Pretty Marys All in a Row by Gwendolyn Kiste

Author:Gwendolyn Kiste [Kiste, Gwendolyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Broken Eye Books
Published: 2017-11-27T22:00:00+00:00

* * *

When I open my eyes, I don’t know if it’s night or day. And I don’t know where I am. This isn’t the highway. The room is cramped and gray, and something sticky pastes itself to the bottoms of my heels.

Blood. I’m already inside the mirror.

Red wanders the dark space, spiraling the edges of the room.

I smile and blink away last evening. “Hello again,” I say and entwine my fingers with hers. Her skin is cold and smells of roses.

“Hello, Rhee.” She squeezes my hand, but her face is pale and strange. I pretend not to notice. This is right. This is the way it’s supposed to be. I’m here, and the party is about to begin.

“What do we do now?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “We wait. Hopefully, the twins will call to me.”

“They’ll call,” I say.

But I’m wrong. We wait for what feels like hours, the silence nearly deafening.

“Go ahead,” Red says at last. “Gather everyone else. You can come back for me at the end.”

I want to argue, I want to stay with her, but we don’t have enough time, so I cover my eyes and focus.

Lew. I see Lew. Tenuously, I pull myself toward her, listening for the heartbeat she no longer has.

When I look again, I’m standing next to her in a narrow kitchen. The walls are arrayed in garish green and orange flowers, and the entire place is ripe with jonquil and jasmine and stale air freshener.

“Where are we?” I ask, still queasy from the trip.

“In Des Moines,” Lew says.

“Des Moines?” I hesitate. “You mean, at the house of that little old lady you scared half to death?”

Lew stares at me defiantly, as if she was expecting this reaction.

“Yeah, so? I like her. She’s nice,” Lew says, stroking that last word as softly as a beloved tabby. “She’s been trying to get me to bake cookies with her for years. She doesn’t seem to understand that I can’t hold a wooden spoon.”

But the old lady doesn’t seem particularly nice tonight. All she can do is glare at me and shake her cane in my face.

“You aren’t my Lew,” she says and braces herself against the stove. “Where is my Lew?”

“She’s right here.” I motion next to me. It must look like blank air because the old lady grimaces.

“Don’t get sassy with me, youngster,” she says. “I might not be so spry as you, but I haven’t gone soft in the head. Not yet anyway.”

Lew rolls her eyes. “I don’t know how you’re going to convince her to go anywhere with you.”

I sigh. “What’s her name?”

“Gladys.”

“Hello, Gladys.” I inch forward, half convinced she might really smack me with that cane. “You can’t see her, but I assure you that Lew’s here with me.”

“Lew? Darling?” Gladys flails wildly at the air. “What did you do with her?”

“Lew will tell you all about it soon. But first, I’d like to take you somewhere. If that’s okay with you.”

“A trip?” Gladys eyes me up, one fright-white eyebrow curled in suspicion.

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