1 - Little Baby
Before he made you, he made me
It’s three forty-two amwhen I stumble through the back door of my house smelling of smoke and sex. I am so drunk I forget to take off my Docs and they clunk on every step as I make my way upstairs to my bedroom. On some nights this clunking would be enough to earn a beating from my father, but on this night, it’s not. He’s been drinking for three weeks straight. I haven’t even seen him for days. Heard him, yes—he and my mother are always fighting—but seen him, no.
The basement is his man cave so that’s where he likes to get his booze on. And when he’s on a bender like this, he doesn’t even come up to eat. Sleeps down there too.
I love his benders because while he’s still dangerous when he’s falling-down drunk, his aim is pretty bad. He still tries to hit me, but more often than not he breaks his knuckles on a wall instead of my face.
Sobriety, as far as I’m concerned, is my number one enemy. Both mine and my father’s. When he’s drunk, he’s too busy thinking about himself to care about me. And when I’m stoned, I’m too immersed in my own self-delusions to care about the truth.
Which is that my life sucks and is going absolutely nowhere.
I flop into bed, not even bothering to take off my boots. The room is spinning, but I don’t care. And since I decided to drop out of school so I can hang at Boyd’s house every day, I can sleep in as long as I want.
I moan as I turn over onto my stomach, and then pass out, hoping that my father stays drunk forever.
When I wake, I find myself in a place of emptiness.
But as soon as I think that thought, there is a mist here. Purple, but some gold too. It’s hard to see because there is nothing but darkness all around me, but I can feel it. It cools my burning hot body and feels good on my skin.
“Hello?” a voice says.
I don’t startle. I’m not scared. But maybe I should be? I’m not sure.
“Are you awake now, Echo?”
Echo? I make a face. Though I don’t think I’m really making a face because I don’t think I actually have a body. “Who’s Echo?” Then I’m even more confused. Because that’s my voice and how could I have a voice if I don’t have a body?
“Oh.” The other voice is calm, and low, and kind of seductive. “Oh, I see. You’re…” She falters for words, then tries again. “What are you? I mean,who?Who are you?”
Who am I? I don’t know. So I say, “I’m just me.”
“I think you are Echo.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Well…” There’s some hesitation here, like this woman is about to explain something to me but doesn’t quite know how to start. “I think you are. In fact, I should just get to the point here, Echo. That’s your name. I should know. I made you.”
“Mademe?” I scoff. “No. That’s decidedly not true.” These words come out automatically and they come out with such certainty, the woman goes silent for a few moments, allowing me to think. To ponder my… conviction. Because how the hell do I know she’s not the one who made me? I have no memory of anything at the moment. I don’t even have a body.
Which, again, is contradictory since I do have a mouth and a voice.
“OK,” the woman finally says. “All right. Well, if it wasn’t me, then who?”
I shrug my shoulders, surprised that I have shoulders to do this. And I’m just about to say I don’t know, I just know it’s not her, when a name comes to me. “Josep did.”
“Josep?” Her response to my answer is filled with both surprise and delight. “Well. I guess I didn’t see that one coming. But who am I kidding? I didn’t see any of this coming. Well, the death. My own death, I mean. I knew that part.”
“You’re dead.” I say these words flatly and with no emotion. “Does that mean I’m dead?”
“Well, death, as it pertains to witches, can sometimes be… subjective? Yes. That’s a good word to describe it. You see, I no longer have a body but I live on in spirit. And isn’t that the only thing that counts?”
“No.” And again, I say this automatically and with a surety I don’t actually feel. Then more words are spilling out. Words I don’t seem to have any control over. “Spirit can’t fuck, witch. Spirit can’t eat, or drink, or feel things.”
The woman scoffs. “That might be true, but a spirit knows that those things—these things that only physical bodies feel—they are…” Again, she struggles for a word.
“You need a thesaurus,” I say, which makes her laugh. “You talk too slow. You come off as very indecisive.”
