Monster (9 page)

It wasn’t a permanent solution. Something better would have to be worked out in the long run. But for now, the act of writing the memories down and reading them allowed her to recall, at least to some degree. Why hadn’t she thought of this before?

Maybe she had. Maybe there were notebooks full of reminders back at her apartment before the place was trashed by…

By something.

She glanced at her notebook and read her notes. “Trolls,” she said to herself, though she was looking at the sales assistant. “Trolls ate my apartment.”

The look in his eyes and the way he backed away from the counter told her he probably thought she was crazy.

Chuckling, she paid for her items. He stuffed them into a plastic sack and pushed them across the counter toward her. When she reached for them, he jumped back.

“You don’t know,” she said, “because you can’t see or remember. But I can.” She held up the notebook and laughed. She turned toward the door and realized everyone in the store was staring at her like she was a madwoman. But she liked being left alone anyway, so it seemed like a perk.

She opened a pack of cigarettes, took one out, and lit it in the middle of the store. No one complained. Probably thinking she’d sink her teeth into their throats if they did. Judy held up her arm for everyone to see. She pointed at each word, reading it aloud in a calm, even voice.

“Magic. Is. Real.” She tapped her temple. “And I don’t care if there is something wrong with my brain—this time, I’m going to remember.”

A mother pulled her children closer as Judy left the store. Everybody might think she was crazy, but they were the crazy ones. They were the ones without a clue.

She drove back to her apartment. When she got there, she was surprised to see it was in ruins, a big hole in her wall marked off with police tape, and a horrible odor coming from it.
MAGIC IS REAL,
the writing on her arm reminded her, and now she recalled that something supernatural had eaten her apartment.

She went to Paulie’s apartment and knocked on his door. Loud music played, so she knew he was home. She pounded her fist as hard as she could. It took a couple of minutes for him to finally answer. He was naked. No surprise there. He was naked a lot. Thick smoke wafted out of the doorway. It smelled of pot and incense.

“Hi,” she said.

He offered her a nod before turning and walking inside, leaving the door wide open. His narrow butt, flat and pale, didn’t match his wide, tanned shoulders. She stepped inside the apartment and closed the door.

“Paulie, is it all right if I stay here tonight?”

“
Mi casa es su casa,
” he said. “But you’ll have to sleep on the couch. I already got two ladies here, and I ain’t a machine. Want a beer?”

It was a rhetorical question. He brought her one. “So, like, bummer about your apartment, y’know,” he said as he twisted the cap off the bottle and handed it to her.

“Yeah, I know.”

She took a drink, and he just kept nodding to himself.

A naked woman stepped out of the bedroom, and Judy was beginning to feel overdressed. The woman was tall and lean, a little on the bony side. She had wings sprouting from her back.

“This is Judy,” said Paulie. “She’s going to stay the night.” The angel nodded to Judy, who nodded back. “Okay, so I’ll be in the bedroom if you need anything, Jude,” he said as the angel took his hand and pulled him toward the bedroom.

Judy sat down, and the couch cushions expelled a cloud of trapped, sweet-smelling smoke around her. She opened her notebook.

ANGELS ARE REAL
, she wrote.

She heard a faint giggle and a moan beneath the loud music.

AND THEY’RE EASY
.

Lotus was old. Older than the universe. And older than the universe that had come before that. And the one before that. She’d lost count of how many universes she’d seen come and go. They all tended to bleed together, follow the same basic trajectory from birth to collapse. The details might differ, but the end result was always the same. Chaos, then order, then chaos again. The chaos parts were safe and quiet, something she always looked forward to. It was those stretches of order that could sometimes make her endless life difficult. But even those instances were brief. She usually ignored them, finding ways to kill the time.

