Angeline hated the end of the month. She endured the same miserable ritual month after month. She sat at a cluttered table beside her cramped kitchen surrounded by heaps of torn envelopes and folded up bills. Several bookmarked tabs glared from her browser. Gas. Electric. Rent. Credit card. Bank. Those tabs were like invisible hands grasping at her wallet. Or maybe they were wringing her heart. Her eyes flicked to the taskbar, where the highlighted spreadsheet icon taunted her with a single word: budget.
Were it only herself, she hardly would have cared. But it wasn’t just herself. She also had to worry about Jake. His pants barely reached his ankles, and his shirts were getting a too tight. There were also his karate classes, not to mention daycare and medical bills and ten other things she couldn’t even remember right now.
Glancing at the balance in her checking account, Angeline groaned. She already knew what the number would dwindle to once she finished, and it made her stomach swirl anxiously like she was teetering above a thousand-foot canyon in a surreal version of “living on the edge.”
Only sacrifice would appease the monster playing hacky sack with her stomach. So, what did she give up? Coffee. She could stop going to the little coffee shop down the block. That’d ease her margins, but not by a lot. Then she thought about the ice cream waiting in her freezer, and she felt a brief surge of guilt. No more ice cream, then. And she could cancel Jake’s karate lessons, too. That’d help a lot, actually...
But the thought of canceling his lessons made Angeline flush. She imagined Jake’s heartbroken face covered in streams of tears. She found herself caught between the sensible and the sentimental.
Was it actually sentimental, though? Jake had so much energy, and those lessons helped him work it out, right? His exhaustion also gave Angeline a couple of hours to clean the apartment. Angeline ignored that she probably lost more time taking him to lessons than she got from exhausting him.
She decided she could wait to decide until after she’d slept on it. Deep down, she already knew she would not cancel the lessons, but the nagging voice in her head was silenced—or at least muffled—by her pointless promise.
The voice quieted down momentarily, but the stress gnawing at Angeline cracked her resolve, and her emotions suddenly overwhelmed her. She’d feel better if she let it out and cried, but was too tired, so she settled for leaning back in her chair and rubbing her eyes. She wanted to sleep. But then the anxious concoction in her gut would keep her up all night.
“Mommy?” a little voice said.
Angeline blinked, and saw Jake just outside the kitchen, rubbing his eyes against the glare of the yellow kitchen lights. He was in his favorite PJs, which were covered in little fighter jets. Angeline remembered yet another promise she’d yet to keep. Jake said he wanted one of those jets, called a “Raptor” or something, and Angeline had promised to get it for him after he’d lost his first baby tooth. She could definitely afford that, but hadn’t gotten around to it yet, and that made Angeline feel just a little worse.
“Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” Jake asked as he blinked his little blue eyes.
“Did you have another bad dream?” Angeline asked.
Jake nodded, “It was really scary.”
“Do you want to talk about it, bud?” Angeline said.
“Mm-hmm,” Jake nodded, “It was Long Fingers, again.”
Long Fingers was what Jake called a monster that had started appearing in his dreams for the past few nights. Angeline wondered how much she’d have to budget for a therapist if these nightmares didn’t stop, and her stomach whirled again.
“Please, Mommy?” Jake said.
“Not tonight, bud,” Angeline said, thinking of how Jake always kicked in his sleep, “You need to sleep in your own bed, okay?”
“Okay,” Jake sniffled, and his face contorted and reddened as he started crying.
“Oh, buddy!” Angeline said. Her heart broke a little, sending her out of her chair and over to his side, scooping him up into her arms.
He buried his face in her shoulder, and sobbed, “He’s really, really, really scary!”
Angeline shushed him, and said, “I know, buddy, I know,” and bounced in place, rocking from one foot to the other, just like she used to do when he was a baby.
“I wanna sleep in your bed,” he sobbed, “I won’t have bad dreams if I sleep in your bed!”
“You still might, buddy,” Angeline said.
