Hands

I need more hands
to touch more lives.

Footsteps

The footsteps in the fresh snow speak loudly to me. Some are long and tell "Watch out! It's slippery here!" Others are short with brown tufts between heels - promises of safety. Some are in the grass beside others and say "I am a rebel and a friend!" Others still are nearly buried, alone. The footsteps walk me safely home in the storm.

Soul Sisters

[inspired by true events. names have been changed to prevent perilous cat fights. perhaps in vain.]

               Before I tell the tale of Clara’s wedding, I must reveal three deep secrets I have kept from her – three secrets cut into stone, deeper than sea. The first is that Clara’s soul is forever knotted to mine by silver thread through hundreds of years of friendship and love. In each life, we find each other. Perhaps it is because souls are wont to fall into habit, or perhaps it is because lost shadows in the eldritch plane are drawn like the moon to the twirling earth. I have held her hair as she has vomited from a late Friday night and flu for hundreds of years, though I’m sure that in the Celtic days, it was probably morning sickness and whatever bugs our dirtier selves attracted. We practiced magic together, I know, for when we first opened her novice spell tome together, it felt like we were picking up where we’d left off. We even skipped the first few pages, somehow knowing the techniques and failed results. Our friendship is ancient and eternal.

               The second secret is that I have ruined her love life. I did it intentionally. How couldn’t I? She had fallen in love with a thug and an imbecile. The face she doted over had bruises and permanent bone damage from frequent street brawls, always started by him, and from the cops that had to drag him to jail each time. When she talked of marrying him, I became ill. I had to intervene, and I did. While Clara became more proficient with witchcraft over this current life, mine has turned to a whole new power – the Internet. I hacked and I dug and did everything I could to separate them. When another woman showed up in the street thug’s life without Clara’s knowing, I knew everything from her residence, their dates, their expenditures, and finally, this woman’s unclean STD record. Then I held Clara’s head as she puked and cried. The relationship was over before she could pick up a nasty case of Chlamydia, but Clara was hurt, and I was sorry. I didn’t say a word.

Round Two occurred when a stout, creepy nerd chased Clara about her town. I knew he was bad news when he started texting her – before she gave him her number. Clara, a real sucker and lovesick puppy, thought it was romantic that this stranger doted on her so. Her wounded heart filled right up. I didn’t have a chance to work my newfound magic, though, as Street Thug found Creep and beat the tar out of him in a public park for touching “his girl” as he said. Creep was put off, and when Clara had doubts about the progression of their relationship, I told her she should move on.

Round Three was probably just as disastrous. A Mafia underboss’s nephew who was about as mature as the runts on the playground has somehow won my best friend over. I groaned inside. I was far away by now, living two states away, but he made her happy. He wasn’t in and out of jail, and he wasn’t working on stalking charges. I figured she was content with her love life. I knew she wouldn’t marry him, for this one didn’t understand the meaning of savings or fiscal responsibilities.

Years passed, and I didn’t see much of Clara. Soul sisters don’t need to see each other to know the other is well. We can sense when something is wrong. At least, I always manage to time my phone calls perfectly with some great tragedy. We were going to school and getting lost in progress.

The third secret is that I made this wedding possible. When Clara was a little inebriated and exhausted by another slave-wage-slave-hour day, she broke off her relationship with the single man I could ever approve of her loving, Mister Thomas Fair. He opened doors for her, paid for their dates, loved kids, loved family, shook hands – everything. He was a charmer and a gentleman. All the men she’d dated and cared about combined could not make a better boyfriend than Thomas, and the night devastated him, Clara, and me. She cried for days when he would not take her back. He was thoroughly wounded, and he had every right to be. I asked her over and over why it happened, and each time it was a new reason – fatigue, distance between them, too much irresponsibility. The fact of the matter was that she was not happy, he was not happy, and she was too shy and ashamed to beg him to come back.

I was not. I begged and bribed him. I found his number and I called him. And it worked, and they worked, and they were together again. I didn’t tell her how hard I tried to make them work. I wanted her to feel like it was fate just restitching an old pattern in the quilting threads of fate. Years passed, and I was in the midst of my residencies and training when Clara called with the news – she was getting married in August, and she wanted me to be the maid of honor. I feigned happiness. After all, most couples that are in love, work well together, and intend to marry usually get to the proposal stage, right? We talked briefly of budgets and what she really wanted, and already I knew of some venues that she would love – parks we’d always dreamed of marrying in just a mile or two away from her childhood home. I opened the old wedding book and made some inquiries, told the owners of the date in her mind, and jotted it down.

