Time & Space (Short Fiction Collection Vol. 2) (6 page)

Miguel wasted no time, getting right down to business. He marched over to a doorway, pausing halfway through a set of curtains made from string after string of red beads. “Follow me, she’s in here.”

Marcela stepped through the beaded curtain, half expecting someone to jump out and yell
surprise
at any moment, let her in on the game they’d been playing but the young man had spoken the truth–the large black woman who’d sold her the silver ball pendant a year ago, Mambo Ranice, was lying in bed covered in blankets, dead to the world. Her hands were folded respectfully across her chest, and the sheets had become a simple altar, covered in flowers, a few small pictures, and some of the necklaces she’d made. She looked happy, content.

“I’ll try and come back to check on you in the morning,” Miguel said, bowing slightly, starting to back out of the room.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Marcela briefly panicked, but her inner voice spoke up again and she was sure she knew the answer before the young man replied.

“Lay down. Rest. My mother wishes to speak to you.”

With that, Miguel left the room, leaving Marcela with a dead woman she barely knew. Lay down? Rest? Surely he was kidding. There was no way–

But before Marcela could object, she yawned, suddenly fighting to keep her eyes open. She didn’t panic. In fact, an overwhelming feeling of calmness washed over her, soothing her doubting mind and letting her see she had nothing to fear in this place of death. The voice within her told her to trust her instincts. She lay down beside the voodoo priestess, and within seconds, was fast asleep.

***

Running…running…

Searching in the dark, sniffing the air, knowing she is getting close.

Her nostrils flare, a new smell replacing, overpowering the old scent. She bursts through the tree line, comes upon a small house, recognizing the temple, recognizing the burning incense, recognizing the lizard…and recognizing the large black woman standing on the front porch. These sights trigger an avalanche of memories and she momentarily forgets about the hunt. Memories breed awareness, and she remembers not only where she is and who stands before her, but also who she is and why she’s here.

Mambo Ranice looks exactly as Marcela remembers her: wrapped in layers of bright colorful sheets, her hair braided with small beads. She is smiling and holding her arms out in greeting.

“Be at peace, child. Stay with me awhile.”

“But you’re dead, aren’t you?”

“Maybe, maybe not. On sacred ground, it really doesn’t matter. That’s why I needed you to come here. I couldn’t stay long enough, me coming to you.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Nothing, child. Just to talk, to explain what’s happening to you. I know you feel the coming change, but you don’t need to fear it. Your protector comes.”

“I, I don’t understand?”

“You don’t need to. You just need to believe. There’s a power within you, child. I don’t know what it is, but I felt it the moment I met you last summer. Your Anifantia spoke to my soul that day, asked me–“

“My what?”

“Your Anifantia. It’s your animal within, your spirit guide and protector. It lies dormant within most humans, but yours wants to be set free. That’s why I sold you that necklace.”

Marcela reaches up and strokes the silver pendant. The bumps and dents have returned. Instead of a perfectly round ball, it has flattened out, sprouting several short appendages.

“What’s happening to it?”

“It’s becoming, child. Just like you…Just like you…like you…"

Mambo Ranice is starting to fade away, the smoke from the incense starting to seep through her insubstantial form.

“Wait!” Marcela shouts. “Don’t leave yet, I still don’t understand. This is all crazy talk, isn’t it? I mean, really, it’s just a dream!”

Mambo Ranice smiles.

“Is it, child? Are you sure?”

***

After returning from Costa Rica, Marcela spent days trying to get her head around everything she’d seen and heard. She still wasn’t sure what exactly had happened at Semma, the voodoo temple. When she’d woken up the next morning, she’d found herself all alone in bed. Mambo Ranice’s body was gone. Either Miguel had returned in the middle of the night to carry her away, or she had never been there in the first place. Perhaps the heavy incense in the air had been a drug of some sort and she’d inhaled enough of it to cause her to hallucinate. Or maybe she was just going crazy. There was always that possibility. Then again, when she’d checked her silver pendant that morning, it hadn’t seemed as round and unblemished as she remembered. It wasn’t flattened out, like in the dream, but something about it sure looked–and felt–different. Deep down, she wanted to believe that everything that had happened had been real.

