Evil - Chapter 2
I laid on the dirt road in front of Junebug and Carl’s house until all my tears dried up and my back stopped heaving.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.
It's not easy being the Antichrist.
Anjelica’s mother never told her that she was a demon. Now, all she wants is her old life back, but that’s not possible for her. Not after what she’s seen.
Anjelica used to be a popular cheerleader with an awesome life, but that was before an evil cult of demons tried to use her blood to open a portal to Hell and start the Apocalypse.
She was rescued from that fate, barely, and because of the imminent threat to her life, her saviors ripped her from Los Angeles and brought her to a safe house in the middle of nowhere.
They said it was for her own good, but she would rather be dead than stuck in boring, old Bronard, Missouri. She was from the big city, so a sleepy, rural life wasn’t for her.
She longed for excitement.
So, when she met a young witch with a mysterious past who promised to show her everything she knew about opening portals and traveling between distant lands, they bonded immediately
I mean, what’s the worst that could happen, right?
It’s not like they would open an intergalactic gateway to another planet and get thrown into a brand, new world with no way to get back to Earth, right?
Join Anjelica in her own solo adventure and find out what happened to her immediately after the events in Magic.
I laid on the dirt road in front of Junebug and Carl’s house until all my tears dried up and my back stopped heaving.
“You feel better?” Junebug asked when my whimpers fell silent.
“I don’t think I’m ever going to feel better again.”
She sighed. “You will. Someday you’ll wake up, and you’ll barely feel the pain at all.”
“How?” I asked hopefully. “How do you know?”
“I’m quite a bit older than you, and I’ve lost a lot in my years. Most people have a lifetime to get comfortable with that much sadness. You just got too much thrown on you too soon. You left your mom, right?”
I nodded, wiping my face. “Uh-huh.”
“I lost my mom to cancer about a decade ago. Lost my dad, too, and my brother. It’s awful every time. You have any siblings?”
I shook my head. “No, I was an only child. My mom called me a spoiled…brat…” When I said that last word, the tears came again. “Brat…because of…because of it,” I sputtered out through my tears.
Junebug rubbed her hand through my hair. “It’s going to come in waves like that. Over time, those crashing waves recede and finally just leave a little wake behind them. That’s when it gets survivable, though none of us get out of this life alive.”
I looked up at her. For the first time, I saw June’s bright green eyes and her soft skin. Age hadn’t hit her hard, and she barely had any wrinkles on her face, though there was great wisdom in it all the same. “Thank you.” I took a deep breath. “When did you find out you were different?”
“Different?”
“You’re a fairy, right?”
She laughed. “Oh yeah. Sorry, ‘round here that doesn’t make me very different from most of the people.” She thought for a moment. “It was later in life when my mom was sick. I don’t have much fairy blood, just a drop, so I can’t do much. Not like Carl. He’s more like Kimberly. He can move through the ether at will. Very handy for vacations.”
I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I think I’m ready to go inside now.”
“Oh good,” she said. “This road was not meant for sitting.”
Junebug stood up with a small groan and brushed the dirt off her flower dress, then held out her arm to help me up. I wiped myself off and followed her inside. The wooden steps up to the porch creaked as my weight pressed down upon them, and I made sure to note that for later in case I needed to leave unnoticed.
She pulled the storm door open and held it open for me. The hardwood foyer was cluttered with shoes and coats. A mirror hung over a little table filled with keys, and I had my first look at myself since before I was kidnapped.
I was a wreck. My freckled face was blotchy and red, and my red hair frayed like wild thatch. It hadn’t been combed in two days. My green eyes were cracked with red veins from crying, and my nose was as puffy as the bags under my eyes.
“I look terrible.”
“No,” Junebug said, pulling a hair tie from her wrist. “Well, yes, but we can fix that.”
She handed it to me, and I pulled my hair back into a ponytail. “Thank you.” I still looked terrible, but slightly less so now. “I feel like I’m just going to keep saying that forever now.”
“Well, don’t thank me until I show you around.” She pointed me to a room set off the main foyer. Ruddy old couches were arranged in front of a TV at the far end. “This is the TV room.” She turned to the left, where Kimberly and Carl waved from a long table. “That’s the dining room.” She pointed to another door. “Behind there is the kitchen. That’s where I spend a lot of time.”
“You a cook?”
“I have a little bakery in the middle of town, sells everything from bread to pies. Pretty popular, too, if I do say so. Most of the ingredients I use come right from this farm or from trading our produce for whatever we need.”
“Sounds nice,” I said. “Quaint even.”
“There isn’t much around here, but we like it. You’ll get used to it in a while. Or you won’t, and then it’s good you only have a couple of years before you’re off on your own.” In front of us, the wooden staircase matched the grain of the foyer.
She beckoned me to followed her up the stairs, which led to another short hallway with four doors. She pointed to the one on the far left. “There at the end is our room.” She moved her attention to the door next to it. “That’s the office. Carl likes to putz around in there when he’s not out in the fields.” She walked to the furthest door on the right and knocked. “Lizzie, open up!”
