The next day’s memories unfold, like blurred edges of a burnt photograph. The interrogations, the accusations.
“You killed a cat! The neighborhood bodega cat!”
“You robbed the store. You stole booze and gum, and bags of bread.”
“There were homeless men and drugs. Your clothes were torn!”
The police swarmed around me, like flies on a dead bird, and escorted me to their cold cement lair. Men and women in dark-stained suits with even darker circles under their eyes, blackened my fingertips, blinded light in my face, and swabbed between my legs.
And just when I thought they would set me free, as I plotted my return to the wildness, the freedom, the magic…other men in different uniforms, pushing a wheeled chair with straps, grabbed at me.
“You have to go back to the hospital,” my husband said as the men put me in the chair and strapped me in. I didn’t struggle. My mother-in-law, holding my baby in one hand, shook my full pill bottle with the other, like a smoking gun, in my face.
“You never took your pills!” she screeched. “You liar!”
“I don’t need them anymore,” I said as my baby cried. I reached my hand out to her, but they whisked me away, swiftly out of the building, and into a chariot donned with flashing lights. As I was bounced around in my chair, I tried to focus on the two small dirty windows in the back. The city whipped past me in a technicolor blur, as if I were racing towards the end of the Earth.
And then nothing but days upon days in a white room with bars on the windows and heavy padlocks on the door. A needle pierced my arm. I was woozy and in and out of consciousness as men and women in white clothes spoke to me, questioned me, poked and prodded me. I was in a mist, as if trapped with the Lotus Eaters, no desire for anything but more haze. No yearning to move off this island. The eagle screeched by my window, never leaving me, but as the days passed, the sound dulled, and eventually the eagle disappeared completely. All I hear now is a pounding in my head, a flat white noise, an echo of nothing.
My husband calls, but he doesn’t come to see me. They hand me the phone and stand in the room while we talk. The conversation is always the same: The baby is fine, she misses you. How are you feeling? Better? Just get better. OK, talk to you soon.
It is always a one-way conversation.
And then one day, the doctors enter at their usual time, but behind them, a male nurse. His head is down as he finally removes the IV out of my arm. The doctors are speaking, but I don’t care to hear what they are saying. I can only stare at the nurse. I can’t see his face, but his skin, it frightens me. He is thin, his skin almost translucent, the blue veins on his hands throb with the pulse of the pounding in my chest and in my head. His hands are ice cold, like the dead in the grave. I hold my breath.
“You can take pills now,” one doctor says, and the creature nurse with his head downcast hands me a large white pill and holds a cup of water. I put it in my mouth. It is dry, and the chalk dust chokes my throat. The doctors leave, and now I am alone with Death. I put my hand out for the cup.
“Spit it out!” he whisper-hisses, and holds his hand out to me. I open my mouth, but he pushes my head down.
“Not like that. The cameras are watching.”
I understand. I lower my head to hide my spitting into his skeletal hand. He squeezes it so tight, it explodes into dust.
An owl hoots outside the room. I snap my head towards the grimy window covered with bars. I hear it again, this time louder, closer. Where is it?
“It’s inside of you,” the Death nurse says aloud, and then turns away from me to leave.
“Wait,” I cry, but he doesn’t stop. “WAIT!” He stops short and turns and lifts his head up to me. I gasp. His face is bony, hollow, no hair on his head. He is gray, as if he has never seen the sun. More blue veins mar his face. His eyes are stark blue.
“It’s inside of you,” he says, his corpse face unchanging. He leaves, locking the door behind him with a loud metal clang.
And thus, it goes for days. The cold, dead nurse comes and hands me the pill, and then, with my head bent away from the cameras, I spit it back in his hand. And he leaves and locks the door behind him, the keys on his belt jingling, the door slamming so hard it shakes my insides for an hour.
Until today.
I spit out the pill. He doesn’t leave.
“Can you hear it?” he asks.
“The owl?”
He nods. And then I hear it screech, inside my head, threatening to split it open. I see its flaming orange eyes behind my eyes, its beak in my mouth, its talons in my hand.
“You’re becoming,” he says. “Spit.”