One thing Marcela couldn’t deny; she was beginning to change, inside and out. Just as Mambo Ranice had said she would.
The coming change
she’d called it.

That weekend, returning from the corner 7-Eleven store with a bag of essentials–she went out only at night now–her body definitely felt different, not clumsy and sore as one might expect, still recovering from all the recent injuries, but actually strong and powerful. After putting the groceries away, she stripped down and stood naked in front of her dressing mirror, carefully examining herself. Her skin was kind of mottled. She had always been dark, tanning very easily, but now, her body was splotchy. But that wasn’t the strangest thing. No indeed. She smoothed both hands along the sides of her breasts.

They were shrinking!

At first, she’d thought it was her imagination. But now she was sure. Her breasts were growing smaller. She turned and looked over her shoulder, her entire figure seemed to be growing boyish–her hips for sure were losing the feminine roundness.

Strange.

Staring at herself in the mirror, Marcela thought, I’m losing my old identity, but growing stronger, feeling more powerful even.

“Jesus, maybe I’m becoming a male,” she said aloud and laughed. Dismissing the ridiculous speculation, she whispered, “but what’s really happening to me? Is it all in my mind? Actually, the body changes aren’t really that pronounced. Maybe–”

There was a rap at the door.

“Hey, Marcela, it’s me, Sandy,” the familiar voice called through the door. “You know, that weird lady across the hall, the one you seem to be avoiding like a STD. Saw you coming back with groceries. Open up.”

Pulling on a kimono-like bathrobe to cover the suspected body changes, Marcela went to the door, paused a moment, then opened it. “Hi, Sandy,” she said, forcing a smile.

“Hello, stranger,” the thin brunette said, smiling back. “You okay?” There was a puzzled, almost hurt, expression on Sandy’s face.

Marcela nodded, then explained, “My trip took a lot out of me. And actually, been having a lot of cramps since I got back, you know, that time.” She shrugged. Of course it was a lie. She hadn’t had a period since a month before the attack. And even though she got no more exercise than the occasional nightly walk to the corner store and prowling the apartment, Marcela felt in top health. Oh, she hadn’t been eating much, her normally vegetarian diet seeming kind of bland and unfulfilling.

“I understand,” Sandy said. “You probably aren’t interested in a movie after dinner, are you?”

Marcela smiled and shook her head. The mention of dinner made her aware of a smell, a wonderful smell. She poked her head out in the corridor, noticing that her friend had left her door ajar. The smell was coming from inside Sandy’s apartment. “
Mmmm
, what are you cooking for dinner? Smells great.”

Her friend eyed Marcela curiously before answering. “Nothing yet. I’ve got some ground chuck out thawing.” Sandy turned toward her opened door and sniffed. “I can’t smell anything.” She turned back to her friend. “You sure you smell something from my apartment?”

Marcela nodded. Shrugged.

“Thought you didn’t care for meat?”

“I don’t,” Marcela replied, feeling slightly confused, because something did indeed smell very good, even activating her salivary glands.

They chatted a few more minutes, Marcela not mentioning anything about her trip or the peculiar body changes, instead convincing her neighbor that she was fine except for a little PMS. They agreed to a movie early in the coming week. Then they hugged goodbye, Marcela finding the actual physical contact unsettling. She closed the door to Sandy, puzzled by her reaction to physical contact. She’d always enjoyed hugging and being hugged.

***

Running…

Running…looking for something that’s close but stays just out of reach.

The slick, muddy paths of the rainforest replaced by sidewalks of asphalt and stone, her hunt taking her into the concrete jungle now, but her quest unchanged.

