I park my decrepit Honda before the burned-out skeleton of the toy factory. The cracked windows are dark with smoke, and the ground thick with ash and weeds. The tin walls look ready to collapse in on themselves. Garron gives a huge sigh from the passenger seat and tugs at the wad of duct-tape that keeps the sun visor on his side up.
“Are you ever gonna get a better car?”
“I like this one.” I get out.
“Oh, do you?” He slams his door. “I like the movie Frankenstein, but would I go out on a date with him? Certainly not.”
“What are you trying to say, Garron?” I sigh. The factory’s ground floor has a pit in the middle, flanked by stairs that lead down into it. Spots of hot pink fabric dot the dirt – a teddy bear’s arm, a leg, half a stomach.
“I’m just saying you should think about getting a better car.”
“So when you decide to take my car without asking me on your usual midnight McDonald’s run, you’ll be styling?”
“Yes.” He stops. “No! I would never betray your trust like that!”
“I found a half-eaten chicken sandwich in my glovebox this morning.”
“A Porsche would be lovely.”
I press my thumb against the electronic lock beside the steel door built into the earth. It slides open, revealing the shiny inside of a hermetically-clean elevator.
“Floor two.” I sigh.
“Floor two.” A woman’s mechanical voice parrots after me. The elevator starts downward.
I would not buy a new car just to appease Garron’s sense of self-worth. It was bad enough he took it for a spin every night without asking me, and even worse that he had a spare key hidden away somewhere. My job as cleaner wasn’t low-pay, but it wasn’t luxurious, and I was saving for college. I would use my old car until it stopped working entirely, come what may, and Garron was a sack of gonorrhea-ridden lard for suggesting otherwise.
“Avery,” Garron gives me a friendly pat on the back. “You’re thinking out loud again, yeah?”
“I am upset,” I sniff, “with certain individuals.”
“You have arrived.” The female voice echoes, and the elevators slides open to reveal the white, circular hallway lined with doors. Garron steps out to shout.
“We’re home!”
Nothing stirs at our arrival, no noise of acknowledgement. Somewhere, a machine beeps probably out of pity.
“We have food.” I deadpan into the quiet.
The doors fly open and Leona barges out, her arms open in a grand gesture and a smile on her face.
“You’re home!” She sweeps past Garron completely and puts her manicured hands on either side of my face like I’m the niece and she’s the glamorous aunt. She plucks the warm bag out of my hand and grabs one drink from the tray I’m holding. Garron trails after her into the kitchen like a limping puppy, at the approximate rate of whatever a limping puppy in airtight leather pants can manage.
“Leona, I’m home too!” He warbles.
Another door opens, and the dark-haired head of Zeke appears. He watches the two of them go before walking up to me. He’s in a comfortable flannel and jeans, his ponytail long down his back. The open palm of his hand indicates I’m to give him something.
“Drinks, or nuggets?”
He points to nuggets. I pass him the heavy bag, and we walk into the kitchen together, where Garron is already collapsed on the floor in a melodramatic pose.
“Here, put some plates on.” Leona hands me a stack of paper plates and cups. Zeke shadows me, and places a carton of nuggets on every plate I drop. I step around Garron’s body to get to the other side of the table, and Zeke drags his feet just enough so his boots hit Garron in the nutsack.
At the ensuing scream Hawk, with his sleek silver hair and crisp suit, walks in from his office across the way. He fishes crusty silverware out from a drawer. The body on the floor moans.
“Something wrong, Garron?” He asks breezily.
“My life is over.”
“It was a life well-lived.”
“I’m not really dying!” Garron shouts as if we’d actually thought otherwise. “But I’m not getting up until Leona forgives me, or says something to me, anything!”
“And what did you do to her that warrants this silence?” Hawk asks, looking over the table at Leona, who shrugs. Her halter top only emphasizes the strong muscles in her shoulders.
“He bought me a shirt.”
“A shirt.” I raise my eyebrows. Beside me, Zeke stops playing with his napkin to look up. Hawk pauses in dishing out the mashed potatoes from the carton. Leona rolls her eyes, storms into her room, and returns with a few threads clutched in her hand. She unfurls them and presses it against her body.
“A shirt.” She glares at the vicinity of the floor.
“It’s a beautiful shirt!” Garron cries out.
“Garron,” Hawk clears his throat. “That is the theory of a shirt.”
“He thinks I’m a slut.” Leona throws the strings at the trashcan. It misses, but snags on the lid and hangs by one of its three total threads.