“Coming!” The door opened, and a light-skinned girl opened it. She was every bit the mix of Carl and Junebug, with June’s green eyes and Carl’s stern jaw. Her hair was buzzed short, and she wore a bullring in her nose.
“Take that out,” June said, pulling on the bullring. I gasped, thinking it might rip her septum out, but instead, it slid off like nothing. June glanced in my direction. “It’s just a clip-on. She’s twelve and just getting to that rebellious stage.”
I chuckled. “I remember it well.”
“Who’s this?” Lizzie asked, studying me.
“Lizzie, meet Anjelica.”
“Hi,” I said with a little wave.
“She’s staying with us for a while,” Junebug replied.
“Another one?” Lizzie rolled her eyes. “Nice to meet you, I guess. Can I go now?”
“Yes, but next time I see you, I expect a better attitude, yes? Otherwise, don’t bother coming out ‘til school tomorrow.”
“Fine,” Lizzie said over her shoulder as she shut the door.
“She’s nice,” I said.
“Usually, at least,” Junebug turned back to me. “I wish I could beg my mother’s forgiveness for how I treated her at that age. I guess this is my punishment.”
“I heard that!” Lizzie called from behind her door.
“Good!” Junebug said, the smile never leaving her face. She pointed to the room next door. “This is your room.”
She held the door for me, and I walked through. At home, the walls of my room were painted a dark green and covered in posters. This room had boring, plain, white walls that were bare, save for a single flower painting near the window. On the wall closest to Lizzie was a long closet with double doors. The furniture was plain. A writing desk, a dresser, and a mirror. Near the window on the other side was a small curio. Along the far wall was a queen size bed, covered in a similar floral pattern as Junebug’s dress, along with a small, whitewashed vanity.
“We’ll go to the store and get you some proper clothes later today, but I’ll leave you to settle for now.”
“Actually,” I said. “Could I have some coffee?”
“You sure you don’t want to sleep?”
“I know I should, but…can I have some anyway?”
There was a simple reason why I wanted coffee. Kimberly was downstairs, and once she left, I had no idea when I would see her again. She was the only anchor to my past life. When she left, I would have nothing left and no choice but to literally start from scratch.
I sat at the dining room table listening to Kimberly and Carl swap stories, each more fantastical than the last, until my second cup of coffee was gone.
“And then,” Carl clapped his hands together, “just like that, I was gone, and the chonchon was left flying toward an empty space in the forest.” He laughed. “I would have paid to see its face when I just vanished in thin air.”
“You say that now,” Junebug said. “But I was there when you tumbled home—you were shook.”
“It’s basically a human face with bat wings.” He looked directly at me when he said that. Kimberly must have told him I didn’t know anything about magical life. Either that or my confusion was etched deep on my face. “And I don’t want to meet the person who isn’t scared of something like that. Ugly little buggers.”
Kimberly took a final sip of coffee and then leaned back in her chair, stretching. “I could stay here all day swapping stories, but as I’ve told Anjelica, I have an exam today, and my mom is going to freak out that I was gone all night without calling.”
“You’re gonna get so grounded,” I said, smiling.
She stood. “You laugh, but I will.”
It sounded nice to have a mother that cared about you enough to ground you, even when you were a powerful pixie who could slaughter demons. I would be lucky if my mom even noticed I was gone before next weekend when she finally got a day off, and even then, it’s not like we kept the same schedule. She might literally go weeks before realizing I was gone.
“I’ll walk you out,” Carl said.
I pushed my chair out. “Mind if I do it?”
Carl shrugged. “Fine with me. I need to go feed the hogs anyway.”
“Don’t take too long, dear,” Junebug said, catching my eye. “If you’re not going to sleep, you can help me bring some food to the bakery and we’ll get you those clothes.”
“Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to sle—” I looked over at Kimberly, and she shook her head. “I mean, that sounds great.”
Kimberly led me outside and gave me an apologetic smile. “This is your life now.” She dropped her head. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good life. They’re nice people, but I know it’s not what you signed up for.” She leaped forward and hugged me tightly. “I’m glad you aren’t dead.”
“Me too.” I patted her on the back. “And I have you to thank for it, for all of this.”
“I don’t think you understand how lucky you are.” She pulled back from me. “You will, though. In time.”
“I hope so.”
She squeezed my arms before turning from me. “You saved the world, Anjelica.”
“All I did was not die.”
Kimberly raised her eyebrows slightly. “Sometimes, that’s all it takes.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a black opal pendant on a silver necklace. “Don’t ever take this off, no matter what. Understand?”
I put on the necklace. “I won’t.”
“Good.” With that, she dropped a pinch of the pink pixie dust she kept in a pouch on her belt, vanishing in a puff of pink smoke.
The dust tickled my nose. When it had settled, I turned back to the house. Junebug was already bringing a plate of donuts down the steps toward the pick-up truck.
“You ride in the back, love. The wind will wake you right up.”
That couldn’t be a safe way to travel, but I hadn’t been making very safe choices lately. I shrugged and hopped into the bed of the pick-up, ready for a new adventure.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.