Reay Jespersen

With a child’s life in the balance, a parent will do exceptional things. Ilsa was slipping further away with each passing moment and needed the apothecary medicine strapped under my cloak. My only option was to cut through the Dark Forest. Tales of the region said that most avoided the Forest at all costs, and that those who didn’t were never heard from again. But the Black Path would cut my travel time by half at least.
With no choice to make, I went in.

Spidery trees clawed the sky from the fog-laiden ground, and all was deathly quiet. I pushed myself hard for long stretches at a time, stopping only when absolutely necessary. I was perhaps half way through to the far side when a beautiful woman in tattered clothing approached me, stepping – almost forming – out of the dim fog. She seemed familiar, possessing some aspects of my late wife, yet at the same time strange.
She cupped her hands, imploring. “Good sir, may I please have some food?”
But what little food I had brought from the distant village was lost as I fell into a stream I was crossing much earlier. I had nothing for myself, let alone to offer to others. I told her I could not help her.
With that, her demeanor changed drastically: her beautiful face became twisted and hateful, once-beautiful eyes suddenly blazing with anger. She closed her fist, opened it again, and blew a fine powder at my face. My eyes stung and my breathing was reduced to choking gasps.
Everything went black.

I awoke as if immediately to find myself bare and leather-strapped to a wooden table. Candles, books, glass jars of oddities, and small, rusty farm tools were everywhere in the room, whose smell turned my stomach.
“You don’t like your new home?” An old woman’s voice croaked at my expression. I turned to see a mockery of the woman I had seen on the path, now decades older; bent and twisted. She wasn’t looking at me, but was instead focused on her work as she pushed a ladle around a cauldron hung over her large fireplace.
“Where am I? Who are you?”
“You should never have entered my domain,” she said, sparing me only a brief glance.
Tales of the Dark Hag flitted through my mind. No longer myth. No longer stories for children to scare each other with. Alive and before me and holding me prisoner.
Then, remembering what the tales said she did with her prisoners.
“Free me, fiend, or you’ll pay dearly when I’ll escape,” I informed her.
“Escape?” She asked. “And how, pray, will you do that?” She glancing at my legs before turning back to her cauldron. I looked down the length of my body to see my legs had been cut off above the knee, now ending in stumps with bloodied poultices wrapped against them.
Yet rather than of myself, I thought of Ilsa. Without her medicine, she would now certainly die… utterly alone. Tears welled up, and though I don’t recall doing so, I must have uttered her name.
“Oh, not to worry,” the old crone said. “She’s doing very well. Aren’t you, dear?”
All in a moment, cold, rasped metal encircled my small finger just before pressure was put upon it, and with a crisp snap, a blinding pain shot through me. Vision swimming as unconsciousness vied to take over, I looked down to see Ilsa wrapping a poultice to the wound she had inflicted, where my finger had been. The blood flow stemmed immediately.
I wanted to say her name, call out to my only child. But in my shock, I could do nothing but watch. She took my finger to the old woman. “Yes, Mother,” she responded. The Hag dropped my finger into her brew, stirring it in as Ilsa watched.
First heart, then body, and now mind broken, I finally let unconsciousness take me… hoping to never wake again.

She sat in the empty subway car, chastising herself for riding it so late at night. No one should, in this city going to Hell in a hand basket, but particularly at her age? What had she been thinking?
Still, the ladies of her Bridge Club had insisted there was no other way than to hold the games at Meredith’s house this week – their usual community centre meeting spot closed for renovations as it was – so Edna had little choice but to travel across the city to attend.
Oh, she could have taken a taxi, of course, but at the prices they charged? She could get a month’s worth of food for her tabby, Mr. Pickles, for what a taxi would cost to drive her a half hour away.
No matter, she thought, looking at her reflection in the window beside her and adjusting her flowered hat. She was here now. No use crying over spilled milk. Or at least, Mr. Pickles certainly wouldn’t be upset if such a thing were to happen.
The subway pulled into the next station, which Edna was quietly relieved to find seemingly empty. Only one more station to go. But as the subway eased to a stop, her smiling, shrunken apple face dropped when she saw a group of young men gathered a short ways down on the platform, talking and laughing about something. Hoodlums, the lot of them, with their long or bed-tossed hair and unshaven faces, dressed in their undershirts and worn dungarees. Two of the five wore baseball caps, one normally but the other, particularly brazen one wearing his cap backwards. Backwards! It was like the lot of them were raised in a barn. And, as was just her luck, the whole braying pack of them herded onto the far end of her subway car. Pursing her lips, Edna shifted uncomfortably.
The doors closed and the subway lurched forward, pulling out of the station, and still the hooligans kept up their shenanigans. As the subway plunged into the tunnel, one of the group facing Edna gestured to her with his head. The others became quiet, all turning to look at her. They looked at each other again. The one turned directly away from her said something, and the others nodded and laughed darkly; a sound without humour. Edna had a bad feeling about this.
Her suspicion was confirmed when the same one spun on his heel and started making his way toward her. The rest of his filthy pack followed him, those not busily making themselves look nonchalant instead sporting insipid grins on their faces.
Edna distracted herself, looking around at anything except them, until they stopped a few paces from her and stood there. Head turned to the side, Edna finally peered at them, darting her eyes to them and away again. She sighed deeply and finally looked them straight on.
“What?” She snapped.
“Your purse,” the lead hood smiled.
“What about it?” Edna asked, unfamiliar with mugging protocol.
He looked at his companions, some chuckling at his bemused expression. He turned back to Edna, serious. “What about it is I want it.”
“Well, you can’t have it,” she said.
His face betrayed a moment of surprise before it was replaced by anger and he started a slow, purposeful strut toward her. “I don’t think you get it,” he said, now almost on top of her.
“No, deary,” Edna said, her most innocent grandmother face on. “You don’t get it.” She snapped to her feet, throwing an empty hand toward him, and he became a two-dimensional form of pure light before disappearing.
His dumbfounded friends stood wide-eyed and slack-jawed where they stood. “So,” Edna said to them, cocking her head slightly and smiling. After a single, pounding heartbeat, they broke and ran back down the length of the subway, clambering over each other to get away. She tut-tutted them. So predictable.
She threw another open palm at one, and he shrank into nothingness, even as she gestured to the next and he was sucked into a door-shaped portal that opened and closed in the blink of an eye. She pulled up her sagging knee-high stockings and set out with purpose after the remaining two.
A gesture of her hand, and the second last of them disappeared into a miniature, all-consuming tornado which began at his feet and swept up his body and over his head.
The remaining hoodlum slammed into the door between subway cars, frantically pulling at the handle, which found itself suddenly locked. He turned around to find some other way out and stopped in his tracks when he saw Edna standing an arm’s reach away. Hyperventilating, he backed against the door, looking around for some salvation; a desperate, caged animal.
His breathing became more shallow as she approached, this smiling old lady no taller than his chest.
“Wh-… what are you?” He strained.
“Irked,” she said with a quick nod. She levelled a finger at him. “And…” she touched his stomach, with a high-pitched, “Boop!” He turned into confetti and made a small pop as he weakly blew apart and drifted to the subway floor.
Edna brushed bits of confetti off herself as the subway pulled into her station. The doors opened. She adjusted her flowered hat and stepped out onto the platform, turning toward the escalator. Toward the bus, and Mr. Pickles, and home.
Hell in a hand basket, she thought to herself. The city was getting so bad a demi-god couldn’t even feel safe on the subway any more.

