Page 3 of Bound By Fury

Stories of pretty brown girls with magic in their blood. Stories of generations of women born of the stars. They were bedtime stories and make-believe, but they never failed to bring a smile to my grandmother’s lips.

I’d forgotten them, too caught up in everything hard and real about life. But last night I pulled out every memory I could find and laid them bare in front of me. I squeezed my eyes shut so hard, I got a tension headache, and I prayed for a miracle.

I prayed for power, for magic, for secrets—anything to save her.

But there was nothing. Nothing inside me but despair.

Behind me the woman clears her throat, and it’s like a surge of searing light cuts through my mind.

The tinge of blood floods my mouth, and I sniffle, glancing over my shoulder. The woman is still there, watching me.

I spin on my heel.

“Can I help you?”

Graying eyebrows shoot to her forehead as she holds up her hands. “I’m just doing my job.”

Somewhere in the back of the store a beeping begins.

I shake my head. My skin burns. The air around me undulates like heat waves off a summer road. “No, you’re following me around the store. Why?”

The woman sputters, but her eyes are hard. “I know your type. It ain’t illegal for me to protect what’s mine. You come in here checking your phone like you waiting on somethin’. Y’all think that ’cause we just simple white folk, we don’t know your ways? The law applies to you just like it do e’rybody else.”

As if I give a shit about this crotchety old lady or her dusty-ass store. It doesn’t matter how many times something like this happens—just because I saw it coming doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

“Are you kidding me?” My hands ball at my sides, and her eyes flicker to them warily. “I’m not stealing anything, lady. I’m just trying to buy a snack.”

The sardonic grin that splits her face makes my stomach knot.

“I ain’t no goddamn idiot! You may not be stealing, but that’s only ’cause I’m here keeping my eye on you. That’s the only way your kind will ever stay in line. Might as well go back to wherever the hell you come from if you don’t like it!”

Confusion and ire war within me. This woman doesn’t even know who she’s discriminating against—all she sees is the brown of my skin and the width of my nose and the curl of my hair. It doesn’t matter to her what I am, just that I am not like her.

The high-pitched beeping at the back of the store crescendos as fury, bitter on my tongue, overtakes me. My Gigi is dying, and this woman wants to accuse me of trying to steal from her?! My whole body shakes as I regard her sneer, the way her hand hovers at her phone, finger poised above the nine. Gigi would say that I should rise above, but that’s where we differ. I don’t want to rise above racists. I want to meet them in the depths of hell and watch as the fire melts the flesh from their bones.

Static scorches the tips of my fingers, something raw and uncomfortable cracking open at my core, flooding my veins. My vision blurs, and the layering of a thousand murmuring voices in countless languages buzzes in my head, disorienting me.

The woman looks at me expectantly, 911 dialed on her phone.

I open my mouth to spit my response, but my words are stolen by the sprinklers in the ceiling as they activate.

The first droplet of water hits my face, and instantly the feeling evaporates—whatever the fuck that was. Gripping the store shelves, I turn my face to the sky and let the artificial rain douse the flames of my anger.

“What the hell?” the woman screeches, abandoning our argument before tucking her phone into her pocket and bridging her fingers over her head as she scampers toward the back of the store. My heartbeat slows to a dull thud as I abandon my Zebra Cakes for a bag of chips and a Kit-Kat and walk past the register, tossing a ten-dollar bill on the counter and flipping off the camera that stares from the corner.

I feel empty now that the pressure in my chest has dissipated and I’ve returned to my baseline existential panic.

But in the hollow of its absence, something stirs.

No longer in the mood for a movie, I burst through the door and round the corner with only one regret as my phone begins to ring in my pocket.

I should’ve just stolen the shit.

TWO

WILLOW ESTATE IS UNDEAD. RISEN from the grave, cracked bones and cobwebs and maggots for eyes. My hands are stained red. Concentrated on the tips of my fingers and caked beneath my nails, the oil clings like dried blood. Holding the pastel at arm’s length, I line it up against the vertical panes of the house, squinting my left eye and tilting my head, assessing.

Once a veritable fortress amid sprawling green grounds, the chipped burgundy paint of the old Victorian bleeds against the tempestuous sky. Weeds creep between the slats of the rotted steps, and the wraparound porch sags at the edges. Intricate, pink-painted woven wood trim loops beneath the gables and under the windows and across the overhung eaves, its cracks sprouting scraggly mildew like five-o’clock shadow.