Magnetite Tonight (pt 9).

The demon wipes its mouth and belches, dropping the cat carcass. Her front is stained with gore. So is yours.

Who are you? you say, the dew making your feet numb.

I’m nobody and never will be, she says. Pick a word and that’s what I will be, but not a name. Names are traps.

She rushes at you, climbing on you, grabbing your face in both hands.

I’m gonna fuck your face, she growls, I’m gonna shit in your eyes.

And then Katrina is back. Her face smooths and softens; she lets you go, saying she’s sorry. She doesn’t have the pendant on, and neither do you.

That was Jude, she says. She takes your hand and brings you to the back stairs, the old wood groaning under your weight. I made him special, like a really expensive wine, she says. I wouldn’t sell him to anybody. Jude is exquisite.

The one I had, you say. With the magnetite.

Average, she says. Nothing special. Garden variety and run of the mill.

That can’t be, you say. I was as big as everywhere. I was every single thing.

That’s why people pay so much for them, she says. It’s a fair trade. You get to go places most of us have to die to reach, and they get to ride around in your skin and have their little fun. But now, she says, dragging her fingernail along the inside of your arm, what the best of the best would be like. Imagine what you just tripped on times a million billion trillion. Something like that would ruin your life, is what it would do.

Tears are dripping from your chin; you ache so badly to have the light back. It’s the way to something sweeter, something bigger that even in your freed state you aren’t allowed to access. Not yet; not just yet.

Times a million? you say, rubbing your eyes.

A billion, she says, and you think on how you flew in the light because of that magnetite and how it was absolute fucking paradise, and then you think on the idea of a million billion, a sound like slot machines paying out forever, and to all of that you say to her please, yes, all right, okay.