“You finished your homework?”
“Yes, sir.”
Wilfred glanced at Agatha, who nodded her confirmation. She touched her napkin to the side of her mouth. “He finished it after dishes and before listening to the radio last night.”
Taking a sip of coffee, Wilfred looked with a slight smile at his son, who sat in his pajamas and scooped the last bit of oatmeal into his mouth. “Well, perhaps the son I had last year, who was so willing to let his work and grades slide, is starting to become a young man I can finally be proud of.”
“I want to do well,” Edwin said earnestly as he concentrated on scraping the bowl clean. He looked up. “To make you proud of me, yes, but also because we were told that only the students with the highest grades will be chosen for the clubs.”
“And those who show particular enthusiasm and ability will no doubt be selected as the leaders,” Wilfred confirmed. The boy’s eyes lit up with aspiration.
The family returned to its breakfast routine. The clinking of cutlery on plates was all that broke the silence for long moments.
“Have you heard any more about the transfer?” Agatha asked.
Wilfred shook his head as he took the last bite of egg and toast. “Nothing yet,” he finally said. “It would probably still be out east, if anywhere.”
“I hope so,” Agatha said. “That’s where the Beckers moved, you remember?”
“I remember.”
“It would be wonderful to see them again. Mindy and I could restart our Bridge club. Maybe with new members from the neighbourhood. I’m sure there must be Bridge players out that way.”
Wilfred nodded automatically. “I’m sure of it.”
She took a small bite of her eggs, pensive. “So they said by the end of the week?”
Wilfred sighed, sagging slightly in his pajamas, tired of days of the discussion. “Yes. They said they would know for sure whether or not I’m getting transferred by the thirteenth, the end of this week, and would let me know either way by shift’s end Friday.”
He remembered something and checked his watch. “Blast, I’m late.” He stood up and hurried to his room.
“Late? For what?” Agatha asked. She got up and followed him, nervous. Edwin leaned slightly in his chair to be able to look down the hallway of their small house and see his mother standing at the doorway to his parents’ bedroom.
“The meeting,” Wilfred said from within. “I told you about it last week, remember? The managers wanted to meet with lead supervisors to go over the lagging turnaround time we’ve been having the last few months. Our numbers are way down, and they’re none too happy about it.”
Edwin slid from his chair and made his way down the hall.
“But the meeting is now? This morning? So it won’t keep you tonight?” Agatha asked.
“Yes,” Wilfred said, forcing patience. “That’s why I’m late now.”
“Well alright,” she said, still anxious. “But call me if you’re going to be late for dinner.”
He sighed. “Of course.”
She smiled and smoothed the front of her dress, turning and walking back up the hallway, stroking Edwin’s crew cut hair as she passed by him. He got to the door of the bedroom and looked in, having always enjoyed watching his father get ready for work.
Already in his pants and starched shirt, Wilfred threw his jacket onto his arms and leaned down to pull his boots on, polished to a shine visible even in the early morning light.
Looking at himself in the full-length mirror, he stood up straight and did up the buttons down the front of his jacket before he saw the reflection of the boy in the doorway. Wilfred smiled and turned to him, flawlessly official, even the leather of his snapped holster buffed to perfection.
Knowing what his father was expecting, Edwin stood at emphasized attention and clicked his slippered heels together, saluting his right hand at arm’s length upward in front of him.
Wilfred’s expression became serious and he clicked his boot heels together and saluted back the same way, holding the pose for a moment before smiling and breaking form. “Go on and get changed and get your books, or you’ll be late, too,” he said with a gesture of his head. “And keep up the good work at school.”
A wide smile on his face, Edwin nodded once and ran into his room to gather his books, wanting to do well. Wanting, as every boy does, to make his father proud.