And then there was Luna.

  This morning was far from ideal, but my heart commands me to put the incident behind and look forward to seeing my girl again. We’ve been through too much already. Maybe she’ll change her mind about the wings—there’s always hope.

  Small rocks ping against the undercarriage of my car as it lurches up the road. Vultures swerve through the sky, flying and then hunching down in the trees. Something is dead over there, or at least dying. Whatever it is, I don’t want to know.

  No more wrath for today. No more death.

  2

  I first met Luna three years ago while bartending at Rex’s. The owner liked me well enough until anger got the best of me. One night I was taking the trash out when a girl’s cries caught my attention. Her pleas for someone to leave her alone echoed around the brick alleyway.

  “Calm down, sweetheart,” came a slurred, drunken reply. Around the corner a massive dude had a ballerina-sized girl cornered and crying. He smacked one hand over her mouth and tore a long rip up the side of her thin dress. My hand tightened around the trash bag pressed to my side. The smooth rim of a dark green beer bottle poked its way through the too-full plastic. I stretched the bag open. Old nacho cheese and stale beer trailed through the air, making my nose wrinkle. Once retrieved, I launched the empty bottle toward the dude’s back, thinking it would bounce off his big body and smash on the ground. The glass shattered.

  He whipped around and screamed the furious howl of a wounded, drunk man. The cuts shone from the back of his neck where blood glittered like black water in the night. If only the bottle had split him open entirely and left him bleeding to death in the alley.

  It at least distracted him enough for the girl to get away and for the bar’s owner to call the cops. The girl thanked me. Rex’s owner fired me for attacking a patron.

  Luna was friends with the ballerina, and she rushed across the dimly lit bar.

  “Hey, you saved my friend,” she had said. Her indigo lipstick smeared against her teeth, but Christ was she beautiful. “My husband knows someone who could fix this. Want us to make a call? He has some great lawyer friends—”

  “No worries, really.” I held up a hand and waved away the kindness. “This place isn’t worth it. There are other bars and other assholes out there to work for.”

  Even though I didn’t drink much myself, I was a damned good bartender. My bookshelf overfilled with drink recipes, mixology guides, and lessons about the different reactions of alcohol, mixers, and flavors. Bartending turned into an artwork to pay the bills.

  At the bar, I became somebody else and could pretend to be a normal woman for the night, earn my tips with good drinks and fake flirtations.

  The wrath inside me, however, made me stay away from doing it again. There are only so many times you can watch the sleaze of the world ruin these girls who seemed, like me, to be fighting their own perceived wrongness. For weeks after, fantasies plagued me about smashing open the creep’s head and choking him with glass, about burying the bar’s owner in a shallow grave while he suffocated on worms and dirt.

  Before the drama, Luna used to come into Rex’s with her husband, a tall, gorgeous man with dark skin and long eyelashes. He was a decent guy but was never right for her. I served them both plenty of times (always a foaming beer for him and a whiskey sour for her), but never spoke to Luna much until after the bottle incident. Rex’s was too busy for small talk with patrons.

  We became fast friends. My ache for her was instant. She was the night come to life, a dewdrop of shimmering darkness wearing a bubblegum pink dress and matching heels.

  We went out alone one night to a bar she’d never been to, and the intoxication of her flowery perfume and vodka-stained lips was suddenly too near and too far away. My mouth found hers. She kissed back hard and needy, only to pull away with ruined lipstick and wide eyes.

  “Shit, Andi.” Her glance darted away, but smooth fingers intertwined with mine. “I’ve never cheated on my husband with a woman before. Okay, that came out wrong. I’ve never cheated on him with anyone. You know what I mean.”

  I did. She jumped away and disappeared into a taxi.

  And then she came to my house the next night.

  She and Malik were on the rocks before I came along. The divorce paperwork had already been in a slow process for their disintegrating marriage. At least that’s what I like to tell myself.

  When it was finalized, she stumbled into my house with a look of both relief and sadness.