Searching…

Always searching…

***

Marcela woke up just as it was getting dark, the night sounds of the city coming through her window, which she’d left open for some air. But she found it stifling in her apartment tonight. She got up and stretched, not bothering to dress, feeling unusually restless, but intrigued by the mystery of the dream. Running through the city instead of the forest had put an interesting new twist on things, but it didn’t answer any of her questions. What was she searching for? No matter how hard she thought about it, she had no clue.

Still naked, she again examined herself in the mirror. The skin mottling seemed much more pronounced; and there was no doubt now that her breasts and hip curves were disappearing. Marcela knew she should feel much more alarmed, should consider calling her doctor–perhaps the body changes related to some kind of undetected damage from the park attack. But she didn’t really believe that at all. No. For some intuitive reason, she felt no real deep anxiety about the changes, only a little curiosity. They felt right. She thought again about Mambo Ranice, and felt that somehow the mystery of the dreams were directly related to her body transformation.

What was she searching for in the city?

Later, on a whim, Marcela clicked on the TV, hoping to hear on the news that the heat wave was going to break soon. As the picture appeared, she realized she hadn’t had the TV on since coming home from the hospital. And the rape, over two weeks ago now. My God, it seemed much longer. Already the details of that night were growing fuzzy in her memory. In fact, unlike her old self, she was spending less and less time in the past, more concerned with the here and now. Everything present tense.

The anchorwoman had been interviewing a police department lieutenant. The detective was talking about specific episodes of violence within the general city chaos–gang behavior.

Marcela turned up the sound.

“…That’s right, Cheryl,” the policeman was nodding. “It has escalated, proliferating from the North Central projects.  Laughing Death, the apparent dominant gang now apparently with hundreds of members, has spread out, muggings on the Muni, robberies in convenience stores in the northern suburbs, some members even moving down into the park. Several reported robberies and rapes.”

The anchorwoman used the police department spokesman as a lead-in to a reporter at St. Mary’s Hospital. He was interviewing an apparent gang victim. The young man, a cyclist, was lying with a leg in traction, his face bruised and swollen. He’d been attacked along the Westside biking trail, not far from the site of Marcela’s attack. The reporter held out the mic as the victim painfully described the experience–they’d stolen his wallet, bike, and beaten him badly.

Then back to the anchorwoman, Cheryl, who summarized the new wave of terror by the Laughing Death Gang, showing a still shot of a gang member in colors. The boy was wearing a black bandanna on his head and a black windbreaker with a white caricature of a grinning skull over the right breast.

“They don’t care if their colors identify them,” Cheryl concluded. “They seem to want the notoriety.”

As Marcela watched the broadcast, she probably should have felt some anxiety after realizing who her attackers had been and the hazard they still presented in the park. But she experienced no fear, only a growing restlessness, an inability to concentrate on anything pertaining to the past. At the end of the newscast she switched off the TV, and despite the muggy temperature and obvious danger, she went out. But other than wandering about aimlessly in the steamy night, she saw nothing, encountered no one, returning home a little before daybreak, dropping down her bed and drifting off into an exhausted sleep, clutching her cool silver pendant for comfort. Her tired mind barely registered that the once smooth sphere had grown four tiny legs and the beginnings of a head and tail…

***

In the crotch of the tree she stretches for a moment or two, glancing about into the dark humid night, listening carefully and sniffing in all directions–deciding everything is normal before dropping to the ground eight feet below, landing lightly on all four paws. She begins to move quickly through the heavy undergrowth, slipping past large leaves extending out into her path, pausing every now and then to sample a specific, strengthening scent, before hurrying along quickly…searching, searching.

She follows the path to where it crosses a concrete path, a bike path, and she realizes she’s back in the concrete jungle–a park.

Then, she stops abruptly, sniffing the muggy, scented air and inadvertently her mouth waters with the recognition: prey.

Her lithe body seems to shrink as she hunkers down and begins to stalk seriously, sampling the air as she moves, but actively searching now with her amber colored eyes.

There, ahead on the bike path–three figures, all dressed in black.