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deemoyza(Originally posted on October 22, 2019)
What a Nuisance, What a Waste | 2,717 words | Fantasy
The scorpion was already dead when Carmen found it, a tiny gray-green corpse on the linoleum, its tail stretched out behind it, its deadly instrument laid down like a weapon in surrender.
Still, the sight of it frightened Carmen, not because of the power and danger inherent in its form, but simply because it had gotten in. It had breached the barrier between her and the wild, come into the space where she was the most vulnerable, the space where she thought she was safe.
And if the scorpion had come in, what else might?
She called the exterminator, keeping a wary eye on the scorpion the whole time she was on the phone, seized by the irrational fear that it might spontaneously reanimate and come directly for her. The exterminator was nonchalant about the entire matter, removing the dead scorpion, checking the area for more, then treating the outside of the house. He was leaving as Carmen’s husband returned from work, and stopped to fill him in on the situation.
“So,” Carmen’s husband said, shutting the front door behind him, “I heard you had an interesting visitor today. Where was it?”
“Kitchen,” Carmen answered, a shiver running through her at the memory.
“Already dead?”
“Yes, but —”
“Huh. The last treatment was still working, then. But I guess it was about time for another.”
“Still working? Jim, the scorpion was inside. The treatment isn’t working if it doesn’t keep things out.”
“But it was dead. It must’ve picked up some of the residue on the way in.”
“How can you be so calm about the whole thing?”
“Because it comes with the territory, literally. Once you get out of the city, things like this happen.” Jim sighed. "You know that. And it never used to bother you before."
"That was when things stayed where they belonged. Us inside, them outside.”
“And that’s the case, most of the time. That little guy you found just got lucky — well, maybe not so much, considering the poison got him, anyway. It was a fluke, nothing more.” Jim reached out and pulled Carmen close. "But I know it can be unnerving. What do you say we just avoid the scene of the incident for tonight and go out to eat, instead?"
Despite her uneasiness, Carmen smiled. "That sounds like a very sensible plan.”
She couldn’t help glancing into the kitchen, however, in search of another intruder. There was rarely only one.
***
The mouse was a dingy brown, and popped out of the wastebasket as if its tiny feet had been fitted with springs. It scurried across the floor, driven by Carmen’s screams, and wedged itself into a small hole near the back door.
Another call, another visit from the exterminator, who, once again, found no evidence of infestation beyond the single specimen Carmen reported, but set out traps and patched up the hole near the door.
“Warm weather, and nearby construction,” he said, when Carmen asked what might have driven the mouse to her home. "A lot of people in the area reporting them right now. Just keep an eye on the traps, and call us if the problem gets worse. But I think you’ll be fine. I only saw the one."
There was rarely only one.
Several days later, it was a lizard lounging in the bathtub, which Jim trapped and escorted outside. Days after that, a dove crashed into the living room window, snapping its neck and leaving a greasy spread-wing stain on the glass. More days, more encounters: a snake slithering across the back porch, a spider on the bedroom sill, a sparrow flying into shelves and frames and walls, desperately trying to escape. Each one an intrusion, each one a message.
Carmen knew. As she watched the sparrow fly out through the front door, realization settled in her chest, laced with a leaden dread. It wasn’t warm weather, or recent construction, that had brought these creatures out. It was her.
She’d stayed too long.
The terms of the covenant had been clear, and back then, she’d eagerly accepted them: three years as a woman, to live among and learn from the people in the valley below her home. Three years to laugh and dance and sing; three years to ache and cry and want. Three years to touch the ground, feel the sunlight, revel in all the thoughts and sensations denied to her in her divine state, before returning, theoretically sated, to devote herself to her everlasting work once more.
But three years, while a snap of the fingers to the gods, was a long time for a human. A long time to experience all that she had desired, and a long time to learn to desire more. For while she laughed and danced and sang, and ached and cried and wanted more than she thought possible, she also fell in love.