Between medical rotations, it was hard to keep in touch with the bride-to-be. Her slave hours and wages were of no benefit, either. Then one night as I scrolled through spam emails and important-not-important emails, I found an online conversation that I’d been invited to but only caught the tail end of. The names were of women Clara talked to all of the time on Facebook. They would “like” some statuses and leave emoticon faces on some. Clara had tagged a few when they went out on weekends. Some were listed as sisters and best friends in the relationship section – a section I never made it to – and left her cute messages all the time. To the unknowing wanderer, these women were Clara’s best friends for life. I knew better. I could feel it.

One woman commented that it was a good thing “she” was getting “the boot” because “she” always made inappropriate insertions of Skrillex lyrics into conversation. Another laughed that someone could even insert the rare discernable words of a dubstep moron into normal day chatter. Others wondered which horrible nightmare of a “song” would be selected for the wedding so that everyone could stand around awkwardly and not know what to do. The first woman said she looked better in the wedding colors and accented Clara’s wedding dress better anyway, and that Clara’s beautiful brown curls should be accented by her even darker curls. I realized, as I scrolled up, that I had made these remarks that they were picking at on Clara’s social sites. I was the subject of the taunts.

I chuckled and closed my laptop lid, setting my head on my arm. I was being replaced as maid-of-honor by the first woman, this Sarah. How cute, Sarah and Clara. Sarah who was there every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night for bowling and girls’ night out and shoe-shopping. Sarah from work. Sarah in every internet status. Sarah who thought her Clara’s best friend. It seemed Clara thought Sarah to be her best friend and that it would be easier to accommodate a more local maid-of-honor. I moaned. Sarah was fake. I had never met her, but despite what every person has ever said to me, text screams personality and sarcasm. I can feel it. I am an Internet Witch, and I know this woman well enough to know that she is not right for the job.

I said nothing of the news and continued through rotations. When my next mentor ended up in Rochester, I spent hours in the local wedding boutique. Clara had never told me the theme or the colors she decided on, if she decided on one at all, but I had already known for years exactly what she wanted. I could not explain it, even to the young sales lady in the store, but when I saw the perfect shoes, the earrings, the veil, the rings, I knew Clara wanted them – needed them. Clara was a princess, had always been a princess, and would always be a princess. She wanted a wedding fitting a princess even if she said she wanted a modern or financially responsible wedding. Twice a week I visited the shop and made little purchases – the dangling teardrop earrings here, the tall tiara there, always a glittering candle. I spent money straight out of my own wedding savings because I knew John and I would be a while yet with school still dragging between us, and because I loved Clara. I wanted her to have a princess wedding.

When May rolled around and medical school graduation with it, I saw Clara. She had come out in the midst of wedding drama and crazy work hours and everything to see her best friend walk around blinding by the sun in her white coat. I hugged her and told her how much I missed her. That night, she cried into my shoulder. All of her friends had abandoned her. Some secret or another had been spilled, a boy was involved on Sarah’s end, drinks were thrown. I tried to feign surprise, but I wasn’t. Clara and I had fought like lion and hyena in school and tore at each other’s throats, but we’d walked away stronger than ever. A secret couldn’t even dent our relationship – not even my hatred for her ex-boyfriends. She begged my forgiveness and asked me to be her maid-of-honor despite her bridezilla complex. I told her I always anticipated it, and that night, John, Thomas, Clara and I spent the hot night in the hotel pool playing kids’ games like old times.

Clara had relinquished to me her wedding plans as her slave owners cracked the whip. John worked under the same lord and could not help much either. They had only established a venue and a photographer, and the photographer was Sarah’s friend from a bar. I fired him and asked a friend from Los Angeles, a professional friend-of-a-friend, to come up. He owed me a favor from community college and even had connections with the local restaurant chain. I sweetened up a flower vendor that had owed my mother a favor from her insurance days, and when that didn’t work out, I discovered and ex-crush from middle school had actually been crushing on me and tried to sweeten me up with a deal on flowers. I took the deal and denied his date offer. This bridesmaid was spoken for. The flowers, the photographer, the venue, and the food were taken care of, and there was money left to spend. I had already shipped and stored the boxes of candles, silver ribbon, guest book, card box, china, wine glasses, and even the cake ornament – a princess and her prince – to the town. All was ready.

Sarah reconciled later with Clara and threw a bachelorette party. I was not invited. I did not care. I had an internship with the greatest pediatric hospital in the country. Petty squabbles with bored brats couldn’t bother me. I sent Clara a card with a gift certificate to her favorite restaurant and a coupon for a dress refitting if she need it (she did, she lost weight). Come time for the wedding, I was more than available. John and I drove everyone nuts with rehearsals and arrangements, but the show went on.

When Clara finally walked the candle-lit aisle, she was as beautiful and happy as she was supposed to be. She made her vows and kissed her new husband, and everyone rejoiced. He carried her down the aisle to my Cobra – 2012 California special edition in bold red, convertible, lava red seats – and drove her to the reception at the finest restaurant outside of town in an old family winery. Food from the Italian restaurant was already set next to the breads, cheeses, and wines. Everything was set in silvers and blues, mirrors and tiaras. It was a feast fit for a new king and queen, and Clara was happy.