“But if I do, then I can squeeze you!” Jake said, his sobs dying down to choking gasps that sounded like violent hiccups.
“How about this?” Angeline said, “How about you give me the tightest, strongest, most sqeeziest squeeze right now, and maybe you won’t have nightmares tonight?”
Without even a word, Jake squeezed his arms around Angeline’s neck until she felt like she was in a vise, and she choked out, “Oh, you’re so strong, little man!” and she squeezed him right back.
Eventually, his grip slackened. He rested on her shoulders as she slowly rocked back and forth. He sniffled again.
“Do you feel better, bud?” Angeline whispered.
“A little,” he said.
“Are you ready to go back to bed?”
“Noooo,” he moaned.
Angeline glanced back at her laptop, whose screen had gone black.
“Mommy needs to take care of stuff, okay, so do you think you can go back to bed?” she said, doing her best to sound sweet.
“No,” he said, more firmly this time.
Angeline felt a stab of annoyance. She took a deep breath.
“How about we make a deal, okay?”
He shook his head, “No.”
“If you go back to bed, I’ll buy you the Raptor fighter tomorrow, okay?” Angeline said.
Jake paused.
“But you were already going to get me the Raptor.”
“Yeah, but I’ll get it for you tomorrow instead of this weekend,” Angeline said.
“No,” Jake said resolutely.
“Okay, how about this, then?” Angeline said, “If you promise to go back to bed, I’ll get you some ice cream. And, if you have any other bad dreams tonight, you can sleep in Mommy’s bed. How does that sound?”
Jake kept his face buried in her shoulder for a few moments, then said, “Okay.”
Once he was chomping away at some ice cream, Angeline resumed work on the bills. Jake started making faces at Angeline, which she did her best to replicate, sending him into little fits of giggles. Eventually, the ice cream was all gone, and Angeline took him to the bathroom to brush his teeth again. He complained that he’d already brushed his teeth, but with a just a little scolding he complied.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
Tucking him into bed, Jake said, “Mommy, I’m still scared.”
“Why are you scared?” Angeline said.
“I’m afraid Long Fingers will eat me,” he said in a small voice.
“Long Fingers isn’t real,” Angeline said, “And you know what? Even if he was real?” and she stooped down to his ear, and whispered, “I bet you’d kick his butt.”
“No, I can’t,” Jake said.
“Sure, you can! Remember how great your kicks were yesterday at karate practice? You even made Sensei go ‘oof!’” Angeline said, throwing herself back across his bed. Peeking at his face, she saw a little smile. Then she said, “And if he’s still up after you punch him, you just come and get Mommy, and she’ll finish him for you.”
She punched at the air and smiled.
“Promise?” Jake said.
“Pinky promise,” she smiled, extending a pinky. He took his pinky out from under the covers and linked it to hers, then quickly put it back under the covers, his smile widening a little.
“Love you, bud,” Angeline said.
She planted a kiss on his forehead.
“Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite!”
“Okay,” Jake said, and Angeline left his bedroom, returning to her laptop in the cramped kitchen. The light flickered, and Angeline frowned up at it. Just one more thing to take care of.
But as Angeline tried to resume her work, she found she could do little more than stare at her budget spreadsheet. She thought of Long Fingers, instead.
She went to her bedroom and took a drawing out of her nightstand. After Jake’s first nightmare about it, he drew a picture. Jagged crayon marks flickered all over Long Fingers’ form, but the thing itself was eerie. It was almost like a man, but unnaturally thin, almost to the point of being a stick figure, and stooped low, so its string-like fingers tumbled to the ground like knotted bits of hair. The head was long and tubular, not unlike an elephant’s trunk, though the nostrils were replaced by a circle of jagged white teeth colored crimson which stood out against the blackness of its body.
If Angeline kept having nightmares about this creature, too, she’d also probably want to sleep with someone else. Angeline looked behind her at the bed. It was empty. It had been ever since Evan left. Sometimes, when Angeline looked at Jake, she could see a bit of Evan in him staring back at her, before things had gone bad, and their nights became filled with shouting.
