Clingers
August is always the hottest month on the mountain. The pine needle carpet gets so red and crispy it feels like a sharp word could ignite it. The air hums with dry static. We, the dogs and I, weather it with frequent trips to the creek, it’s glacier fed and always a welcome treat. Most of the time we only encounter other mountain creatures, each of us minding our own business. Witches and animals tend to have an understanding. But this summer has been exceptionally hot and that brings less typical mountain residents out of hiding. Namely, the many monsters I’ve trapped there. Keeping the monsters in check is what the dogs are trained for, but even they can be caught by surprise when one of their wards wanders out of its usual haunt looking to cool off.
As happened on the day this particular client was also making her way up the mountain. I had made a little dam in the creek so it would be deep enough to swim in and was up to my neck in my shiver-inducing pool. My limbs were just starting to go numb, it was lovely. The dogs were closer to the shore, rolling and wrestling in the icy shallows when they both straightened up and leapt out of the water. They stood there dripping and watching the opposite bank intently as I made my way over to them and stuck my feet in flip flops. The creek at this point is rather wide for a creek, maybe forty feet across, but is generally not too deep. I was thinking about this, and how easily it could be crossed as I followed the dogs’ gaze across the water, shading my eyes with my hand. I smiled.
“Oh, hello!” I waved. The creature had been standing up to its ankles in the cold water but shrank back to the bank as I spoke. Which was fair, I suppose, it had once been a woman, but I was responsible for taking that form away from it. The woman in question had been a serial killer, she’d come up my mountain seeking a place to shelter until police had given up the hunt for her. But then she met me. I turned her into something slightly less threatening, not harmless of course, nothing is harmless, but certainly incapable of answering a singles ad in the paper. She got the ignominious end she deserved, as I saw it, seeing as she’d murdered several of her own children. I turned her into a teddy bear. Human sized, but devoid of any teeth or claws. I left her her drive to kill, but gave her no easy means of accomplishing the task. She was still her greedy, narcissistic, murderous self, just, in a fluffy prison. To the dogs she was just another monster. To me she was… kind of hilarious.
“How are things, Belle?”
Her mouth was little more than a line of stitching, she couldn’t speak. Her fur was matted and dirty and her black button eyes looked blankly in my direction. I could see her nubby fluff stump hands ball up with tension.