David Nickle - Monstrous Affections

“That’s right,” said swamp witch. “And whatever you say, it’s better for it.”

Tea-drinking man shrugged. And although he never seemed too inflated, he seemed to deflate then. He slumped a little, in fact.

“What did you think you would accomplish?”

Swamp witch shrugged now. What did it need to accomplish? She wondered. What was the point of this accomplishment anyhow — of taking your powers and making the world into a place of your dreams? Why look ahead — when all that was there were endings and misery? Why not make a pleasant place now?

“And you fester in your swamp,” said tea-drinking man, “wallowing in the muck with your insects and rodents and frogs. I’d drain that swamp, I was you.”

Swamp witch looked at him, and as she did, she saw another ending: one in which all of Okehole County was nothing but an embodiment of tea-drinking man’s hopes and dreams — victim of his regrets.

It was an end, all right — a point too long before she buried her own children and faced her own end. Swamp witch did not like to look upon ends long, but she couldn’t look away from this one: it filled up the horizon like a great big sunset.

“You have got the sickness,” she said. “The dreaming sick. You won’t now give it to me. And you won’t give it to our town. You won’t give it to this county.”

“I already done that,” he said simply, sadly almost.

— No he hasn’t, said dragonfly, buzzing up from the back of the shop. Hop on.

The tea-drinking man tried to grab her, but he was sore and half-paralyzed now from the Reverend’s bite, and he just knocked over a box of chewing tobacco and mumbled swearwords. Swamp witch felt her middle contract and the smoke and book get big and she flung her leg over the back of dragonfly. Tea-drinking man called after her: “You shouldn’t have!” but swamp witch already had, and she wouldn’t let the itchy virus of regret get at her now.

Swamp witch soared. She climbed again to the very top of her domain — the place where the dome of stars turned solid and fruit-drunk swallows’d stun themselves dead. Dragonfly set up there, buzzing beneath the sallow light of Sirius, and swamp witch leaned over to him and asked him what he’d meant by that.

And dragonfly whispered his answer with his wings, buzzing against the hard shell of the world so they echoed down to earth. Swamp witch peered down there — at her town, her people, who from this place seemed even tinier than she was now. She smiled and squinted: could almost make them out. There was little Linda Farley, her eyes dried up and a big old garden hoe in her hands; Jack Irving, with a red plastic gas can, riding shotgun in Harry Oates’ pickup; Bess Overland with a flensing knife and Tommy Balchy, beautiful young Tommy, with a big old two-by-four that’d had a nail driven through it. He was leading the senior class from the Okehole County High School, and a bunch of straggling ninth-graders, down Brevener Street, toward the front of old Albert Farmer’s smoke and book.

Swamp witch smiled a little, with sudden nostalgia. The last time she’d seen her folk like that had been before she’d met Albert — just before, when she’d been invited to leave her home town — on pain of death pretty well. She saw that so clearly, she knew, because it was so similar to her recollection of what was about to happen.

Tea-drinking man was going to pick up the telephone in Albert Farmer’s shop, dial a long-distance operator who hadn’t heard from Okehole County in Lord knew how long, and tell the others that he’d done it. “Symme’ry,” he’d say, then repeat slowly, “ sym-met-tree. Is restored. We got it.”

And at the other end, a voice that ululated like wind chimes would laugh and thank him and tell him that his cheque was in the mail, the board of directors was pleased, there was a new office with a window waiting for him, see you later and stop by the club when you get back. And tea-drinking man would with shaking hand hang up the phone, and step outside to survey his new town.

And then — like before, when swamp witch had come out of the pharmacy, the glamour fresh upon her, two smooth pebbles in her pocket and the knowledge that she could do anything — anything! — then, the town would set upon him.

Swamp witch had been faster than tea-drinking man would be. Swamp witch had also known the town, known it like her own soul practically, and she’d cut down the alleyway between Bill’s and the Household Hardware and muttered “glycol,” and vanished from their sight, leaving them all hopped up and pissed off with nothing they could do.

Slow, sick old tea-drinking man, who’d swapped his dreaming sickness for snake sick, wouldn’t have the same advantage.

They’d do to him what they couldn’t ever do to her.

And that would be the end.

—Think, she asked dragonfly, once they got that out of their system, tearin’ themselves up a witch, actually beatin’ one — think it’d cure them of all the regret that fellow’d stoked ’em with?

Dragonfly pondered the question and finally said:

—You don’t ask a question like that unless you know the answer.

—You are a wise bug, said swamp witch.

—Not wise enough to know where you want to go next.

—Hmm.

Last time this had happened, swamp witch had figured she’d head straight for the wetlands and wait it out. Then, she’d been sidetracked by a game of checkers and the promise of certainty. This time, as she directed dragonfly down toward the mist of the wetland and past that to her tiny hutch, swamp witch vowed that she would not pause on her way there. She would spend the next six days in the swamp, thinking about what she’d do on the seventh. It would take a lot of careful thinking leading up to Saturday, because for the first time in her life, she’d be free that night.

Mitchell Owens spent much of his seventeen years a quiet boy, sitting very still in the darkest part of a very dark room. Most people could not figure him out, and as far as Mitchell was concerned, the feeling was mutual.

But his older friend Stefan wasn’t most people. He picked up on Mitchell’s vibe right away, as Mitchell was still squeezing into the back of Stef and Trudy’s Explorer in the parking lot of the Becker’s convenience store where they had met three times now. Stefan looked over his shoulder, looked again with his eyes a little narrower, then turned around so his knees were on the seat and his skinny chest was pressed against the headrest.

“Looks like you ate a bug, Mitch,” he said.

“Didn’t eat a bug,” said Mitchell.

“Just an expression,” said Trudy, eyeing him herself in the rearview mirror. She was haloed in the light of the Becker’s sign so from behind her blonde hair looked like the discharge off a Van de Graaff generator — black as midnight in the middle of her skull, leaping bolts of yellow on the rim. The rearview mirror told a different story: her eyes were in full illumination, a blazing rectangle of light.

Mitchell stammered when he spoke up:

“Th-they took away my laptop.”

“I see you don’t have it with you,” said Stefan. “By they I assume you mean the police.”

“Yuh.”

“Bummer,” said Stefan.

“You’ll get it back,” said Trudy.

“Did they follow you?” asked Stefan.

“No.”

“Why would they follow Mitch?” Trudy put the Explorer into gear, and tapped the gas so that Stefan lurched against the seat. “Fuck, woman!” he said, and Trudy said, “I’ve got a name. Sit forward. It’s more comfortable.”

“Fuck,” said Stefan again, and he winked at Mitchell. “Do up your seatbelt, Mitch. Woman — Trudy’s — in a mood.”