AJ said one night, by way of greeting before I was even out of my hotel uniform. “All of these bugs? Just crawling on me? They just feel like tiny little rapists.”
“LITTLE DRAMATIC,” I thought, filling my wine glass as much as it could possibly go.
Somehow, Franzia was one of the healthier things I’d put my mouth on that year.
inworld
“Yeah! He thought I was a girl! Didn’t you hear it?” It’s hard to describe the look in their eyes, this sort of unhinged desperation. Almost as if my hearing this myself would make me go, ‘Oh my gods, AJ, you’re right, you’re the most tragically estrogen-laden person on the planet, clearly the only solution is to starve yourself and take chainsaw to your hip line, I can’t believe I’ve been so blind.’
“Oh, I’m sorry, AJ.” I said, muttering through an entirely hypothetical conversation as I hauled my things off the porch of a residence I no longer lived in. “I can’t afford to give you gas money to your job interview. As it turns out, the fucking UNSEELIE FAE KING was too busy cementing their ass indent in Arkady’s couch to drop off MY PROPERTY THEY TOOK to the middle of downtown so I had to pay for a BLOODY Saturday night Uber.”
I both liked and disliked the way she talked. Her cadence was that of a gameshow host, with enviable precision of verbiage but an over-acted quality to it. She gave the vague impression that she was imitating a scene in a film. “After I was kicked out– me, who was the centre of every problem– how long did it take for the situation to collapse?”
I smiled. Or it might have been a grimace. “About a month and one week.”
I didn’t know, at the time, that these were my life’s worst abusers, brought together by dubious circumstances. You’d think that amount of toxic coming that close to each other would actually cause a rift in the universe. Maybe it did.
I remember this starkly because when I first laid eyes on them in person, it was in that very room. The walls were painted startlingly crimson, there were Asian antiques all around. It reminded me a lot of– it reminded me a lot of–
I wasn’t well-versed in Tarot at the time, but we had fun chatting with the bartender. We told them we were a polycule out for Valentine’s Day, who was dating whom. I wish I could tell you what the other three drew. But goddamn if my ass didn’t draw the fucking Tower.
“When I end up being proven right about this, you owe me three crates of champagne!” I called down the stairs. I felt comforted by that. Finally, something coming out of my mouth that was more believably me.
Arkady was not amused. “That’s what I’m fucking talking about!” I heard him snap back from the kitchen.
Visarden had been half vampire, half elf. Because of course he was. I remember when Arkady had first unveiled his appearance to me. He’d bought sclera lenses and a long black wig that he’d tinted with the slightest hint of violet. I’d opened Snapchat to see Visarden beaming at me, looking like Holly Black’s muse come to life. “Yeah, so… Here’s… Me.” The memory can still bring a flutter to this tired, mechanical heart.
Ash is a predator.
They go after systems and traumatized, mentally ill persons without a solid sense of self. They seek the under-aged or monster-like alters or “past-lives” for their own sexual gratification. They will synthesize a sense of belonging using religion and magic, and then turn the tides against you once you either learn to say ‘no’ or you start questioning too much.
Living Fiction 