Evil - Chapter 23
Moments after the executioner fell with a bloody thud, gunfire exploded behind me, and the cadre of soldiers prodding us into the nooses fell down with a painful, collective moan.
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.
“Finally,” Madam Fantasmo said, loosening the noose and grabbing a knife from the belt of a fallen soldier. With one fell swoop, she sliced the noose from my neck before turning her attention to Quince and the others. “Grab a gun. We’re not out of this yet.”
I pulled the remaining fibers of the noose off my neck. “What are you talking about? What’s happening?”
When she’d finished cutting her helpers free, she turned to me with a big smile. “The rebellion has announced itself this day. Now, grab a gun.”
The guard behind me stared at me with dead eyes when I pulled the gun from his clutched hand. I didn’t know what Madam Fantasmo expected me to do with it, but I had it. “Now what?”
Guards gathered on both sides of the stand, ready to attack us. From the edge of the crowd, an explosion rocked the ground, and then another from across the square. A ring of blasts erupted, and the crowd scattered, trampling the guards as they ran for safety.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?” I asked.
Madam Fantasmo clutched onto the frame of the wooden structure. “Yes, hang on tight.”
No sooner had I grasped onto the frame of the hangman’s stand when four explosions erupted from each of its corners. The ground below us buckled, and the whole stand collapsed down with a loud crash. Before the dust settled, Madam Fantasmo hopped down into the slushy sewers below. I followed her without asking any questions as the crowd screamed above us. We were halfway down the tunnel when the guards opened fire on the stand.
“Care to tell me what is going on?” I asked after fifteen minutes fumbling through the sewers. I could no longer hear the police.
“I’m sorry, love,” Madam Fantasmo said. “We didn’t expect it to get this far. This was sort of a last-ditch effort to keep you safe.” She stopped. “Ah, yes. Here we are.”
I walked forward to see a ladder that led up into the city above us. Quince and Volkim scurried up the grimy rungs, and Madam Fantasmo pushed me to follow. Light flooded over us when Quince loosened the manhole cover. I exited the sewer into a garden surrounded by buildings on all four sides. The wordless helper exited next, and finally, Madam Fantasmo after her.
“Oh, thank the stars. They made me memorize the map, and I swore I would get it wrong.” Madam Fantasmo walked toward a brick house on our right. She reached into a potted plant to pull out an antique key, which she used to open the door and disappear inside. “Come on.”
I followed the others through the ground floor of the house, simple but clean. It smelled like lemon and vinegar, which clashed with the wet dog smell wafting off of us. In the living room, a svelte, older man wearing tuxedo tails stood next to a collection of cleaning equipment.
“This is Enger,” Quince said. “Strip to your underwear and leave your clothes for him. There are four showers upstairs and a change of clothes for each of you.” She turned to me, then pointed to the nameless girl. “Sindra will come to help dye your hair once we’re all clean and dressed.”
“My hair?” I said.
She nodded. “We’ll all have to go through modifications to make us look different if we want to avoid detection from the street cameras.” She grabbed her chin and yanked, and a hunk of plaster came off, revealing a softer, rounder face underneath it. Meanwhile, Sindra removed a pair of blue contacts, revealing her purple eyes.
“It will be easier for some of us than others.” Madam Fantasmo’s voice dropped half an octave. “I haven’t spoken like this in a long time. I hate it.” She started to cry.
Volkim, who had taken off her wig to reveal a bald head underneath, reached over and rubbed Madam Fantasmo’s back. “Hey, hey. Nobody can tell you who you are, and when this is over—”
“I know. It’s stupid. It’s just—No, it’s okay. You’re right. We all have to hide for a short time.” She looked down at the wig. “Soon, my love, we’ll be together again, and we’ll never have to hide again.”
She tossed the suit into a pile forming in the center of the room, discarding the remnants of a past life. We all stripped down and put on flip-flops before heading up the stairs. I looked over my shoulder and watched as Enger grabbed a handful of our discarded clothes, then opened a small door to what must have been the basement.
“What are you going to do to them?” I asked.
“Burn them, of course,” Enger said, and disappeared into the basement. Moments later, an acrid smell filled the air, the result of burning hair and rubber.
***
Even after a thirty-minute shower and scrubbing myself red with the luffa Enger provided, the stink of the sewer was still on me. Worse, when I closed my eyes to wash off the soap, the guard’s dead eyes haunted my memory. Too many dead people haunted my memories.
“Are you decent?” Sindra asked. Her voice was lovely, melodic, and calming, and she smiled brightly as I wrapped myself in a towel. “We need to get started on your hair.”
I sat on the toilet and let her rub Vaseline along the base of my neck and the edges of my forehead. “What are you doing that for?”
“It prevents staining,” Sindra said. “Haven’t you ever colored your hair before?”
“No,” I replied. “I kind of love my hair. It’s the only thing about me that I like, honestly.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, pulling my hair into four sections and clipping them. “It’s a shame to change it, but one day it will grow back, as long as you stay alive.”