  “Do you regret the divorce?”

  She shook her head. “Malik isn’t a bad man, you know? We got married young, and we grew apart. He wants kids and a momma to stay home and watch those kids. I don’t want anything to do with that.”

  I smiled at her, already hopelessly in love. “Me neither. I just want you.”

  “Plus,” she said, “I think my interest in romantic partners is uhm, a little different than when I was a teenager.” The warmth of her hand on my upper thigh sent a thousand tiny bolts of electricity through my flesh.

  “Would you ever want to be with him again, if he changed his mind about the future?”

  She laughed out a musical melody and my heart sang along. “No way. We’re going to try and be friends, but I don’t love him romantically.” Her eyes shone as she looked into mine.

  Malik had called me once, drunk and heartbroken, which is the only reason I ever forgave the things he said. What he shouted at me wasn’t anything new, the same furious slurs I’d heard my whole life, but when he bitched out Luna and threatened my girl, I let him know I’d gouge his eyes out with fishhooks if he hurt her.

  I don’t think he ever would. He loves her too much, but he had the wrath that night and I understood him. Maybe that was the worst part, how you can understand a stranger because you know their pain, because you helped cause their pain.

  —

  When I pull up the road, it’s nearly noon and the vultures are resting in three of the big trees that dot the property line. I try to ignore them and look away but can’t stop daydreaming about growing wings and flying with the flock. A family.

  A family who eats carrion. Laughter bubbles free and true for the first time today. Part of me feels like they’ve been watching during the entire session, as if they followed on invisible wings and eavesdropped as intently as Dr. Fawning seemed to listen.

  A cherry red Ford parked at the house rocks gently in the breeze. My mind calms, picturing Luna’s dark curls tangling in the wind, the car’s windows rolled down in the summer, her singing along to the radio.

  The gravel and dried mud crunch beneath bootsteps. The sun lends its warmth, but the wind chill is less forgiving. As soon as I open the door and spot Luna lounging on the living room couch, the chill dissipates. The midnight of her eyes instantly focuses on me. In her focus, I find my center and sanity.

  “Hey Andi.” She smiles and sits up, patting the space on the couch next to her. “How was it?”

  I flop down and rest my head on her shoulder, already eager to forget this morning’s humiliation. She tangles smooth fingers through the auburn strands of my hair, sending waves of comfort and love with every stroke. We share so many interests, our passions for woodsy walks and driving around to every park in the state, taking silly photos and dreaming of traveling away. But our differences really drew me to her.

  Where I was pale and timid and dressed from head-to-toe in black, Luna glowed like the center of a Brown-Eyed-Susan—she was outgoing, wicked smart, and wore striking, patterned scarves and long, colorful dresses that contrasted beautifully against her skin. The moon to my sun, keeping me balanced in a world where my own brain wages civil war with emotions.

  “Hello,” Luna says and flutters a smooth hand with two shiny, emerald rings in front of me. I bring her fingers to my cheek.

  “Earth to Andi.”

  “Hmm?”

  “How’s the new chick?” Luna tilts her head and raises a perfectly arched eyebrow. The faint, lime-green of her eyeshadow glitters above the long lashes.

  “Quiet. I did most of the talking. Her suit was funny.”

  “Funny how?”

  “Well who wears an all-tan suit? It looked weird.”

  Luna laughs and each note of it is like a delicate wind chime singing the most beloved of songs. “I guess if that’s your only complaint, then she must be okay.” She eyes my black leggings and oversized black sweater covered in hair and lint. “The suit is probably fine, too. Like you’re some fashionista.” She rolls her eyes in pretend mockery, and we tackle each other into the corner of the couch.

  She sighs against my ear and clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth, which means she was going to say something but changed her mind.

  “What is it?” I pull away and stare her down.

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, Luna. Don’t make me beg,” I say and then wink. She laughs a little and sighs again.

