Pet: Chapters 1–2

It was the angels who took apart the prisons and the police; who held councils prosecuting the former officers who’d shot children and murdered people, sentencing them to restitution and rehabilitation.

It was the angels who took apart the prisons and the police; who held councils prosecuting the former officers who’d shot children and murdered people, sentencing them to restitution and rehabilitation.

They’d remember the marches and vigils, the shaky footage that was splashed everywhere of their deaths (a thing that wasn’t allowed anymore, that gruesome dissemination of someone’s child gasping in their final moments, bubbling air or blood or grief—the angels respected the dead and their loved ones).

Redemption adjusted the strap of his backpack.

Jam put the books down on a table that wasn’t too crowded and leaned her elbows on them, watching her mother’s shoulder blades jerk and convulse as she moved on her hands and knees, a massive canvas stretched beneath her.

It was something about his vibe, Jam thought, something about how attuned they were to each other.

She blinked and Bitter’s face came into focus, a piece at a time, the hard cheekbones, the bare eyebrows, the broad mouth pressed with a matte red.

There were raked gouges in it, next to delicate veined imprints, next to pieces of Bitter’s palm.

There were raked gouges in it, next to delicate veined imprints, next to pieces of Bitter’s palm.

He was shrugging off his jacket, and his chest was expansive under it—“I was built to be a local farmer back home on the continent,” he always said, but he’d gone another way and ended up as a paramedic.

“All right, sweetness,” she’d said, looking at the writhing child and thinking back on several arguments they’d had about Jam’s clothes, when Jam would sign refusal over and over.

It was nice to see how these conversations went between her mother and the work, this coy dance, this sufferhead behavior, as Aloe would say.

He hadn’t meant anything strong by it. Just to comfort his daughter, prompted by an old fear, by echoes of memories of what people used to do to girls like her.

She was playing ragas now, haunting things full of sitar and tabla and sarod.

The goat legs had stayed, jutting thighs and all, but from the waist up, the figure was new.

A torso twisted all the way around, still furred, but the thick white was interrupted by a new bloodiness, intermittent streaks, as if the figure had made a mess while eating something.

The arms remained long, but they were feathered now, an iridescent gold ending in obscenely human hands.

Photographs of Bitter’s hands were strewn around as studies—she’d painted her own hands into the figure, painted crude stitches that grafted her wrists to its feathered arms.

Photographs of Bitter’s hands were strewn around as studies—she’d painted her own hands into the figure, painted crude stitches that grafted her wrists to its feathered arms.

Photographs of Bitter’s hands were strewn around as studies—she’d painted her own hands into the figure, painted crude stitches that grafted her wrists to its feathered arms.

Only the fingernails had color; they were metal claws the same gold as the feathers, as if some essence of the figure had pierced the mutilated flesh and burst out from the cuticles.

The figure’s head was heavy with curled ram’s horns, clotted red, and the face was an interlocked geometric mess of metallic feathers that smothered any features.

Jam gasped and scrambled backward off the painting until she was pushing away from it, her chest rough and heaving, her left palm loud with hurt.

She got on her knees and shuffled back to the painting, peering at it without the vertigo of standing upright, cradling her hand to her chest.

Aloe kept a comprehensive first aid kit in the house, accordioned shelves of supplies layered inside, and Jam dragged it out from under the bathroom sink.

She stanched the bleeding with wadded paper towels, then pulled out alcohol wipes and a pack of butterfly closures.

Every time Jam hurt herself around the house, Bitter shook her head ruefully and just said that Aloe’s clumsiness had to have ended up somewhere.

The studio door opened without a sound, like it was conniving with her.

When she looked down at the painting, the smoke in the background was moving, churning and swirling.

Even the feathers were moving now, in a fine tremble, moonlight pattering over the gold.

Unfortunately for rational Jam, the figure continued to blatantly prove her wrong, levering one arm out and reaching down to the floor for stability, the gold claws carving small strips from the hardwood.

The terror in Jam’s chest paused at the sheer...awkwardness of the thing.

It wasn’t rising with grace so much as jerkily trying to extricate itself from the work, and its head was still buried in the canvas.

The thing sighed and its voice dripped with even more condescension than it had before, which was kind of impressive.

I wish, I truly wish, that I had the time to explain the intricacies of cross-dimensional portals to you, little girl, but I don’t.

I wish, I truly wish, that I had the time to explain the intricacies of cross-dimensional portals to you, little girl, but I don’t.

Thank you, it said in her head, and Jam decided to ignore the grudging tone.

Did it resent Bitter for painting it?

Her mother, who refused to believe in keeping animals indoors and never let her get so much as a goldfish, had gone and painted a thing with goat legs and ram horns, a thing that could have fallen out of some apocalyptic last pages of an old holy book, a furry, goldfeathered thing that was squatting in the studio like no man’s business.

The comfort of its awkwardness was gone, and it seemed casually lethal now, like it was lying in wait, like the crouch was a precursor to springing up and that strange, blurry mouth opening and someone’s throat being torn out.