“It’s like dental floss.” I marvel, taking a chicken leg.
“It’s not dental floss, it’s Peruvian silk!” Garron shouts.
Hawk heaves a sigh. “Sit in your chair, Garron, and join us for this delicious dinner.”
“No. Not until Leona says something to me.”
“Something.” Leona quips, and bites a biscuit.
“That’s not what I meant!” The red-head wails. Zeke stands, takes an empty chair, and drops it over Garron’s body. Garron is understandably outraged. He issues a formal complaint, “YOU JERK,” and proceeds to thrash around under the wood until he realizes no one is watching and we’ve all gone back to eating. When he doesn’t move to join us at the table, I put together a plate of food and place it on the floor at his side. He doesn’t move.
“Garron,” I sigh. “Please eat.”
Sitting up slowly, pretty scowl still in place, he shovels a forkful of mashed potatoes in his mouth and chews like it’s killing him. I smile, half with relief and half with amusement.
With a stomach full of food, Garron springs back to life, doggedly following Leona into her room to beg further forgiveness. Hawk thanks me for the meal and returns to his office to work. There isn’t much clean-up in the kitchen, and I put the leftovers in the fridge and smash the pile of paper plates into the trash before tying the bag. When I try to lift it, my muscles burn. What was in here that made it so damn heavy?
“Leona threw away her old magazines.” Zeke’s low voice echoes a little in the white hallway. He walks in and takes the bag from me.
“Thanks.”
“Go study.”
“Yes sir!” I salute, and his face breaks into a rare smile. I watch him walk into the elevator. Even when he’s gone, I stare at the silver of the doors for a moment before walking to my room at the very end of the circular hall.
Zeke was the most mysterious of us, and that was saying something. Every hunter here had a clouded past. We’d shared stories, but never the story. Out of all of them, I’d had the most typical life – my mom had me too young and I was sent to live with my grandmother. When I turned eighteen this year, I volunteered to move out and decided to live at the Enclave, or ‘with friends’, as I told grandma.
Leona was a transfer from an Enclave in Barbados. She was twenty-two, spoke with a slight accent, and had an exotic beauty and the unnerving ability to smell good no matter the situation - like cinnamon and pepper. Though we were still awkward with each other at times, she’d told me of her younger days. She’d been training to follow her father’s footsteps as a demon hunter since the tender age of five.
I open the door of my room – which is half a utility closet. Shelves of toilet paper, baking soda, sponges, and other amenities line one wall. On the other my twin-size bed and desk with small laptop sit; the so-hideous-it’s-charming orange bedspread and dark computer a stark contrast against the white walls. My bedside table has an enamel, fish-shaped lamp from a bygone era that serves as the sole light source. It wasn’t the most stylish, it smelled like sickeningly sweet potpourri, and I would kill for a real dresser instead of cardboard boxes to put my clothes in, but it suited me just fine.
I sit at my desk and pop open my Chemistry book, but I’m not thinking about potassium or what chemical it can bond with.
No one knew Zeke’s history save for Hawk, and Hawk had only told us what we needed to know; Zeke came from a Navajo reservation in Arizona. He was the son from a long line of medicine men - shaman. Zeke had been dispersing demons since his youngest days, but not in the way hunters usually did. The Navajo used sage and totems, sweat lodges and sacred circles to drive out demons that affected them. It had been hard for Zeke to adjust to the violent, cathartic way hunters followed. He had been with Hawk the longest – nearly nine years. Hawk never said why Zeke chose to leave the reservation, and Zeke never said anything about it, either.
Hawk’s past was long, but he spoke about it even less than Zeke. The topic of his wife – Marie - was never brought up. Garron was mysterious too – he had professed countless times that he couldn’t remember anything before the day Hawk had recruited him. Hawk said he had amnesia that was like to never lift, and that we should help him make memories of his own instead of worrying about his past.
All of them fought and killed hundreds of demons a year. Poloma was our city to protect. Demons congregated where there were people, and people congregated in cities. Demons possessed the weak; lust-filled and gluttonous, the enraged and the envying. In a human body, the demon sought the pleasures of the world – and not all pleasures were the harmless booze and velvet kind. Rape, mass killing, drug running, human trafficking. Everything ugly about humanity had demons infesting the woodwork of it, egging it on.
Hawk told us where the demons were. He got the locations in a letter every week from the council. How the council determined where demons were, we never knew. No one knew, they just did as asked. Our Lives as Well-Paid Lapdogs.
I look down at my textbook and sigh. My Life as the Girl Who Will Fail Chem.
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