  “It’s stupid, really. I know you need to deal with things in your own way. It’s just…ugh. You’re going to hate me! Especially after this morning. I’m really sorry again.”

  “I could never hate you.” My hands grip her hands. “Please tell me.”

  “It’s like I feel left out or something. Maybe that’s not the right term. Maybe I’m jealous, which is insane because it’s not like I want to make you open up and tell me all these morbid details, but there’s this whole part of you and your life story you’ve told therapists but not me. Am I fucked up to think that? Is it even fair for me to ask this?”

  “You’re always allowed to ask me anything, Luna-bug.”

  She beams at the silly nickname. A sharp inhale fights its way into my lungs.

  “Well, you know most of it.”

  My body fidgets around on the couch and I shift away. Her patient eyes shine but she doesn’t reach out, perhaps sensing my need for space.

  “My little brother died when he was four, you know that part,” I say, and she nods, her lips pulled in tight. “He climbed out to the roof and fell onto the cement patio. My father was crushed, guilt-ridden, and crazy. My mom tried to be strong, but the demons in her mind pulverized her, begged her to give up, but she didn’t. She survived, for me. I never realized how close my father had been to snapping. He spared me because I was at a sleepover that night, too far away of a target for his temporary but fatal breakdown.”

  My fingers curl into a fist, absentmindedly thumping a bruising rhythm against my thigh until Luna’s warm hand holds it still. Heartbeats pound in my ear with a loud, steady cadence.

  “He tied my mom up in his old truck with the already cracked windshield. Drove them both into the freezing Schuylkill River. The police told me she almost survived the water. The drugs in her system didn’t subdue her for too long, but somewhere between the crash and the truck sinking, broken shards of ice from the river poured in through the crushed windshield and pierced her eyes.” The words waterfall out, rushing to exorcise their raw pain before courage falters.

  “After they died, no one wanted to be around me. I was a mean, morbid girl, and I resented everyone and their perfect, living family members. Every day at school was a challenge, a dare for someone to piss off the angry chick with the dead family.”

  No one understood or cared to try and understand. They had no idea what it was like seeing my mother hauled form the lake. The way water and other fluids leaked from her mouth and ears and nose, her crystal blue eyes nothing more than gored, sinewy sockets of emptiness.

  Luna winces and slowly untangles her hand from mine. My fingernails had dug deep crescents into her skin. My mouth opens to offer an apology, but a smothered sob breaks free instead. Her arms wrap around my shaking body. Hot tears stream down and into my mouth, leaving behind salty apologies in the after-silence.

  —

  Even with Luna’s warm arms wrapped me, the vultures still visit my dreams. My beautiful partner with her wind chime laugh cannot keep them away. The birds are there, nestled inside my mind’s tombstone labyrinth, and they stare at me from atop my families’ gravestones.

  3:00AM glowers red numbers from the clock on the nightstand. I am desperately trying to recapture those misted, scattered dream-thoughts into the net of my conscious memories. My old therapist was there, muttering from a hospital bed cushioned between naked trees. I couldn’t understand her, but the vultures did. They circled and listened, a tornado of wings and beaks awaiting her command.

  Vultures are relatively quiet creatures, but in my dream, they wouldn’t stop hissing until my dead therapist sliced her arm open. Cancer revealed itself as a murky, black clog of bile, seeping from her forearm and pooling onto the forest soil.

  Hissing turned to screaming and the buzzards dove furiously around my head, demanding I taste her cancer.

  The curdled chunks of the disease were so appalling it woke me up. And as I lay on the sweat-soaked sheets straining to capture my breath, trying not to violently twitch away and wake Luna, the fuzzy aftertaste of vinegary sludge lingers on in the back of my throat.

  Thirst becomes a desperate need, and I slip away from Luna’s clutch and walk into the kitchen. Cool water offers a small reprieve from the imaginary taste but does nothing to keep the vultures out of my head.