Since the dawn of this universe, she’d seen everything there was to see and been nearly everything there was to be. She’d swum the ocean depths as a plesiosaurus and spent several hundred years as cave moss. She’d been there to see the invention of the wheel, the first flint ax, several hundred ice ages repeated over and over again on planets now dead and long forgotten. On this planet, she’d been there for the rise of the Roman Empire, the fall of Camelot, every Chinese dynasty, the Dark Ages, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution. She’d marveled at the wonders of the written alphabet, the discovery of fire, and Velcro. And she’d witnessed the horrors of Genghis Khan’s conquering hordes, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Pet Rock craze.

She’d seen every wonderful advance and every boneheaded mistake of humanity and nature repeated ad infinitum to the point that the whole world felt like a script she’d read a thousand times before. And it was. Yet inevitably, despite these mistakes, the universe would continue to advance its own misguided agenda. Humanity was only the latest tool toward that goal.

She could not allow that. There was a balance to the universe, a way things were supposed to be. And every so often she had to remind the universe of that natural order. And if she had to remove humanity from the equation… well, it wouldn’t be the first time a species had to be removed.

On the positive side, she didn’t feel nearly as bad about this as when she’d had to undo the dinosaurs.

Lotus sat in her kitchen, drinking tea, communing with the stone. Everything was recorded within it because everything sprang from it. Without its vital energies feeding the existence of the cosmos, there would be no cosmos. If one bothered to look deep enough into the stone’s depths, one could read the history of the atoms themselves, and of the tinier parts that made those atoms, and so on and so on. Vast and incomprehensible histories that were beyond imagining.

She wasn’t interested in any of that. She already knew most of it.

The stone told her what she wanted to know, albeit reluctantly. It had grown resistant lately, even a bit tricky. It couldn’t hide from her the information that the time was near for the next ascendency. Very near. Even without the stone, Lotus could feel it. She’d seen the pattern often enough to recognize it.

The ascendency was close. She was in the right place; the usurper lived somewhere in this city. And she knew the usurper’s first name, but it wasn’t quite enough to go on.

Judy was a very common name, after all.

Judy awoke clutching a notebook. At first she wasn’t sure where she was, but the strange odors, and the soft melodies of Barry Manilow coming from the stereo helped to remind her. If those weren’t enough of a hint, Paulie was sitting in the chair across from the sofa. He was staring at her with half-closed eyes. At first she thought he was naked, but he was wearing underwear. It looked a little too tight, and the spandex around his thighs and waist appeared to be cutting off his circulation. It didn’t conceal much. Better than nothing, though, she decided.

She stirred. Her back was a little stiff after a night on his sofa. She couldn’t remember why she’d spent the night here. Something had happened to her apartment, but the details were fuzzy.

Paulie had yet to react to her awakening. He just kept staring. She didn’t know if he was really staring or if he’d just fallen asleep with his eyes not quite closed. She almost tested him but figured she didn’t care.

The bathroom was occupied. She waited a minute, but had to get up and knock at the insistence of her bladder.

“Just a minute,” a woman said on the door’s other side. Grumbling, Judy slid down the wall and sat on the floor to wait. She noticed a few white feathers scattered on the carpet. Maybe Paulie had gotten a bird. A big bird.

A woman stepped out of the bathroom. Her robe sat high on her shoulders, like she had a hunchback. The woman noticed a feather held in Judy’s hand.

“Sorry, I’m molting.”

Only half listening, Judy nodded before ducking into the bathroom. She emerged feeling refreshed and hungry. On her way to the kitchenette, she noticed Paulie was still sitting in his chair. He hadn’t moved an inch.

His fridge was a wasteland of moldy leftovers. She found some milk, and after some scavenging, turned up some cereal, a bowl, and a wooden mixing spoon. She plopped down on the sofa while munching.

She picked up the notebook beside her with mild curiosity. The words
DON’T FORGET
written in bold marker. She flipped it open and scanned its contents. At first she thought it was a joke. But it was a damn elaborate one, considering the way the handwriting matched hers. Somebody must’ve gone to a lot of trouble.

The skinny woman emerged from the bedroom. She had jeans on but was topless. Probably because she couldn’t get a shirt on over her wings.

Judy set aside her bowl and read through the notebook. “Son of a bitch.”