Spirited and happy, everyone waltzed to old tunes and held each other close. John and I gossiped about old town folks that Clara and I disagreed about in high school. Sarah showed up and glared at me before leaving. Then Clara and I danced while John and Thomas laughed. She cried for how happy she was to be marrying her true love. I cried because she cried. Then the DJ threw on the dubstep track I’d asked and provided, and she laughed. Everyone danced like robots as they laughed and shouted, and in the end, everyone had a good time.

If there was one thing everyone learned, it was the power of friendship. Friends don’t need the internet or even phones. We feel each other through time and space, drifting along through the river of time. It is eternal and beautiful. Clara learned to trust me, and when it comes my time to take the bridezilla crown, I know she will be there too.

Necromancer

All the tools were ready, from the bone saw to the pliers. He lit frankincense in the corners of the hall to diffuse the pungent aroma of death that gripped the dark hall. Rats wove in and out of the ruined benches in search of his spoiled supper and found poisoned morsels in tattered rags. The robbed man sneered at the pitiful creatures and set a candle on his work bench for the client.

Four loud raps interrupted the man. He cackled as he scuttled to the bolted wooden door and peeked through the musty keyhole. On the other side stood a man in muddy robes with a wooden leg and long hands that better resembled talons than human appendages. The robbed man released the latches and bolts and yielded the passage to the ville creature at his door.

"Welcome, Sebastian," said the robed man.

"Mordecai," the bird man greeted. His voice was raspy with age and chronic sickness. "Have you prepared everything as I have asked?"

"But of course," was Mordecai's reply.

The creature, Sebastian, hovered to the bench and let loose a hoarse laugh to himself. Then he wandered top the collection of corpses deeper in the room laid beneath fresh candles by the robed man. Most were soldiers from the battle at the nearby river, but there were some boys and maidens among the fallen.

"What will you be creating tonight my lord?" asked Mordecai. "May I offer any suggestions?"

"A battle mage," replied Sebastian.

Mordecai let out a croaking "ah" and knotted his hands together. "Let us work right away, then."

Sebastian walked past the first few bodies and paused at a white pair of feet. Without touching any other part, he plucked at the toes and rubbed them. Slowly, his hands moved up the ankles. The body was a drummer boy who'd fallen by an archer's arrow. "This one has good feet," he said aloud. Then he examined the legs beside him. "No, never mind. I want a woman's feet. They've more muscle to them."

"Yes, you are right," Mordecai agreed. "Always right, sir."

He stopped at an older captain's corpse. His steel armor was at his side, and his sword on the table beside him. "I like his arms," he said. "Truly strong - not massive, but dense like diamonds. But his hands are awkward. Cut them just below the elbow."

"Yes, sir!" Mordecai said and started with his bone saw on the soldier's body. As Sebastian looked over the other bodies, the sound of flesh and bone slicing apart echoed in a quick rhythm.

The ugly creature stopped at an older boy's side. Blood still colored his cheeks; his lips looked as though he were smiling in the midst of a dream. Without a word, the creature opened the boy's shirt and chest, plucking his heart from the hole. "A perfect heart for my creation," he muttered. "And good lungs. This one was a bard."

Mordecai paused to look. "Yes, my lord. I will set it aside for you!"

The creature stopped at a young woman's side. "Perfect hands, this one. Tired but not destroyed. Was she a musician or a tailor?"

"An adulterous housewife, murdered by her husband in her sleep," Mordecai said.

The creature snarled. "I've no need for a traitor." He paused, snarled again, and moved to the next soldier. From him, he took the ribs and stomach. "Such a waste of good material, these wretches!"

The next body had only one arm and a pegleg. Sebastian was furious. "Where is his other hand!" he demanded.

"Lost many years ago in battle, sir," Mordecai replied from the altar table.

"Foolish boy!" Sebastian removed his hand with his knife and set it on the table. "I need another hand. One that can withstand fire."

"May I suggest the soldier at the end, sir? He has worked with the hot tars and catapults for many battles."

Sebastian looked over the soldier at the end. The face of this body was very tired. Though it was shaved, the deep greys suggested that even eternal sleep was not deep enough for this exhausted soldier. His hand was dexterous and calloused. Yes, it matched the boy's hand well! The would work well together! He removed the soldier's hand and took his ears as well.

"What face will you choose, sir?" Mordecai asked.

Sebastian ignored him and found a young woman with strong, tanned legs. He severed them gently, careful not to ruin them in a geiser of blood, and set them on the table. The feet were of average size though the toes were painted. The creature did not understand why women painted their toes when no one ever saw them.