  What does it taste like—dead flesh? Do the bodies haunt the vultures after they consume the carcass? If I eat a human’s meat, do they live on inside me forever? Humans eat cooked ham, steak, venison, and more all the time. All those dead cows, chickens, pigs, fish—they become meals. Their bodies digesting inside another body. Bones and organs, blood and marrow, absorbing and taking what each part needs to survive. It’s cooked, preserved, safe.

  Everything is always so safe here. Savory and sheltered.

  My mind wades back into the Schuylkill River’s water. Before I knew my parents were gone, I came home from the rocky sleepover in the morning and was hoping to be greeted by the aroma of my mother’s breakfast creations, usually scrambled eggs with cheese and the cherry tomatoes from our garden. Only old chimney smoke from the fire we made two nights before lingered in the air. Wind gusts had traveled down and stirred up the charred logs.

  It would be two more days until they found my parents in the river, until I saw my mother’s shattered face and ruined eyes. What if I had saved part of her skin or brain or liquids before she was buried? Maybe she’d be living inside me, a small part of her, whispering and guiding me through this life. My whole family, they could be here suspended within my body rather than remembered as skeletons buried inside my bone-castle of memories.

  Maybe I could have kept them forever. Is this what the vultures do? These guardians of the underworld, these eaters of flesh and souls, what are the secrets hidden inside their curving vertebrae?

  The longing to hold something dead against my tongue consumes me like a starvation. The power of it floods my body stronger than the sin of wrath ever has. Can dead flesh hold anger?

  Mine would. Mine would be the most excruciatingly bitter of them all.

  “Andi?”

  Luna’s sleepy call echoes down the hallway. Should I tell her these thoughts, how they scatter around in my brain like thrown marbles? She’d probably crease her brow at me, try to make sense of my newest obsession through a half-awake state of mind.

  Images of her repulsion toward the moth wings leaks into my brain like an uninvited rain storm. She has no idea how hard I have to fight myself to keep the anger away.

  So no, for now, this is mine. My secret. My need to know and understand the vultures.

  3

  Hello?? Seriously, Andi?

  Luna’s annoyed text message lights up the phone screen. For whatever reason, my mind has entrapped itself in a dark place this week, the kind of darkness where it’s better to avoid the people you love.

  This happened before, me disappearing and ignoring everyone. Most people stopped caring about trying to find me, except Luna. One time she tracked me to the rooftop of an old, abandoned convenience store downtown. I rambled about my brother and how I had to save him from the fall. Climbing up to the rooftop was a memory I never recovered. I remembered muttering my brother’s name over and over. It was like a blackout from too much booze, but I rarely drink, even when I worked at Rex’s.

  I didn’t trust myself enough to drink, to smoke, to do anything involved with letting my guard down because wrath would emerge again. Worse than ever. Needing to slice someone open like that man from the bar.

  Luna’s last voice message goes through a range of emotions. She stopped by the house, but I was out, picking up some dinner. My heart demands, call her, but my brain knows better. She shouldn’t be around me right now, even if it seems cruel to ignore her. If I called back and said it was for her own good to leave me be for a bit, it would ignite a war with the only person I love. Her temporary anger and permanent safety is the better option.

  The rotisserie chicken dinner tempts my mind back into the kitchen. My stomach growls in want as I remove the blue plastic bag and free the cooked bird from its plastic prison. Condensation drips from the still warm lid, and the liquid reminds me of Dr. Fawning’s dewy eyes today when she’d said my love for Luna is more obsession than real love.

  The plastic lid crunches from my hands twisting it up. If I was obsessed with Luna, I wouldn’t ignore her all week with the intention of protecting her. I’d be creeping outside her apartment with a camera, watching her through the windows or some perverted shit. Or sending her dead moth wings in the mail.

  Dr. Fawning said I will figure that out in time, but I don’t understand what she means. I don’t dislike the doctor, necessarily, but she’s so quiet and abstract with her whispers and stares. I need guidance to fill the empty ache in my body. Otherwise, I am forever starving for help, unsure of how to ask for it.

 

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