Suddenly, Angeline found that she didn’t care if Jake kicked in his sleep. She went to his bedroom, and pressed her ear to the door, to see if he was rustling in his bed. She heard nothing. He must be asleep. But Angeline bet she could carry him to her bed, and he wouldn’t wake up. He was such a heavy sleeper that he’d once slept straight through a shooting that had happened right outside their apartment. The gunfire had woken up the whole building, but Jake had slept on.
The door creaked a little as Angeline opened it, and she wrinkled her nose. Something smelled off. It reminded her instantly of how it had smelled when her cat had died. Her heart suddenly hammering in her chest, she thrust the door wide and stared at the bed.
Time seemed to stop, and she felt suddenly as if she wasn’t herself anymore. The covers had been cast aside from the bed and someone small in Jake’s jet fighter pajamas was lying there. But they didn’t have a head. Instead, where their head should have been, was a pool of something dark that glistened in the light from the hallway.
Angeline couldn’t hear herself breathe as she looked just to the left of the bed, toward the floor. Something was there, glistening and shapeless. It was a mush of dark red and gray with chunks of ivory that seemed to have splattered to the floor, and something in Angeline’s head realized that it was about the size of a child’s head and then she started screaming.
----------------------------------------
The bar was nice and cool. Not the establishment, mind, but the bar itself. Addy rested her cheek on it with a relaxed sigh, relishing the contrast between the muggy air and the varnished wood.
“Addy, you don’t know what’s been on there,” an uneasy voice said.
Blinking, Addy looked toward the voice’s source. A glowing green serpent floated in the air next to her. If a snake could look concerned, then S certainly did. Addy giggled, “I think I know better than you, S.”
“What’s that?” another voice asked, this one rough and surly. Tommy, the bartender, was blurry, but Addy could make out his grey button down that was stretched over a generously portioned gut.
“Nothing,” Addy said, and closed her eyes again.
“I think you should head home,” S said.
Addy waved her hand blindly at where she supposed S must be and grumbled.
“Want another?” Tommy said.
“Yes!” Addy slurred, not sure what she’d agreed to.
“This bartender is a horrid influence,” S groaned, “He really should know better. Don’t you think you’ve had enough to drink?”
“Can always have more,” Addy mumbled.
“I really can’t understand you when you’re drunk,” S said, “Enunciate, Addy!”
Addy sat up, abandoning the cool bar top, and tried to stare at S, which was difficult seeing as there were three of him, and she said, “I drink as much as I want, you fu-gh-cking snake.”
“Who the hell d’you think you’re talking to?” Tommy said as he slid a tumbler overflowing with beautiful amber liquor toward Addy, who grabbed it. She gave it a cursory, token sniff, as if that would somehow improve the flavor in her stupefied state.
“This is top shelf stuff, thanks, Tommy Boy!” Addy said.
Tommy stared at Addy for a moment, then scratched his head and said, “Uh, sure. Enjoy the Jack.”
Addy did. Or at least, she tried. She felt so fuzzy it was as if her soul were phasing out of her body. This made Addy giggle even more. Soul. What would a priest give for the knowledge that she had about the Soul? All these idiots arguing about the afterlife and souls and it was Addy, a drunk twenty-something that could reveal its nature to them and shove their pompous faces in just how bleak it was. Not even oblivion could be so depressing! Addy finished the whiskey, savoring its burn, wanting to see just how numb she could get before she had an out-of-body experience.
“One more!” Addy shouted, and another tumbler was in her hand. She really felt disconnected now, like she had fully left her body for something else entirely. “Wine is the blood of Christ, but whiskey is the piss of gods!”
Elsewhere in the bar, someone said, “What’d she say?”
But as Addy gulped down the whiskey for a second, she wondered if maybe this actually was piss. She smacked her lips. It didn’t burn. In fact, it tasted bitter. She looked at her glass and saw water.
