IGMS Issue 8 Read online

  He hurried to the lobby where he heard talk of a tropical storm. "Nothing to worry about," the night manager said. "It'll blow over by morning."

  Outside the sky had turned angry. Jacob headed for the beach hoping the sea air would clear his head. He was finished with drinking. Indeed, he'd probably come to the end of a lot of things.

  The palms churned above him, their dry whispers sounding alarms. The ocean spread before him, teasing him with its offer of permanence. Jacob ran into the surf, water splashing his legs, hoping the cool water would clear his head, but it only made his suit cling to his ankles. His head was littered with memories, things he'd done and seen and tried to forget. A lifetime of death and despair. What did it matter anymore? When had it ever mattered?

  It had all been lies.

  Up ahead he saw shadows on the beach. The little man. The sturdy woman. Nigel had made it easy.

  "Anna," Jacob cried. He saw her turn, and then Nigel. He saw the gun in Nigel's hand.

  "Go back," Nigel called. "There are more than enough bullets in this gun."

  Jacob walked towards them. "So what's it all about, Nigel? A show of loyalty? Another dead soul notched in your belt?"

  "She wants to go," he said.

  "Only because you've sold her your deceptions."

  Jacob reached where they stood on the sand. He looked at Anna. She stood passively by Nigel's side, her eyes faraway and dreaming lies of paradise.

  "Give me the gun, Nigel."

  The air shivered. Rain fell, as the moon turned away.

  Nigel didn't move.

  "The gun," Jacob repeated, holding out his hand.

  Nigel smiled, showing his foul teeth. He pointed the gun to Anna's head. She continued to look off in ignorant bliss.

  "Say bye-bye," he hissed.

  "No," Jacob yelled.

  He lunged at them, pushing Anna free. Nigel stumbled and fired, missing them both. "Bastard," he shouted as he regained his footing on the sand. He pointed the gun at Jacob.

  Jacob approached him, his hand still held out. "Give me the gun."

  "As you wish," Nigel said. "Your end time has come anyway."

  The gun fired, releasing a flash of orange. The bullet tore through Jacob's chest. It knocked him back a step. Warm blood spilled down his stomach.

  Jacob looked down at the darkening hole in his white suit. He didn't feel pain, only something more like release. He stared at Nigel. "Not yet," he said, and he rushed the little man, his hands finding Nigel's throat. "Not without you."

  Nigel shot again and Jacob's chest shuddered from the impact. Still he tightened his grip on the little man's throat, his thumbs finding the windpipe. As the cartilage in Nigel's throat collapsed, a thin smile crossed his lips, reminding Jacob of what he already knew. That you couldn't kill evil, you could only thwart it for a while, or at best, ruin its day. For now, for Jacob, that would have to be good enough. He felt the cleaving of spirit and body and heard the cries of captured souls escaping all around him. What had seconds before been Nigel, or the creature from Hell, or whatever the damn thing he was, had departed. Jacob wondered how quickly he would see him again.

  A breath caught in his throat. He released the empty husk that had held Nigel and fell to his knees. He looked down and saw his blood pooling on the sand.

  End time, he thought. End time for everyone.

  Darkness filled in the gaps between the earth and the sky. The winds joined the frenzy of the coming storm.

  Jacob fell forward. The last earthly sound he heard was Anna's screams.

  He wished her well.

  He wished them all well.

  Limbo

  by Stephanie Dray

  Artwork by Anselmo Alliegro

  * * *

  She wants me to steal the salt.

  Just this afternoon, I let her grab a fistful of mustard packets from McDonald's. That should have been enough for her. But now I'm on a date in a fancy restaurant, and she won't shut up about the salt.

  My date's name is Chang. He is a doctor; I'm a medical researcher. We met at a pharmaceutical conference.

  Very romantic.

  He has boyish dimples. If Peter Pan were Chinese, he'd look like my date.

  "Am I boring you, Adrienne?" he asks.

  "No, I'm just distracted," I say.

  I knew it would come up, but it's something you wait until dessert to mention. We've only had bread and butter. But I gulp down my wine, and murmur, "My DSA won't behave."

  "Your what?" He clearly thinks he misheard.