“Forgot again, huh?” The angel took a seat on the sofa and picked up Judy’s cereal. “Sucks, I know. Gotta be annoying to keep forgetting.”

“Yeah.” Judy moved to the edge of the sofa because the angel’s wings were taking up a lot of space.

“I’m Gracie,” said the angel. “Judy.”

“So, I could show you a trick to help you with that. If you wanted.”

“What kind of trick?”

“Just a magic thing.”

“I can’t use magic,” Judy said. “Damn, I can’t even remember it.”

“Anybody can use magic,” said Gracie. “It’s not like it’s rocket science or anything. What you need is a memory charm. Something simple, easy enough for even you to remember.” She went to the shelf and found a book. “There should be something in here to handle it.”

Gracie handed off the bowl to Judy. The angel flipped through the pages before arriving at her destination. “Here we are. Memory enhancement glyph should do the trick.”

She found a marker on the coffee table and plopped down on the sofa. She leaned close to Judy and moved the marker to her forehead.

Judy blocked the tip with her palm. “What are you doing?”

“I’m helping. It’s what I do.” Gracie’s golden eyes sparkled, and she smiled. She had a crooked tooth. “It’s… like… kind of my job.”

“I don’t want to look like an idiot.”

“What are you worried about? Most humans won’t even notice it. Believe me—they miss a lot.” She spread her wings and flapped.

“No, thanks.”

Gracie capped the marker. “Suit yourself. No pinfeather off my wings. I don’t usually help people like you anyway.”

“Like me?” asked Judy. “Not-nice people.”

“I’m nice.”

“Well, you’re nice-ish.” An embarrassed look crossed Gracie’s face. “Let’s just drop it.”

“Let’s do that,” agreed Judy.

She finished off the rest of her cereal in angry gulps, stomped into the kitchen, and carefully balanced the bowl atop the pile of dirty dishes. She found a beer in Paulie’s fridge but decided it was too early for that. Afternoon was morning for a late-shifter. So she went for a soda instead.

She walked back into the living room. Gracie was gone. Paulie was still sitting immobile in his chair.

Judy drank her soda and fumed. Nobody was really nice anyway. The word didn’t mean anything.

Gracie returned wearing a backless shirt to accommodate her wings. “I’m sorry if I offended you. It’s not like you’re evil or anything.” She disappeared into the kitchen. There was the unmistakable clatter of foraging in Paulie’s fridge. “Are there any more sodas left?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” Judy chugged the last half of her soda and crushed the can. She threw it behind the sofa just as Gracie returned.

“Now I feel bad. Let me make it up to you.” Gracie’s eyes went wide and soulful. “Pretty please.”

“Nobody is going to notice?” asked Judy. “Some people will notice. But most won’t.”

Judy considered the offer, but she didn’t see any other choice. She would forget otherwise. Even the notebook by itself could only slow the process. It couldn’t stop it. If she wanted to remember, she’d have to take radical steps. She consented.

Gracie drew the memory glyph on Judy’s forehead. After it was finished, Judy remembered again. It was a weird sort of memory, distant and without details.

“That’s all you have to do?” asked Judy. “Yep. Should work fine, although there are side effects you should—” Gracie checked her watch. “Oh, darn. I’ve got a transubstantiation in twenty minutes.” She prodded Paulie in the shoulder and his eyes snapped open. “You’ve got to give me a ride.”

“Can’t you just fly, babe?” he asked. “In this smog? Forget it.” While Paulie went to find some pants, Gracie pounced on Judy, seizing her in a powerful hug. “Good luck with your memory stuff.”

“Thanks.”

Paulie and Gracie left. Judy was relieved that he didn’t comment on the markings on her face. Maybe they weren’t as bad as she imagined. She checked herself in the bathroom mirror. The glyph occupied all of her forehead. It was hard to miss. She reminded herself that most people weren’t even as magically aware as she was, so it didn’t matter how much of her face was covered in special enchanted doodles. Heck, maybe even people who could recognize magic might not notice it. Maybe it was invisible.