Sure, but not that he would like to admit to.
Growing up, one of his foster parents had told him that he’d gotten such bad nightmares about a “rotten lady” that they’d had to switch him to another room in the house.Years later when he’d been bored and stoned, Blake had Googled his old address and came across a news report of an aged corpse being discovered at the property back in the 80’s.A photo from the old woman’s obituary was included at the bottom of the article and—eager as he was to write it off as a coincidence—Blake couldn’t shake how eerily familiar she looked to the decaying figure from his youth.
Other little things had happened, too.Weeks before Matt’s mom had died, Blake had a recurring dream of her walking up a staircase with a dead end and disappearing at the top.He’d also just…knownthat his high school math teacher was pregnantweeksbefore she mentioned it to the class.Even as of late he’d seen stuff moving on the edges of his vision.Little things like that, which he had written off as a trick of the eye, or coincidence, or him being observant—stuff that he didn’t have an explanation for.
“I guess,” he admitted, reluctance creeping into his tone.Celeste adopted a knowing smile, their expression looking more than a little contemptible in that moment.
“I know that face.”They chuckled, dropping out of their chair and walking over to the table with the salt lamp.They gestured to a Keurig next to it.“Want some?”
“Sure,” Blake responded without even knowing what had been offered.“And what do you mean bythat?”
Celeste popped a pod in and placed a mug in the receptacle.“I can tell you’ve seen stuff your whole life, but you’ve been able to write it off up until now.”They hummed as the water boiled.“Like you were seeing things or hadn’t gotten enough sleep lately.Things like that.”
Blake flinched at being called out.“Maybe.”
Celeste laughed.“‘Maybe’,” they repeated, their tone soft and amused.“It’s okay.I see ghosts and I tell fortunes for a side-gig while I work on my book.There’s nothing you can tell me that’ll shock me.”
The Keurig filled the mug and Celeste picked it up, handing it to Blake.“So when did it start talking to you?”
“The merman?”
“No, the tea,” Celeste said with a sardonic roll of their eyes.“Yes the merman, it’s why you’re paying me twenty-five dollars per half-hour session.”
Blake sputtered into his drink.“I thought it said twenty on the website!”
“Late evening sessions are extra.Now do tell,” Celeste responded, popping in another Keurig pod and making themself a cup as well.
Blake sighed, his brow scrunching in frustration.“It was yesterday morning.I’ve been working there for over a year—as a lifeguard during summer and a security guard during the off-season—but nothing weird has happened in all that time.”
He took a sip of the tea.“I was doing the slide inspection for the morning and it—he —started talking to me out of the blue.He wanted my energy drink.”
Celeste laughed.“As demanding as ever.”
“You know him?”Blake asked, lowering his teacup.Celeste nodded.
“My mom took me to the water park once when I was little,” they said.“If I remember correctly, he asked for my churro.”
“Are you… not supposed to feed him?”Blake frowned.“Will that make him too powerful or something?”
“No, I’m afraid that’s not how pygmalions work,” Celeste waved the notion away with a flap of their hand.“I doubt he’d be able to taste it anyway.”
“Okay, you didn’t end up explaining it to me—whatisa pygmalion?”Blake asked again.
Celeste ducked down, fingertips fluttering over the spines of a set of books stacked below the Keurig table.They grabbed one entitledGreek Mythology, flipped to a bookmarked page, and set the text down on the coffee table in front of Blake.
“It’s a bit of a misnomer,” Celeste said, tapping the page.
“Pygmalion” was written out in the center in a fanciful script.An illustration on one side depicted a man embracing a marble statue.The picture on the other page was of a sumptuous woman labeled “Aphrodite,” her arms outstretched lovingly.
Celeste explained, “So there was this guy named Pygmalion from Ovid’sMetamorphoses—he was either a king or a sculptor or both.Essentially, he overreacted after looking at a prostitute and decided to become celibate and do sculpting instead of sex.”
“Wow,” Blake responded, tone flat.
“But eventually he managed to sculpt a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with her and started treating her like his wife.Kissing her, screwing her, bringing her presents—the full nine yards,” Celeste went on.“One day he prayed to the goddess of love, Aphrodite, and she decided to turn the sculpture into a real woman to be his wife.She didn’t have a name in the original version, but she was retroactively named Galatea sometime in the 1700’s.
“In our community we use the term ‘pygmalion’ to describe an effigy that has been brought to life,” Celeste explained.At Blake’s perplexed expression they provided: “An effigy is a statue, a painting, a doll, whatever.Anything that looks like a person.They can really only be interacted with and seen by sensitives.
“Some people think that they’re the result of curses—trapped souls.Others think that they’re new souls created to occupy the effigy.”Celeste gazed into their cup, rounding the coffee table to look down at the pages of the book.“But I have it on good authority that it’s a blend of the two.The creator of the effigy poured so much love, energy, and devotion into the creation process that it became a vessel to contain the soul of a loved one who passed away.”
