Almost immediately after I promised myself I would actually go on dates rather than chatting with the occasional sexting, Grayson’s profile popped up in my search.Recently divorced, he’d written in his bio.No kids. Looking to have fun as well as deep conversations.
I swiped right and then messaged him withDo you like women who might be considered a bit strange?After only eight minutes, a notification popped up.I love strange women, he’d responded.
His skin was a little bit tan and covered in freckles, his eyes as dark brown as the fur of the sweet deer who like to come to the kitchen windows in the morning to say hello, and his hair was a golden blond and cropped short. He took me to restaurants downtown by the beach, requesting romantic, candlelit tables in the darkest corners, “so we can really get to know each other,” he’d explained, winking. Last date, we kissed by his car, parked so near the ocean, I was distracted by the seagulls the entire time. Their calls sounded like warnings, somehow…but when I turned my head toward them after, I saw nothing but the sun being swallowed by the blue watercolor of the sea.
The “deep conversations” he’d promised weren’t exactly deep at all, unless you counted the depth of his capacity to talk about how much he lifts (Two fifty? Three hundred? Somewhere thereabouts).
But overall, he was…nice. He never called me The Girl Who Lies, or Freak, or any other unkind name that’s been thrown at me weekly in this town. Grayson was ripped, employed, and, most importantly, not once did he proclaim that he was lookingfor a tradwife who didn’t mind deep-throating at least twice a day. Which was not even close to the worst thing a man had told me via these apps.
While it’s true, Grayson doesn’t seem super enamored with me…it’s not like I’m crazy about him, either. And I don’t consider that a bad thing, to be honest.
Ever since coming back from a yearslong supernatural sleep, I’ve felt like a stranger in my own skin. In my ownlife. I don’t understand the Land of the Living anymore. I was sixteen when I left it, twenty-four when I returned, and twenty-six now. I’ve had two whole years to adjust, and yet everything I do is motivated by a very specific desire to stop feeling like the loneliest woman in the world.
Hence, seducing Grayson literally right now.
Maybe if we have sex, we’llbothbecome enamored with each other.
And even if not, I’d like to have good sex. I’ve never experienced it before. If nothing else, orgasms sure would relieve some stress. I just need to ensure those orgasms first. Magically speaking.
“Just give me a second,” I tell him, lifting up my pointer finger. “One second.”
Grayson huffs just the slightest bit and then shakes his head. “Are youseriouslyleaving?”
His tone is more than a little annoyed, which is bothersome. Annoyed men are not good lovers. I don’t know this from experience, but it seems like common sense. Which is why Ireallyneed to complete the pitchfork part of this ritual before intercourse occurs.
“I will berightback. I swear. This is important.”
And it is. Rose is for romance. Cinnamon is for heat. And thepitchfork is for orgasms.The pitchfork pins them on your land and all those orgasms find their way to you.Nadia’d laughed at me as I took notes.With the way most men are in bed, mija, you need all the help you can get.
Romance, I can do without. Heat, whatever the hell that refers to, doesn’t seem important. But orgasms are essential to me. I’m not about to have sex for the first time in almost ten years without ensuring my own completion.
For all I know, Grayson will ghost me after this. His annoyance right now certainly isn’t making me think he’s going to become enamored with me after all. At the very least, the universe—the Land of the Living, let’s say—owes me. Preferably inmanyinstances of completion.
I run down the stairs, slip on my little outdoor booties at the front door, and race toward the back of the house. It’s a sliver of a backyard, if one could even call it that. We live on a cliff that, in the distance, overlooks the Virginian Atlantic shore. If I stare at it too long—the dazzling glitter of sunlight bouncing off the water like fine quartzite on the side of a carved mountain—I can feel the fish and plankton and whales and seagulls that all inhabit that space.
Sometimes, late at night as I’m falling asleep, I can sense what feels like every single creature in this town, Cranberry, from the pink-edged sulphur butterfly babies in their cocoons to the green-wing teal ducks, tiny and shimmering and curled in on themselves, asleep on the edges of the lakes, to the great horned owls, eyes wide as moons and looking for their nighttime breakfast.
This is the life of the Witch of Criaturas.
A few feet to the left of my sister Sage’s blue rose, there lies the pitchfork, halfway tucked into some bushes. I grab its wooden handle and find the nearest patch of grass I can and stick it rightin there. Luckily it’s rained recently, and so the clay beneath the sod is soft enough that the prongs go in with only a little bit of effort. I clap my hands together once when I release the handle and it stays perfectly upright.
“Okay,” I announce to the fox who has reached my side. This little guy, I like to call Coffee. His eyes look just like Nadia’s Turkish brew that she pours into the dirt for the old gods every morning—one shade between the deepest brown and black. He cocks his head up at me. “It’s time for orgasms. Do foxes even have those?” I frown thoughtfully. “I guess I could google it later. But wouldn’t that look kind of suspicious in my search history? People don’t like me enough as it is…and if they thought I was…” I shake my head as I get a glimpse of my elderly neighbor, Janie, spying on me from between her curtains. “Go hide,” I tell Coffee, and he rushes into the pine trees.
I stare Janie down, but she doesn’t slap the curtains shut until I give her a little wave involving only one of my middle fingers.
I rush back in the house, kicking off my slippers at the entrance, and begin to run upstairs. When I hear Grayson’s voice, however, I pause. What the hell is he talking for? He’s not chatting with Nadia, is he? She’s supposed to be at church literally all day. I didn’t see her car up front, did I? God, that would be so incredibly awkward.
I tiptoe up, praying I don’t hear my great-aunt’s voice echoing from my bedroom, where there are no less than three extra-large multipacks of ribbed, super-ribbed, and tropical-flavored condoms piled up in the middle of my dresser. She would have to be incredibly drunk in order to miss that, highly unlikely on a Sunday morning after church.
But as I creep up the stairs—as soundless as Coffee when hestalks chipmunks and squirrels—another male-sounding voice echoes toward me. It’s someone he’s talking to on speakerphone. The muffled and electronic tone of the other side of this conversation gives it away.
My first thought is Grayson has answered a call from his dad or tío or something. A distant part of me realizes how badly I’m clinging to the idea that Grayson is a Nice Guy. I even come up with a wholesome scenario in seconds. His family member was worried when Grayson didn’t show up to brunch and was just calling to check in. Grayson just answered to reassure them that he was fine, and then he’d hang up and soon I would be having multiple orgasms before kissing him on the cheek goodbye, then getting on with my day.
But then the disembodied voice asks, “So have you bagged the freak yet?”
Grayson laughs. It’s a much different laugh than the one he’d used when we’d met up for an early breakfast at a sandwich spot nearby, before he followed me back here, to Nadia’s, and I offered him water or tea or coffee before I pulled him into my bedroom, ripped off his shirt, and pushed him onto my mattress.
Thatlaugh was polite and restrained.Thislaugh is cruel. Its edges are as sharp as the thorns of pinecones protecting its tiny seeds from those who would devour them.