  I feign nonchalance. "My DSA . . . my Displaced Spiritual Ancestor."

  Cue the tension. It's like I've told him I have the clap. He quietly sips his water, probably praying that his pager will go off.

  "Chinese call our spirits Gui," he finally says. He's trying to be gracious.

  "Well, mine is Italian and she wants me to steal the salt. Actually, now she's more interested in the pepper-mill."

  "Was she a kleptomaniac? Is that how she ended up . . . you know, in Limbo?" He gives me a lopsided smile.

  I like that Chang says Limbo instead of Purgatory, and I like his lopsided smile. It gives me hope this date isn't going to end in disaster. "No. It's just -- Big Ma lived through the Depression. She thinks that if the economy collapses, we'll survive by selling stolen condiments on the black market."

  Chang laughs. This is a good sign. "Big Ma?"

  "She was my great grandmother. Big Ma is her translation."

  Chang makes a face before he can stop himself. Most people imagine that when you open your life to a DSA, you'll get an exotic spirit from a thousand years ago -- some beautiful young woman who met tragedy on a lonely road. That was the fantasy.

  The reality was that I shared my body with a ninety-four year old woman who spent her girlhood herding goats in the old country. Worse, Big Ma is not a stranger. I knew Big Ma when she was still alive. I still remember her sitting on the porch with her stockings rolled down around those elephantine ankles, drinking from the mini-liquor bottles she always snatched from airliner bars. Her house smelled like salami, and she used to smack my sister and me with her over-stuffed purse to make us behave.

  I want to smack her right now because she is calling my date a chink and she wants to know how well-off he is. Ever since Big Ma returned from the dead she's done nothing but nag me to marry a doctor. Now I find one, and she's making racist comments.

  "I admire that you're willing to take her on," Chang says. His unmistakable tone is that he thinks I'm crazy. "I couldn't do it. I've got my residency. I guess it's not very Chinese of me to say, but there's no room in my life for an ancestor."

  "You don't really know what you'll do until an ancestor comes knocking," I tell him. I'm feeling defensive now.

  "But how is it your problem?" he asks. "If an ancestor is displaced, well, they should have planned better for the afterlife."

  I try not to snap at Chang. How exactly Big Ma could have planned for overcrowding in the afterlife, I don't know. DSAs can either wait in Hell until new space is available, or live with a descendant. And I'm not about to let Big Ma live in an inferno with the condemned.

  A white-coated waiter arrives with our entrees. Big Ma complains before I even pick up my fork. She thinks I should have ordered the chicken parmesan. But I know better; she'd have just bitched all night about how American restaurants serve ketchup and call it red sauce.

  "So, your Big Ma lives inside you? She has to go everywhere with you?" Chang asks. "When you go out, you can't leave her with a relative?"

  I would like to leave her on the street corner, but I say, "There's just me and my sister, and my sister has her own dead ancestor to deal with, so I really can't saddle her with mine for the night."

  My sister's DSA is named Henri. He's a monk. A few weeks ago, while my sister took an afternoon nap, Henri tore strips from her leather sofa to make a whip, then scourged himself with it. My sister woke up to a bloody back and a titillated boyfriend who wante
d to know if she was into S&M. She hasn't forgiven him yet -- not Henri and not the boyfriend.

  So, as much as Big Ma irritates me, I could have it worse.

  "Your Big Ma must have some great stories," Chang says. He's really trying. Then Big Ma catches him stealing a glance at my cleavage, and she forces me to frown at him.

  "So, she's always with you? Like, always?" Chang asks.

  I blush. "Big Ma goes to bed early. She's already drowsy, so soon we'll have the rest of the night to ourselves."

  Chang and I talk about our work. He seems genuinely interested. Big Ma is not interested. Medical talk puts her to sleep. Finally, Chang and I are alone and the mood changes.

  We share a cup of chocolate mousse and he winks at me. A perfectly timed wink seems to be a lost art these days, so when Chang walks me back to my apartment, I ask him to come up.

  We kiss in the doorway. We keep kissing as we make our way down the hall, stepping over my unpacked boxes and piles of research books as we go. Chang yanks on the first doorknob.

  I stop him. "No, the other door. This is her room."

