Daily Archives: June 6, 2023

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The Witch and Silk

This is part of a series called The Witch of Fourteenth Street. I wrote it when I was hanging out with someone very very inappropriate. After another pneumonia, so I can blame that. Inspired by Louis Carreras’s story: Covert.

The Witch and Silk

The Witch is hanging out at the Giant Shed, watching the Cave guy work. She admires his muscles. She is listening to him talk, sort of.

“Men’s group meets tomorrow night.”

“A men’s group?” said the Witch, disbelieving. These guys are hyper conservative. “You play drums and beat your chests?”

“No!” says the Cave guy. “We meet Tuesday nights. We are learning skills for the coming collapse. You know that civilization as we know it is going to collapse. Spengler said so.”

The Witch has the book now, but hasn’t it read it. She doesn’t care. “What sort of skills?”

“Lighting fires last week.”

“What, with a bow and wood?”

“Do you know how difficult it is? Wait, how do you know about starting fires with a bow?”

“Another set of kids’ books. Earnest Thompson Seeton. Also tracking and snares and shelter building.”

The Cave guy rolls his eyes. “KIDS’ books. This week we are building rabbit cages. Rabbits for meat.”

“Ok.” says the Witch. “Can I come?”

“NO. THIS IS MEN’S GROUP.”

“Ya’ll will need some women when civilization collapses, though. Unless ya gonna be the last generation.”

“What skills do you have for the collapse? You must be prepared.”

“Two major ones.” says the Witch. “One: I am a physician. That is hella useful. Two: I know 500 or more songs, all twelve verses. I am entertainment when the televisions go dead. Very valuable.”

The Cave guy is silent, glaring. “Humph.” He goes back to the purpleheart.

The Witch grins. “Well, have a good Men’s night. Build those cages. Can I build one in the daytime?”

“All right,” says the Cave guy. He shows her the pattern.

The Witch watches the men come and go from the Giant Shed, where the Cave guy holds court and works as a Shipwright. The teen boys are there too, the mountain bike racing team, the Flying Monkeys. This is all ripe for someone to come in and use them, thinks the Witch. For something covert. I mean, it’s perfect. They are conservative, paranoid and listen to Fox News all the time. I’m surprised no one has already used them.

“My son and I are building frames.” says the Cave guy.

“Frames?” says the Witch. Frames are not boats.

“My friend Silk, the computer expert. He wants us to build them because he doesn’t want to source from China. They are our enemies.”

Oh, thinks the Witch. Oh, wow. “Uh, what sort of computer expert?”

“He says he can make any sort of money on the internet. He’s made his pile. Bitcoin early adopter.”

“The silk road? Are you sure you want to be involved?”

“Oh, he didn’t sell drugs!”

The Witch meets Silk. He is small and quiet and has a wife and a three year old. His house has a high earth berm to hide everything and a sheep that is about to die from not being shorn. Poor sheep, thinks the Witch.

“Silk is turning one of his computer programs over to me!” says the Cave guy. “Easy money!”

“And what are the frames for?” says the Witch, but she’s already scoped it. Black frames. For fake certificates, of course, which Silk is turning out. Silk has moved from a big city and perhaps had a different name. Well, thinks the Witch, Silk is busily setting up the Shipwright to take the fall for the fake certificates and the “easy money” computer program. The Shipwright is six foot 5 inches and apparently thinks his size means he’s smarter than Silk and also thinks that he’s leading the group. Silk is happy to be low profile. Silk takes the Shipwright along when he cashes in a huge amount of Bitcoin, as a body guard. And or fall guy, but there is no raid.

The Witch doesn’t think that Silk is as smart as he thinks either. Well, perhaps with computers. His escape plan is not so good. He takes the cash and a boat and his wife and his three year old and heads for Panama. “He’s taking his three year old daughter there right in the midst of Zika?”

“Silk knows what he’s doing,” says the Cave guy.

“No he doesn’t,” says the Witch. “Um, he may understand computers, but not infectious disease!”

“Zika is all hype, it’s not real.”

“Guess they will find out, won’t they.” And the Witch is not sorry for Silk. Only for the daughter.

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The photograph is of another project that is not a boat.

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Tendrils

He likes to be the smartest. She doesn’t care and anyhow, people don’t like smart women mostly. Men show it off. Women mask it. She can only partially mask with her professional degree.

He’s pleased to walk on the beach with her. She is withdrawn, down. He can feel that. He does not ask why, ever. She slides neatly into the space his wife’s dementia left. His wife who was also depressed. He does whatever he wants, he’s not available, he won’t be trapped. Control.

She is withdrawn, down. She has a difficult task in a year that might kill her. Closing the clinic and working elsewhere. Maybe she only gets pneumonia when a loved one dies. Or maybe COVID-19 will kill her. There, the range is from make a lot of money to dying. It is hard to explain and people don’t believe her.

Tendrils from her time in the ocean brush him. Then they are longer and lit in the sun. They wrap around him, very slowly. The first after a year. Where the tendrils touch, he has scales.

Neither sees. They are too busy laughing. They are small children, wordplay, in the woods, on the beaches, talking, singing.

She thinks her mermaid self is separate, her dream self. She is safest in the ocean. Her microbiota, gut bacteria, are all from the ocean. Symbiotic. He has land bacteria, at least, he starts with them. They change the longer they are together. He says, “I can read your mind!” But he can’t read emotions, since his are locked away. They bang on the dungeon doors howling but his heart is locked there too. His head can’t hear, can’t feel. Only when the small child is out playing.

He is slowly turning green. Now he has a few small leafy tendrils too.

She goes in the sea, the ocean, the unconscious, daily. Unworried, free, happy, healed.

The year goes by. The clinic closes, she has a job.

“Why are you afraid?” He says.

“I am afraid I’ll get sick,” she says.

He has tendrils running all over from her. Half his skin has designs, stripes and patterns. The earliest ones have thickened and spread, rooted wherever they touch him, scales edging the roots. She is fully scaled, with the tendrils from fins and tail and hair. She smells of the sea.

She goes to work and is sick after two months. Very very sick with all it entails.

“You didn’t tell me about this!” he says.

“Why would I?” she says. “No one believes me.”

“I am watching and I don’t believe it.” He hates that her mind is unmasked. “I can follow you and it makes sense but you jump topics so fast!”

She shrugs. “Well.”

He tries to cut ties. Once. Twice. He can’t see the tendrils, so how can he cut them? But now she looks from the ocean and sees. The third time he tries, she grabs a shell and slices through the tendrils and dives deep. He could come in the sea. But he will have to choose.

He chooses not to. He thinks she is calling him from the sea. Every day he drinks a little more, smokes a little more, trying to drown the call.

But it isn’t her. The tendrils are his, now. The dungeon is flooded and the monsters and the small child swim in an ocean, fully scaled. They call him daily, to open the door, to let them out, to join them.

To join them in the sea.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: symbiotic.

Sea of love.