Haiku: Part 4: Gwentermission
* * *Gwen stayed hunched over her keyboard, typing typing typing like a madwoman all day, the glow of the monitor making her face look pale in the dark room and a wreath of cigarette smoke about her head like a seer in a cave bent over some steaming remains in a fire.
Zaphod was right. For every culture, there was some legend about people turning into animals, or vice versa. Every one. Legends and tales and actual religions and fiction.
Something caught her eye, though, in a Wikipedia article about North American legends. It was probably nothing special, but it sent a thrill up her spine when she read it. It was:
“The Navajo believe that if you lock eyes with a skinwalker, they can absorb themselves into your body.”
She thought of Ashe’s eyes, when she had opened the door. That thousand-yard stare. How her eyes had not moved when she spoke, but had simply looked, as if at an invisible point in the air.
Like a woman in a trance.
And then a cold feeling ran through Gwen’s belly.
The woman—the thing—had come out of Ashe’s building.
She’d been so obsessed with finding out what it was, with seeing this impossibility happen in front of her face, that she had forgotten that it had come out of Ashe’s building.
Ashe’s eyes, green and empty as she spoke.
Gwen felt stupid. She felt a childish guilt even as she dove for the phone. She’d been obsessed to the point of distraction ever since she’d seen it and she hadn’t even thought about how it had come out of Ashe’s building and Ashe’s eyes too, as she dialed, punching the buttons—
“Hello?”
“Ashe! Stay right there, don’t move, I’m coming over.” And she ran out of the house without waiting for an answer or even hanging up the phone.
Ashe was wearing the exact same oversized T-shirt she’d been wearing that morning and nothing else. She opened the door a guarded foot.
“What’s up?”
“Lemme in! I need to talk to you!”
“This is really a bad time. Can it wait?”
“No!” She pushed her way in. “Ok, this is going to sound really strange, but just bear with me for a sec before you say anything. Have you seen any—”
She froze.
The Native American woman was standing in the middle of the living room.
She wasn’t naked this time—she was wearing an oversized T-shirt just like Ashe’s, which looked somehow out of place on her—but it was her. She stared at Gwen levelly, an unreadable expression on her face. Her eyes were beautiful. Her eyes were
Don’t look at her eyes!
Gwen looked at the floor, then turned to face Ashe, and was dismayed when Ashe walked over to stand beside the woman.
“This is Haiku,” she said. “She’s an old friend of mine.”
“How do you do,” the woman said. Her voice was like melted caramel.
“Nice to meet you,” Gwen mumbled. She looked slightly to the woman’s left instead of directly at her.
“So what’s the emergency?” Ashe asked. She sounded like herself. She looked like herself, too: no thousand-yard stare, no talking like she was reading off of cue cards, no weirdly stiff posture. She was the old her—and looking at Gwen with concern.
Gwen faltered.
“I... need a ride to the grocery store.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. And the liquor store.” That one actually sounded like a good idea.
“I really can’t right now. Can’t you just go down to the corner?”
“They don’t have tequila. Or limes,” she said, straight-faced—but a doubt began to gnaw at her as she said it.
Ashe was looking at her like she was crazy.
Under the light of day, with her friend and her friend’s friend there in the flesh, doubt formed like a solid thing in her stomach and stayed there.
It had been easy to imagine that something supernatural was happening while in her dark apartment with its macabre images looking down at her, and she’d seen it. She’d been sure.
But now her friend was standing in front of her, and Gwen was about to tell her that the woman standing next to her was some kind of mythical creature that was, possibly, controlling her mind.
“I’m really sorry, now is just—” Ashe looked at Haiku then back to Gwen. “I’ve got some cash, can I call you a cab?” Nothing but concern on her face.
And Gwen was about to say... what?
Something that sounded crazy. Something that was crazy.
Her hair had been in her face. Whatever she’d seen had been 75% hair and 25% something that happened too fast to even get a good grip on the memory. She tried to recall it. It fell apart in her mind’s hands. She’s seen the woman—she was positive—and then she’d seen a bird. And that’s all she had. From that, she’d extrapolated that her friend had been kidnapped and her mind played with by some kind of monster.
Gwen’s resolve crumbled then turned into the opposite of resolve, and when she spoke it was in a smaller voice:
“No, it’s ok, I just thought, you know, you’re playing hooky and apparently I am too and thought we could have a drink and now getting plastered in the middle of the afternoon is suddenly sounding stupid. Heh. Sorry. Nice to meet you... I’m sorry, was it...?”
“Haiku.”
“Nice to meet you.” And this time she did look the woman in the eyes.
And nothing happened, except that Gwen was a little jealous that a person could have eyes like that without any makeup.
“Maybe tomorrow?” Ashe followed her to the door. “Or this weekend? Now is just, she came a long way to get here, so I don’t wanna, you know. Blow her off.”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
She walked out, feeling very much like an idiot.
“She’s strange,” Ashe said.
“Hm.” Haiku was still looking at the door. Then she pulled off the T-shirt in one smooth motion and began walking towards it. It was almost five o’clock.
“You’re going outside,” Ashe observed.
“Yes.”
“Because you’re going to change into something.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t want me to see.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Haiku stopped and turned. Her long hair took a moment longer to stop, and billowed out before coming to rest on her ass.
“I don’t want to scare you.”
“You think it’d scare me?”
“Better to not take the chance,” she smiled, and approached her. “But there is something I should do first. Come with me.” She took Ashe’s hand and led her to the kitchen, stopping in front of the sink.
She took the sprayer from beside the faucet, aimed it at Ashe, and sprayed cold water all over her.
“Gah!” She jumped and covered her face with one hand and her breasts with the other. Haiku sprayed her again. “What are you doing!?”
“Hosing you down.” She put the sprayer back into place. “Like I’ve said, I understand the changes you’re going through as a pet. But from now on, I’m going to be in situations where it would be dangerous for me to become... distracted. If you start to feel...” They shared a look and color rose on both of their cheeks. “If you start to feel like that, take a cold shower if you need to. Stay in it for hours, if you need to.”
“I will.”
“Good.” She smiled, turned, and walked out, her tan ass jiggling slightly with each step.
Ashe watched. Once the door was closed she took the sprayer and, absently, squirted herself with it a couple of times, still looking at the door.
Gwen trudged towards her apartment, feeling embarrassed and small and stupid.
She needed to stop watching so many horror movies. She needed sleep. She needed to get out more, spend less time on the computer. She needed to stop reading that shit day in and day out. She needed to reevaluate her life.
She glanced back at Ashe’s building as she turned the corner towards her house.
She did that just in time to see Haiku walk out, turn into an owl, and fly away.
“SON OF A BITCH,“ she screamed.