The gods had never planned on that, though they had seen the sentimental folly play out before them millions of times over the millennia. Perhaps they’d thought her too smart; perhaps they’d thought her too ugly; perhaps they’d thought her too detached. She’d certainly thought these things of herself, but as she grew to know Jim, she also grew to feel affection, toward him and toward herself, and it was a feeling so grand that she refused to give it up. She refused to relinquish this emotion, this fullness, turning her back on her divine nature, sealing herself inside the constructs of man to prevent it being snatched from her.
Doing so made her mortal, she knew, and every moment she spent in this state, her body and spirit degraded further, but she didn’t care. She would die for this feeling. She would die a thousand times over, if necessary, only to experience this just once in each lifetime.
For a while, she thought she’d won. She thought the gods had given up on her, thought they’d allowed the western winds to grow stagnant in her absence, thought they’d created a new spirit to take her place, to do her work.
But since three years was a fingersnap to the gods, they simply hadn’t noticed when Carmen’s time was up. Now that they had, however, they would stop at nothing to bring her back home.
So, when the scratching sounds began above her bed, she grasped Jim’s arm and shook him awake. He groaned and turned over, muttering half a question.
"Do you hear it?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
“Scratching. Above us.”
Jim frowned and cocked his head. "Uh-uh. Don’t hear it."
Carmen held her breath, hoping that the sounds had been the vestiges of a fading dream, and nothing more. But as Jim closed his eyes, they started up again, from above and from the outer wall.
"It’s back,” she whispered.
“Still can’t hear —”
“Shh! Listen. No, really, listen. It’s quiet, but it’s there.”
Jim sat up, shaking his head, but soon blinked fully awake. Carmen watched his eyes follow the noise — directly above, to the far end of the room, to the wall beside the window.
“Maybe mice?” he ventured. "Maybe we did have an infestation after all?" He got up and walked to the window. "Or cats, on the roof. Could be raccoons.” He peered out the window, then shouted and stumbled backwards as a rotund raccoon hauled itself onto the window ledge and clawed at the glass, begging to be let inside.
“Damn, that scared me!” Jim began laughing. "See, that’s all it was. Some raccoons. I guess we’d better check the lids on our trash cans, keep them —" He stopped short and winced as the raccoon dragged its claws down the glass, slowly, deliberately, raising a high-pitched squeal.
Carmen clapped her hands over her ears and stumbled out of bed, out of the bedroom, and into the hall, where she slid down the wall and curled up on the floor, knees to chest, the terrible squeal ringing in her mind, even as her ears registered Jim shouting and pounding on the window to drive the raccoon away.
She stayed there even after he was successful. She stayed there until gray morning light crept through the living room blinds, and the world outside the house had gone silent in that space between night and day.
***
“Two nights in a row! Those are some of the most aggressive and persistent raccoons I’ve ever seen,” Jim said, stirring his coffee. "I hope they aren’t rabid. Just be careful, if you go outside."
Carmen nodded, staring into her own coffee, and seeing her weary reflection within.
"Still,” Jim went on, “it’s strange. It’s not like they’re behaving randomly. It’s like they actually want something. Something from in here.”
Yes, me. The thought flashed through Carmen’s mind, and her shoulders flinched. She wanted to say it, wanted to assure Jim that the raccoons posed no danger to him or to the neighborhood, wanted to tell him everything. But how much could she even get out before he grew puzzled, or before he stopped her and insisted she was speaking nonsense? Before he sent her to rest, to see a doctor? Before he concluded she was crazy and left her?
Not much.
So, she kept quiet and swirled the coffee in her cup, watching her reflection waver, and noticing a few more years on her face when it stilled again.
***
The smell was particularly strong that morning, but Jim attributed its strength to its recency. He had spotted the javelinas through the kitchen window not long after he’d gotten up, and told Carmen not to worry.
It was little comfort.
Carmen moved the curtain aside and scanned the back yard. A few plants had been uprooted, most likely the work of the javelinas, but she found no evidence of the animals themselves aside from the odor.
“I don’t know what you’re so scared of,” Jim said, fastening his tie. "They come around here all the time. We’ve never had any real problems with them."
"That’s true, but …” Carmen frowned, realizing how ridiculous her words were going to sound to Jim. “… something doesn’t feel right about these. Something feels off.”