Three witches were among the dead. Sebastian took the curling brown locks from one and the blue eyes of another. He contemplated the third witch's lips. "What was their death?" he asked.

"They stood trial, sir, and admitted their guilt when accused of cursing Lord Grey's father," said Mordecai.

Sebastian snarled. "I've no need for foolish truth-speakers," he hissed and moved on.

The creature seemed troubled. Though there were so many bodies, he could not choose from them a set of lips or a face. Mordecai suggested a handsome man's strong-set face, but Sebastian growled. "I want a woman," he said alas.

"A woman, sir?" Mordecai said. At the creature's waving arms, he shuddered. "Of course, sir. A woman, sir."

"The soldiers will hesitate before they kill a woman," he said.

"Yes, sir. You are brilliant, sir." Mordecai quickly moved over the bodies. "The priestess here, she is a virgin and a beauty. The soldiers loved her."

"Good. Give me all of her beauty."

Sebastian walked slowly among the bodies groaning. He paced over and over among them. "An old man knows many things," he grumbled, "but his mind is made up." His decrepit fingers fell over a boy with soft hands and delicate skin. "The scholar is a fool too. He thinks he knows everything. Which would you choose?"

Mordecai paused in his preparations. "I don't rightly know, sir," he said.

Sebastian grumbled and worked to extract the young man's brain from his skull. He was careful removing it, for he did not want to damage the delicate mass.

Next the creature took a long glass tube and poked it into the bellies of several men. When his tube produced dark red fluid, he moved to the next corpse. At the bard's heart-less corpse, he stopped and removed his liver from the same emptiness. Pausing, Sebastian removed all of the bard's guts.

"Sir, his guts are weak," Mordecai warned.

"Nay, they are so strong that they appear weak," Sebastian rasped. "I need a battlemage that can stomach his own atrocities and a liver that will not make him blind with anger."

Mordecai let out a low moan and set the guts with the other organs. "Sir, shall I add this man's blood net to your things? He watched his son die in his arms."

"Yes, do that. No man's blood courses so true as a man watching his kin die," Sebastian said merrily. "Give me his tongue as well. My battle mage will want to taste death."

"Is there anything else I can give you, sir?" Mordecai asked.

The two robed men stood beside the table and looked over the forming body. Sebastian set the bones, the flesh, the many organs in place carefully, pausing to clean the cuts. Mordecai offered him more tools and rags to clean the blood, and the creature took them. Within the hour the body was a messy pile. All the organs were in place and ready.

Sebastian spoke a profane chant and set the pieces together, starting with the priestess's face to the witch's eyes, the scholar's brain to the head, the soldier's ears to the beautiful face, the sister's lock's to the lovely head, and the priestess's delicate neck and shoulders to the bard's lungs and heart. The heartbroken father's blood net set in the organs all the while and prepared to pump the bard heart's blood, and the guts fell into a complicated line down past the virgin priestess's womb and nether areas. The strong legs fastened to the wide woman's hips and to the delicate waist. Sebastian let out an otherworldly moan and took Mordecai's chalk to his hand, and with it he painted the flesh the color of hazelnuts to give it one solid form. With a word, the body breathed, lowering and raising its breasts and belly as it did so. The body let out a harrowing scream as it opened its eyes.

"It is successful!" Mordecai said.  "Congratulations, sir!"

Sebastian said nothing to the other robed man. He shook a jeweled bottle at his side and poured it into the screaming body's lips, hissing, "You will know my arcane magic, underling, and do as I say. Speak, and tell me you know what I expect from you!"

In that moment, the body opened its eyes and ceased its screaming. It parted its lips to form words. Sebastian let out a frustrated moan, and then he fell to the ground. Mordecai shrieked and turned to the body and then the abomination, speaking: "You've killed him! You've killed your master!"

The body spoke more words, slowly and tiredly, and the second man joined him. At the sight of their deaths, it curled its knees to its shoulders. It stayed on the table for hours, shivering, trembling, breathing the stench of death from the chamber. When alas its body ached too much to sit, it stepped onto the stone floor and walked.

"Who am I?" it asked the corpses. Seeing the desecrated bodies around it, the body froze. "What am I?"

The scholar's brain ticked inside and brought the creature logic. It was a woman, born from pieces of many people. The father's tongue hungered for revenge against the dead men that had done this to all of the dead. The bard's heart ached to make it all right. The priestess felt the filth of desecration and death. The creatures magic surged through the father's veins, but she did not know what to do with it. The soldiers were tired of war and death, and all ached for eternal sleep that now eluded them.

"I will right our deaths," she said. "I promise."

The woman took a grey robe from beside the doorway and stepped into the gold-splattered temple. A new day was just beginning, and there was much to be done.

Uncredited image

Does anyone know of the artist(s) who made this? I am so tired of images floating around the internet without credit.