I comply, and he crushes the pill and smiles. His fangs glare in the false light, and he turns and exits, but this time he leaves the door open.
Cautious, I climb out of my bed, and peer into the hallway. It is desolate. I exit and walk the long corridor. It smells of Clorox, rubber, piss. The walls are painted a dingy gray, the windows and doors barred. Everything is locked. I turn a corner and smack into a young woman who is frantic, clutching a doll.
“Is he following me?” she cries. She is scared, looking around. She pulls at her eyebrows, plucking them. Her long blonde hair is thin, matted. She is so pale I can see the blood rushing behind her eyes.
“I want to go home,” she says. “My mother doesn’t know where I am. I have to find her!” The owl screeches inside of me, and I turn my gaze. The Death nurse is watching her from the shadows.
“Is he following me?”
“I don’t think so,” I lie.
She tries to open the door leading to the exit from the hallway.
“Can you open the door? I want to go home!”
I try, but it won’t open.
“It’s locked, you stupid fools!” A laughing squawk.
I whip around. A dark woman stands before me, smiling. Her eyes are painted with heavy black kohl, her long dark hair curls, almost snake-like, around her whole body.
“Stupid ugly bitches!” she says. She laughs and then flashes her tit at me. Then her dark eyes blaze crystal blue. Just like the others. She rushes away from me. I try to follow her, but then I am grabbed.
“Time for your appointment.” The Death nurse turns me towards a group
of doctors in white coats with clipboards, glasses, and pens. As the doctors escort me away, I watch him stalk the young woman down the corridor.
I sit in a chair and the doctors question me over and over. “Why do you think you did what you did?” “Do you still believe what you saw?” “How do you feel?” “Do you want to hurt yourself?” “Do you want to hurt your baby, hurt more animals?”
“No,” I answer.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“I killed a cat?”
“Were you raped?”
“No.”
“Why did you kill the cat?”
“I don’t know.”
“You told the police you were on a hunt, that you were hunting a lion.”
A memory flashes, the smell of blood, the ecstasy of the kill. The screaming. I want to smile, but I dare not.
“I don’t remember,” I say. The owl screeches again. I instinctively snap my head up.
“What do you hear?” the doctor asks. “Do you hear voices in your head? Does the TV talk to you?”
“I don’t hear anything,” I say. And then they shake their heads, scribble in their notepads, and then leave.
***
I sit alone in my room. The owl doesn’t stop screaming now. Inside of me, it is scratching, scratching, at the inside of my skull, desperate to escape. The long-haired dark woman appears in my doorway. She walks towards me seductively with a lit cigarette. She smiles, licking her lips. A piece of tobacco sits on the tip of her tongue. She spits it onto her finger and then flicks it. She takes a deep drag.
“They’re waiting for you.”
“Who?”
She huffs, takes another drag, then spits again and puts the cigarette out on the floor.
“You gave them power, but not enough. They need you.”
The owl screeches in my head and tears at the bone of my skull.
“For what?”
“Come now, you don’t remember any of it?” She leans in, her body reeks of sour sweat and old perfume, cigarettes. She pushes me back on the bed. She sticks her tongue in my mouth and grabs my hand. She puts it in between her legs and grinds on it, writhing on top of me.
“We have wandered the Earth for over two thousand years!” she whispers in my ear, stopping her grinding and grabbing my face. “Our father, our king—his throne destroyed, our powers taken. Nothing was left for us. No more succulent fat dripping from the spring lambs to cover our altars. No more gold coins and gifts to beg for our mercy. No more virgins tethered to our temples for our limitless pleasure. Once, I could make a man disintegrate in ecstasy with just one glance. Now we are nothing. Homeless drifters, full of pestilence and rot.”
She resumes her grinding, moaning, panting.
“We searched for you, she who fights in the front. We searched for you to set us free, and we finally find you!” She screams and finishes, her hot cigarette breath in my face. I turn away.
“Only you can give us our power back.”
“How?”
“Bring us a gift.”
“An offering?”
“A sacrifice.”
“But I did!”
“No! A true sacrifice.”
“I can’t,” I say.
“Yes, you can, because you are one of us. And you are the only one who can set us free.” She climbs off my bed and disappears from my room.