  "Big Ma gets her own room? I thought she lived in your head."

  "It's for her junk. If you open that door, you'll be buried under an avalanche of salt shakers and gilded angels."

  Chang and I go to my room. We trip over an old rug Big Ma bought at a flea market and land hard on my bed. I don't even have time to put down my purse. Chang has nimble surgeon's fingers. He has my dress unzipped before I pull down the covers.

  I think about drawing limits, about telling him he can only go so far. But I haven't had a date in six months. I haven't had sex for more than a year. And with Big Ma around, who knows when I'll have the opportunity again.

  So when Chang gets his pants half -ff, I reach for my purse to get a condom. But when I grab the purse, I find myself swinging it, full force, into Chang's face. It hits him so hard he topples off the side of the bed.

  On the floor, he holds his nose and curses in Chinese. Inside my head, Big Ma curses in Italian. Cacophony.

  She hits him with my purse again.

  "Adrienne, stop!" Chang shields himself with his arms.

  I wrestle Big Ma for control of my purse -- and my hands. "I'm trying, but she's strong for an old woman."

  "Putana!" Big Ma screams at me. I don't have to speak Italian to know she's calling me a whore.

  "Get away, Gui!" Chang tries to knock the purse out of my hands. Sugar and creamer packets spill everywhere.

  He hops around my room, one leg in his pants, one out.

  "I'm so sorry; she's just really old-fashioned!"

  Chang is putting his pants back on. His nose is bleeding. And Big Ma is still shouting when Chang slams out the front door.

  "Are you happy now?" I shout back. "You want me to get married, but you just scared another man away."

  When she was alive, it was hard to understand Big Ma's broken English. Now, I understand her perfectly. "Why would that Chinaman marry you, Adrienne? You can't cook. You can't sew. You can't even milk a goat!"

  Big Ma wants to decorate my apartment; I don't see the point. Some day, I'm going to own a house with built-in shelves. I'll decorate them with souvenirs from all the trips I'm going to take around the world. This apartment is just a way station. I haven't even unpacked my boxes from the last move.

  Big Ma says I pay for the place, so I should make it a home. "Why can't you live where you are?" she wants to know.

  We argue about it on our way home from work.

  When we get to my apartment, my sister is there. She has every CD I own in a pile. "Where the hell is your Enigma album?" she asks by way of greeting.

  I shrug, throw my books on the sofa, and go to the fridge for a diet soda. I hate diet soda, but I've gained ten pounds since Big Ma took up residence. I've woken up with cannoli crumbs on my lips, so I know how it happened. "Since when do you like Enigma?"

  "I don't. It's for Henri. Whenever he hears Gregorian chants, he zones out and leaves me alone." She waves a receipt in front of me. "Six hundred bucks for a damned new leather couch!"

  "Big Ma says not to blaspheme," I say.

  "Screw that. I get that religious crap from Henri day in, day out. The bastard used my email account to log into a clerical chat board and started a flame-war between the Franciscans and the Dominicans."

  Things are obviously not better between my sister and Henri. Things aren't much better between me and Big Ma. I tell my sister how she drove my date off with a bloody nose.

  She laughs. My suffering improves her mood. "Adrienne, don't feel bad. The guy probably didn't even give you his real name. What kind of name is Chang? Did she actually break his nose?"

  "I'll never find out. Dating is hard enough without ancestor baggage. I just want to get married so I can have a real life, but at this rate, I'll be single forever."

  I realize I'm whining. I don't care.

  Big Ma tells me to meet a nice boy at church. I remind her about the Catholic boy who took me to lunch at 7-11. He told me, between slurps of his Big Gulp, that I was lucky he was so open-minded. Most religious folk don't want to date people with DSAs for fear that the moral taint might be hereditary. After all, if Big Ma had been a good Catholic, she wouldn't have ended up in Limbo. That was his feeling.

  I now avoid Church.

  "Have you thought about trying one of those dating services?" my sister asks. "The ones where everyone has a DSA?"

  I groan. I never thought I would need a dating service, but I also never thought I'd be sharing my body with a geriatric shoplifter.

