I was in a kitchen, all right, but it wasn’t my kitchen.
Tilting, disorienting confusion blurred the unfamiliar shapes and colors together.
My heart thudded as the wave of bleach and window cleaner hit me. I looked up slowly, a new fear trickling through me as I followed the sound of a television. My lips parted in silent panic as I watched a man and a woman on a morning show. The conservative anchor cut away from the “blasphemous display of magic,” as he called it, before addressing the audience directly.
A screengrab of Dorian gesturing to an audience popped over their shoulder. A clip of Poppy waving her hands as she spoke was next. They’d done it. Poppy and Dorian had gone public on the news and revealed themselves to the humans. The angry news anchors began to yell about what this heresy meant for our country.
But it wasn’t my TV.
I would never have turned to this channel. But I knew someone who would…
A new sound. Rhythmic. Slow.
One, two, three, four…
My confusion began to take shape. The scent of bleach. The angry television. And that god-awful sound.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as I placed the sound of feet. I recognized the cadence of the steps. I’d heard the weight of these shoes on floors for years and years once, then buried the sound in the deepest, most repressed parts of my memory.
Suddenly, I understood what wires had gotten crossed when I’d thought of home.
Step, step, step,until she came to a halt above me.
I swallowed as I turned to see my mother, hands on her hips, staring down at me.
And then I emptied the contents of my stomach onto her feet.