“Hey, what’s the big fucking idea, Tommy—”
Before Addy could finish her thought, she was no longer in the bar. Everything was white, and she groaned as she realized what had happened. That sodden bitch had turned perfectly good whiskey into water.
And as if in response to Addy’s thought, the Lady appeared. She was pale, with skin more akin to porcelain than flesh. Her braided, damp, black hair glimmered from an unseen light. But her eyes were even more unsettling: bright, neon green like a luminescent sea, shifting and swirling like the tide. Her soaked white dress clung tightly to her body, revealing a figure far from voluptuous, more akin to a wasted husk than a woman.
“Having fun?” the Lady said.
“Sure am,” Addy said uneasily, “Why don’t you let me get back to it?”
“My goal is to limit our interactions—” the Lady began.
“Sweet!” Addy interrupted, “Me, too. So, how about you let me go?”
“But your most recent failure requires redress,” the Lady said, narrowing her eyes.
Addy blinked, “What?”
“There is a monster hunting, unopposed, in my city,” the Lady said, “While you’ve been going to bars and wasted the healing spell I so graciously granted you to restore your abused liver because... Why? Because you’re bored, perhaps?”
“Because I need a goddamn vacation,” Addy growled.
“I see you’ve let the liquid courage loosen your tongue overmuch if you can even consider airing such foolishness,” the Lady said, and she raised a hand to Addy, who recoiled, “Let’s dry up that courage.”
It felt as if Addy’s soul had slammed back into her body. Sensation returned like a truck, and a jackhammer began pounding against the inside of her skull. Addy fell to the ground, clutching her head, groaning.
“Feeling less foolish?” the Lady asked.
“Yeah, loads,” Addy grumbled, then added, “My Lady.”
“Good,” the Lady said, “Now get up.”
Addy knew she wasn’t actually in this white space. She knew it was just a projection, an illusion or dream, but she only barely staggered to her feet. The white room suddenly seemed brighter, and Addy shut her nonexistent eyes, which only gave minimal relief.
“What’s this about a monster?” Addy asked.
“I’m so glad you’ve enough wits to recall why I’ve called you here,” the Lady said, “A Monster has been terrorizing my city, which, as you will recall, I’ve employed you to protect.”
Her city. What a joke. And saying Addy was supposed to protect it, as if Addy had signed a contract and not been coerced into serving this damp bimbo. But Addy bit her tongue.
“Sorry, I’ll get right on it.”
“See that you do,” the Lady said.
“You wanna give me a hint on where to start?” Addy said.
“You will find emergency vehicles near the latest victim’s home in Blaketown,” the Lady said, “I suggest you hurry.”
“Got it,” Addy said, “Anything else?”
“Yes,” the Lady said, and she gave one of her little smiles, “The next time I have to bother you to do your job, our encounter will be far less pleasant for you, though much more gratifying for me. So, for your sake, I suggest you, as they say, get your act together.”
Addy shuddered. She had an idea of what the Lady had in mind. “Got it,” Addy said.
The Lady phased away and a ceiling took her place. Tommy and a few other crusty bar patrons were leaning over her, concern on their faces. “You okay?” Tommy asked.
“What, worried that if I die my tab will go unpaid?” Addy grumbled.
“Not at all—” Tommy began.
“Sure,” Addy said, staggering to her feet, “I think I’d better get home.”
“Do you need me to call you a cab?” Tommy said.
“I’ll take care of myself,” Addy said, “That fall sobered me up.”
Tommy blinked, wondering how in the world falling would sober anyone up. She shoved her way out of the bar and said, “S, where are you?”
“Right here,” S said, materializing suddenly just out of the corner of Addy’s eyes.
“We got a job,” Addy said.
“Oh?” S asked.
Addy filled S in, and he said, “Are you sure you’re in any condition to begin an investigation?”
“Don’t really have a choice,” Addy grumbled.
“Well, I suppose it is kind of your fault,” S said.
“Oh, don’t you start too.”