A Way In

They're always looking...

Photo by Nino Liverani on Unsplash

I’ll tell you about Princess Monrovia. I have to tell someone. I met her in one of our safe houses, she worked with information and taught me how to make fake IDs. When I think of her now, I see her snub nose and hollow eyes that were always rimmed red. From crying, Yuri explained to me one night.

“She cries so much?” I pulled back the slide on my Colt and put it on the table with the other guns Yuri and I were cleaning.

“She’s dying. And she’s not really a princess. Those things make her cry.”

“What’s she dying of?”

“Ghosts. She’s haunted.” Yuri was bent over a dismantled Uzi, pulling a makeshift snake through its short bore.

“A dead lover?”

Yuri shrugged and dragged the snake through the bore a second time. “Could be anyone. A spirit needs is a way in, that’s all. Then it feeds until you die.”

On our second week in the safe house, one morning, hot as Hell, I was stumbling around in the hazy dawn, already sweating. The Princess was in the kitchen making a Bloody Mary.

“Want to know my recipe?” She leaned against the counter, on her t-shirt was a cartoon owl perched on a stack of books and her thin wrists were cuffed with glittering rhinestone bracelets. I nodded and she turned around, so I moved in next to her. She smelled like saltwater and didn’t smile, her body was cooler than the stale air in the kitchen. “Simple. Hair of the dog,” she filled her glass half full of icy vodka, “blood from the wound,” I watched the red V8 juice cut and swirl into the clear, cold booze. Next came hot sauce, “Flames. And only celery.” She crushed the bottom of the celery stick between her finger and thumb then used it to stir the swirling liquid. She drank in long gulps, her gray eyes only half open to the sticky heat. When she finished she set the glass on the counter next to the vodka.

“Come,” she said, sliding her wet hand in mine, pulling me to the back room of the house. Still not smiling.

The bed and carpet in her room were soaked with blood. The air was rancid, unbreathable. She pulled her t-shirt over her head in one motion, the plastic bangles on her wrists rustled as the fabric brushed against them. Her smooth white breasts were separated by a red, swollen scar that ran from her naval to the top of her ribcage. The scar, the blood, whatever she was into, I wasn’t interested. I turned to leave, but she stopped me.

“Please stay. I need help,” her voice was hoarse as she motioned me to the metal folding chair at her desk across the small room. The chair was cold through my sweat-soaked clothes and gooseflesh rose on my bare arms as I sat, ready to leave if things got weirder.

Without a word she grunted and shoved her thumb and index finger into her naval. A stream of blood began to run down her stomach, soaking her shorts. I struggled against a cold force wrapping me in my chair as she pulled her blood-slicked fingers out of her belly, gripping something metal between them.

“Nope. Nuh-uh. Let me go!” My voice sounded scared, far away, like maybe it wasn’t mine. Like I didn’t know me or what nightmare I was in. She pulled the metal upward. The flaps of skin on both sides of the scar bunched then pulled back slightly from her ribs as she unzipped herself. Frigid silence pressed against me, the room was still except for the zipper’s teeth, whispering all the way up to hollow of her throat. She left the pull hanging there, a bloody pendant. Underneath, her bits and her bones were pink and glistening. Her face was angles and dark lines as she pressed on her sternum with two slender red fingers. An icy fear, like a fist tightening around my spine, squeezed the breath from me as her ribcage popped open like a cell door.

I’d seen hearts, but always dead, meaty hearts. This one spasmed like a rabbit hit with a taser. Then it burst open. I fought the chilling force holding me in my seat, every muscle strained. The Princess reached into her bulging, banging heart and pulled out something tiny, white, and furry. Her goodness? Maybe. Her happiness? I wanted to know then. I don’t want to know anymore. The tiny thing seemed to huddle in the palm of her hand as she raised it into the air. The room began to shake, or I did, so violently the chair teetered on its legs. A screech, a killing sound I knew, I’d heard it in my own mind countless times before, came from somewhere else and reverberated through the room, vibrating my bones and clacking my teeth. I locked eyes with Princess Monrovia, hers were wide, rolling with pain as black smoke emanated from her sockets. The smoke coalesced into a creature long and slinking that turned to smile at me with shining fangs. It snapped the trembling furry thing from her hand and swallowed it whole. It screeched again as the Princess shoved her hand back into her heart.

I don’t remember hearing the gunshot, but I remember coming to with the hot Colt in my hand and Yuri shaking me. Princess Monrovia was dead.

Her ghosts follow me now, dark and grinning, always looking for a way in. I can’t give them a way in.