  "Found it," my sister says, holding up the Enigma jewel case in triumph. She runs around my kitchen with her hands over her head like Rocky. "Yo, Adrienne!"

  I try to get her attention. "Listen, if I go to a dating service, will you go with me? You're not getting back together with the S&M guy, so why not?"

  "I'm done with men."

  "Right," I say. "Henri, help me out here."

  "Henri is a monk. He thinks I should enter a nunnery. You're on your own, sis."

  I flip through the phone book. Dharmic Dating. Kindred Spirits. Past Life Passions. I let Big Ma choose. She picks a service called Spiritual Connections. The lady at the office asks a lot of intrusive questions, like whether or not Big Ma killed anyone while she was alive.

  Liability issues, apparently.

  Big Ma's answer isn't something I can politely translate.

  I sign forms, write a flirtatious blurb, and allow myself to be interviewed on video. Within a week, I have a date with a nice-looking policeman named Kevin O'Brien.

  I meet Kevin for a picnic. I am thrilled with his choice of venue, because there's nothing in the park for Big Ma to steal.

  Big Ma doesn't like that Kevin is Irish. She doesn't like that he is a policeman either. And though he impresses me by telling me that his father was a policeman and his father's father was a policeman, Big Ma calls them a family of jackboots.

  Kevin unwraps a ham sandwich for me, and puts it on a plastic plate. The only kind of ham Big Ma can stand is cappicola, but I force her to eat it anyway. It's pretty bland, but Kevin made it himself, and that's nice.

  "I've never met anyone through a service before," I confess.

  "Me neither. But it's hard to find a girl who understands this spiritual shit if she isn't going through it herself."

  I like that Kevin uses the word shit on a first date. It makes him more real. Big Ma thinks he's crass.

  Kevin's DSA is his Uncle Pat. Uncle Pat died when Kevin was little, but he grew up with the pictures. "My mother and Uncle Pat were close. It was his liver that went."

  Kevin laughs as he pops the top off two beers.

  Inside, Big Ma nods knowingly, as if her every stereotype about the Irish is now confirmed. I sip from my beer and bask in the sunshine. "Was your Uncle Pat the religious sort? Big Ma loves angels. And my sister's DSA is a monk . . ."

  "Uncle Pat wasn't religious while he was alive," Ke
vin says. "But now he drags me to every church, synagogue, and mosque he can find, looking for the answer. I guess nobody in Limbo knows what the right religion is, otherwise they'd know how to get out," Kevin says. "Maybe none of them have the right religion."

  Big Ma starts getting agitated at this possibility, so I remind her about our deal. If she behaves, I'll let her decorate my apartment. "Maybe the afterlife isn't about what you believed, but what you did," I say.

  "Of course it is," Kevin says with certainty. Amazingly, he's already on his second beer. "Like I tell Uncle Pat, you gotta serve your time until you get paroled."

  It's nice to be able to talk about our DSAs so naturally. No awkward silences. No lectures. Kevin wouldn't normally be my type, but a girl in my position can't be too choosy.

  My sister is standing in front of my fridge eating yogurt. "Let's order pizza. Henri keeps throwing out my food. He's become an ascetic."

  Big Ma complains about wasting money on take-out and insists on whipping up some pasta faggioli. She's a great cook and watching her use my hands, I learn the tricks she'd forgotten or wasn't willing to teach me while she was alive.

  "You look awful," I tell my sister as I peel the garlic.

  Her eyes are bloodshot. She's paler than usual. "Effing Henri had a midnight confessional."

  "What did he confess?"

  Big Ma wants to know too, but she pretends to be absorbed in bringing the pasta water to a rolling boil.

  "Well," my sister says. "Didn't you ever wonder how we could possibly be descendants of an 19th Century monk?"

  I gasp. "I always thought Henri was an uncle or something."

  "No," my sister says. "He ran away from the monastery. He literally ripped up his bed sheet, made a rope, and climbed out the window to take up with a village seamstress. He's sure that's why he was sent to Limbo. Now he's scourging and starving me to atone for his sins."

  "What did you tell him?" I asked.

  "I told him the whole religion thing is bogus," my sister says, hovering over the skillet where we're frying up beans, garlic, onion, and basil. The scent is mouthwatering.