“I don’t get it,” I said as she began to paint the roots of my hair with a brush. “Why would you do all this for me?”
Sindra chuckled. “We didn’t do it for you. You are a catalyst—a symbol. The rebellion loves their symbols.”
“How am I a symbol? I’m just a girl.”
“I’m just a hair stylist, Anjelica,” Sindra said, crimping my hair with aluminum foil. “That’s way above my pay grade.” When she was done, she placed a plastic shower cap over my head. “We’ll let that set for an hour, and you should be good to go.”
She turned to walk away, and I reached out to stop her. “You have a really pretty voice. Why did you decide to stay silent with me?”
Sindra chuckled. “I’m terrible at keeping secrets. The only way I could stay hidden was to keep my mouth shut. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive, right?”
I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I need to change and shower again to rinse this junk off of me, but I’ll see you around, okay? Don’t touch your hair, no matter how much it itches.”
I walked across the hall to a room where Enger had written my name on a piece of paper hanging on the door. Inside was a small bed, where he had laid a black skirt, dark gray shirt, and white sneakers. Alongside, there was a note, written in the same handwriting he used on the door.
I guessed at your size, but I am a very good guesser. If these don’t fit, let me know.
“He tailored them himself,” I heard Volkim at the door and turned to see her wearing a black skater dress and black boots. Her hair had been chopped into a pixie cut and dyed the same color as her dress. She placed her hands in her pockets and gave a spin. “Mine has pockets.”
“Genius,” I replied. “All dresses should have pockets.”
“Agreed,” she said, then took a long silence. “It’s not all garbage, you know?”
“What isn’t?”
“This planet. I know you’ve only seen the terrible stuff, but it’s not all bad. There are some things worth fighting for.”
“I’m sure there are. My planet also kind of sucks, but it’s also sort of beautiful.” I sighed. “Do you think I’ll ever see it again?”
Volkim shrugged, her hands still in her pockets. “I don’t know. But if there was a way to get you here, there’s got to be a way to get you back, right? Anyway, I’ll let you change. I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry everything’s been so terrible since you got here.”
I smiled. “This moment’s been kind of nice.”
She nodded. “I agree wholeheartedly.”
An hour later, Sindra came to get me. Her hair was now a dark brown, and a pair of brown contacts hid her vibrant, purple eyes. Her face looked slimmer than the last time I saw her, and when I told her, she laughed.
“You can make your face look like just about anything if you have the right make-up.” She removed the foil protecting my hair and led me into the bathroom, where she washed out the excess color, then rubbed it quickly with a towel. “What do you think?”
I flipped my hair back and looked at myself in the mirror. It was like I was a completely different person. My hair was jet black, with none of the shimmering highlights of my natural color. “I hate it.” I looked over at Sindra, whose face turned down. “It’s not your fault. You did a great job; I just…I hate it so much. I hate all of this so much.”
“I get it,” Sindra said. “I’m sending in Quince to give you a cut.”
I opened my mouth to protest but stopped myself. It wasn’t a suggestion. I was going to get my hair cut.
Quince came in with a pair of scissors a couple of minutes later and got right to work. “You’re lucky. I had to have Volkim cut my hair. You have me, and I’m way better.”
My hair was down past my shoulders, near the middle of my back. Though Quince didn’t give me a pixie cut like Volkim’s, she cut over six inches off so that my hair rested an inch above my shoulders.
“Shower, and then I’ll style it,” Quince said. Again, it wasn’t a suggestion. I stepped into the shower as she swept the hair from the chair and floor.
There was no joy in that last shower, just rote memories, and painful thoughts as I washed off the snipped hair and any residual dye. When I was done, Quince styled my hair to make me look like a 1970s TV star, and Volkim used make-up to contour my face until I was nearly unrecognizable, finishing it off with a thick eyeliner that made me seem like a punk rock goddess. It was a look I never thought I could pull off, and when they were done, even I didn’t recognize myself.
When I finally made my way downstairs, the others were waiting for me around a table. Madam Fantasmo stood up. She was as unrecognizable as I was, wearing smart khakis and a white collared shirt popping out of an argyle sweater. Her hair was cropped tight, and she wore brown loafers. All the joy was gone from her face, replaced with a resigned dignity.
“Enger made sandwiches for us. They’re good.” She sounded like a monotone, boring, blasé bank manager as she spoke.
The smell of burnt rubber had been replaced by warm sandwiches, and it looked as if we had never even come into the house from a dirty sewer. In fact, we didn’t even look like ourselves. We looked like a happy family that belonged in this weird, little house, eating delicious cucumber sandwiches.
However, I knew it couldn’t last long. The truth was, we were fugitives, and we would have to move soon or risk getting caught. Still, the sandwiches were delicious.
This is a portal fantasy series with mythological roots and action-adventure tendencies. You can search through all my work on my website.