The Fall

A month-old dream: Saul, a man (who in waking hours) I'd banished from my house, a man whose disrespect spat out of him in all directions, a toady to my enemy, showed up unexpectedly in the brown duplex where I was born. The dream's details are furry, but I distinctly remember his smug lippy smile and the way he danced pennies across his knuckles. Also, his Protean ability to endlessly alter physical form. Of course, I know that if you chain a shapeshifter, his form will solidify, and you can force him to foretell the future.

But I didn't want the future. As he turned into a chipmunk to scamper away, I caught him by the neck, displaying my quarry to Ilena. She flashed her one-sided smile, vaguely pleased. Turning, I threw his body sharply into a porcelain tub, and as a circle opened on his furred back and began spilling brown blood, Ilena grimaced, "he's only a creature," and left me to watch alone as the pool of brown fanned out around his pygmy corpse.

*****

Friends, even the person you hate most turns out ultimately fragile. Even this crusted shell I secrete to circle my own form eventually cracks, revealing me pink inside, and shivering. Are my black spells working? I want to take them back. I want to fold them away and forget them.

A word I spoke in mischief came through, not by my hand but by chance, and now I sit like a man who mistakenly crushed a bird trying to carry it, staring at the enormous hard-knotted hands that betrayed him. Enough obliqueness, though: our former roommate's cat has run away.