice here.

She leaves the bathroom on weak knees, walks into a bright room—a coffee shop—filled with kids studying, old hippies talking politics, a mean-faced woman in line crossing and recrossing her arms, impatient to order her complicated drink. A reflective red truck goes by on the street outside and the whole room flashes red. Anneke opens the door, the little bell on top of which jingles, and the affable man making the cappuccino machine hiss says, “Come back and see us.”

“Thanks,” she says, walking onto the sidewalk.

Where am I?

How do I get back?

Am I really going to jump in a toilet?

Yes, I am.

Then you had better just go in there and do it because the longer you think about it, the worse this will be.

She glances back in the picture window of the coffee shop, sees an abandoned newspaper on a table. Makes the door ding-a-ling again. Looks at the paper. USA Today. Not helpful. Where did it come from? She sees the rack now, near the counter, approaches it as cross-arm-woman eyes her, suspicious she’ll try to cut.

The New York Times.

USA Today.

Ah!

The Dayton Daily News.

This townlet looks too small and clean for Dayton, though.

She spots a small rack on the other side of the coffee line, cranes her head to look; the woman winds up to say Excuse me , but the pleasant fellow at the counter shuts her down with, “What can I start for you?”

Anneke excuses herself behind the woman, plucks a paper, looks at it.

The Yellow Springs News.

Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Jesus Christ, this is real!

I should get out of here.

They’re waiting.

Are they?

Is this happening in real time?

She contemplates another trip to the bathroom, but a heavily bearded poet-type shuts himself in.

Fuck.

I’m not ready to jump in the toilet yet, anyway.

She gets in the coffee line.

Looks behind her, out the front window.

A saloon across the street, all wooden and old-timey.

Oh, that’s all I fucking need.

No, that’s EXACTLY what you fucking need.

Nerve.

She feels herself start to sweat.

Stays in line, gets a hot chocolate with the cash in her front pocket.

Sips the hot chocolate primly, looking now at the bathroom, now at the saloon. Drums her fingers on the table.

Okay, this isn’t your fault. You’re in a situation. You have to do this.

Wow, you’re cunning.

You’re through a magic portal. Whatever happens here won’t count.

[Yawn] Wow, you’re baffling.

You already know you’re going to do it. That, or head to the bus station and get yourself a ticket to Rochester. All you’re doing now is wasting time. Yours, Andrew’s, and fish-cunt’s.

Okay, that was powerful.

Higher power time.

I haven’t really got one.

I’m a phony in AA.

I’m only six months in since my last slip.

What’s six months?

During the next half an hour, Anneke uses the remaining ten in her pants to order one more hot chocolate and a decaf hazelnut latte. She moves her lips while talking to herself. After her third trip into the bathroom to stare down the throat of the potty, she says “Fuck it,” marches out the door,

Ding-a-ling!

and into the tavern across the street, where she orders three shots of Jack Daniel’s, only to be told they don’t serve hard liquor. She asks who does. Walks the block and a half to the Dayton Street Gulch, looking pissed about it.

Now she orders her three shots.

“Fifteen dollars,” says the bartender from a very red mouth sunk in a white-blond beard.

She reaches for her pocket.

Out of bills.

She sees herself tucking her wallet under the front seat of her Subaru.

I don’t have my wallet!

The bartender turns to the fridge, fetches out a beer for the fedora-wearing black man who had been wiping up the pool table with a college kid in an ironically name-tagged mechanic’s shirt. Anneke slams the first shot. She goes to the bathroom of the saloon (just to pee). Returns to the bar. Slams the second shot. Watches the soundless television, where some daytime TV judge reprimands a woman with an improbable weave. A series of commercials follows:

Detergent, with smiley MILF and smilier babies.

A self-help tape for getting rich through faith, presented by an oddly familiar-looking smiley hypocrite.

Diapers.

More babies.

Fuck daytime television anyway.

She downs the third shot.

“What’s your favorite brand of diaper?” she asks the bearded young bartender.

“No preference.”

“Very diplomatic of you,” she says.

He grins.

She used to be able to outdrink men, but now she’s a lightweight. The whiskey slips its hairy fingers around her heart.

It’s good.

Here comes the buzz.

It’s really good.

Maybe he’ll pour me two more.

I’ll ask if they take Visa first so he thinks I’m okay.

I want them.

But then I’ll be shitfaced.

Magic is dangerous enough sober, eh, brujo ?

Now or never.

Anneke slips out the door, is nearly struck by a van, runs across the gas station parking lot, nearly hits a stroller, sprints past the tavern and into the coffee shop,

Ding-a-ling-a-ling!!

finds the bathroom door latched!

She glances at the window.

Glimpses the bartender’s head between trucks and over cars. She could have played that cooler, acted like she was just going to her car, but adrenaline got her. He looks purposeful. He’ll vault when there’s a break in the traffic.

Anneke says “Fuck!” and kicks the bathroom door open, the tiny bolt tinkling on the floor.

“Fuck!” echoes a peaceful skinhead type with quarter-sized wooden disks in his ears. She yanks him out from in front of the toilet just before he starts urinating, then pushes him into the coffee shop, his pierced cock a-jiggle.

“Wh’th’fuck, man!” he says.

The counterman sees the push, starts to say “Hey!”

Before he can, both counterman and baldy see Anneke jump into the toilet and disappear.

More properly, she jumps at the toilet, but no part of her touches it.

Her cracked oxblood Docs vanish last, flailing.

Both men instantly forget her.

When the exasperated bartender flings open the door of the coffee shop— ding-a-ling-a-ling!!! —the counterman asks if there’s a problem.

The bartender scratches his beard.

“I’m sorry,” he says, realizing he was rough with the door but absolutely blanking on why.

He covers.

“Do you have any fives?”

The cabin is full of Russians. They have come from Florida, New Jersey, Little Odessa. A few Americans, stunned-looking relatives of Dragomirov’s late wife, all tall, sandy-blond, and blue-eyed, sit in their own corner of the back porch, almost on top of each other because there is no room. The intensity of the Russians scares them, these Lutherans whose stewardess-model married a man of dubious past employment and dangerous associations. This Dragomirov tribe is wild-eyed, dark-haired, quick to laugh, quick to anger.