“I can’t tell what. They’re acting normal, not like those damned raccoons a couple weeks ago. Never thought I’d have to call Game and Fish on a raccoon.” Jim sighed, then leaned down and kissed Carmen on the cheek. "Still, I think I understand where you’re coming from. It’s been a crazy few weeks with the animals around here. Hopefully, whatever’s got them in an uproar will settle down soon."
"I hope you’re right.” The words were bitter on Carmen’s tongue. A futile hope, when she already knew the truth. Still, she refused to surrender to the gods’ tactics. She’d found something here that she would never be able to on the divine plane, and they were not going to intimidate her into giving it up. She could weather the storm, wait out their wrath. She would stay put, lock herself inside the house, if need be, but she was not going back.
She hadn’t even noticed Jim leave. But his shout from outside pulled her from her thoughts, and when she looked out the window, fear coursed hot through her limbs. Jim was halfway between the house and the car, and making progress in neither direction as a herd of javelina surrounded him, grunting, lunging, snapping their teeth. He swung his briefcase at them, but this only angered them more. He continued shouting, trying to drive them away, and Carmen could hear the panic rising in his voice as the javelinas pressed inward.
She ran to the door and flung it open, hoping to distract the javelinas long enough for Jim to get into his car. Several of them turned toward her, ears flattened, hair rising on their backs. They grunted and gnashed and advanced. She heard Jim tell her to shut the door, heard his words dissolve into a scream as the javelinas knocked him down and descended upon him. Those who had spotted Carmen broke into a charge, squeezing past the door before she could close it, knocking her feet out from under her. She cried out and swatted at the javelinas, prepared to feel their teeth tearing into her flesh, determined to let the gods destroy her body before they could reclaim her spirit.
The javelinas did not attack, however; they simply stood on her chest, pinning her to the floor, filling her sinuses with their odor as she listened, helplessly, to Jim’s screams outside, and the cries of concerned neighbors. She heard a gunshot, then another, followed by voices at her doorstep, fists pounding on the door, hands rattling the knob.
But … she hadn’t locked the door.
We think it’s best you don’t see the damage you’ve caused. The calm voice of an elder god reached her mind as one of the javelina’s nosed at her cheek. There is no point to that. You are back now.
What have you done? she thought back. What have you done to Jim?
We have done nothing. You have caused this. The javelina snorted. If you had come willingly when your time was up, if you had forsaken the mortal realm at the time we agreed upon, all of this could have been avoided. Why did you stay?
I stayed because … because I felt like I belonged here. I found things more wonderful among mortals than I have ever seen or felt among the gods. But now … now, you’ve taken —
Correct. Remove the temptation, reclaim the soul. Come now, child, return with us. The western wind has grown stagnant without your spirit to guide it.
Carmen shook her head, feeling the javelina’s hoof dig into her chest. No.
Another snort. Foolish. We’d thought you, of all the lesser spirits, would have been immune to the folly of human emotion. What a nuisance, what a waste, is a heart. The javelina raised its leg, then brought it down hard, with the force of forty of its kind. Its hoof broke through Carmen’s skin, cracked the breastbone beneath and crushed her heart. Carmen cried out, loudly, pain and happiness and desire draining from her spirit as the blood drained from her body. Darkness hovered at the edges of her vision, moving inward with each unsuccessful gasp until her sight failed her, and she slipped away.
***
The clouds above were fat and white, laden with cold rain. The spirit stood upon the mountain and raised her hand above her head, hooking her fingers into the clouds and pulling them forward, eastward, to nourish the valley below. She watched as the people reacted to the rain, some celebrating, some cursing, and felt, for a brief, shimmering second, a flutter deep inside, a memory without a home.
She’d answered to a strange name, once, for the space of a fingersnap, though she couldn’t recall the sound of it now. She remembered a concept called pain, which she saw reflected on some faces below her, and one called happiness, reflected on others. And she remembered another feeling, something that tugged at the very core of her being, one she thought she saw in the couples that walked hand in hand, in the mother cradling a child, in the old woman petting a dog.
She might have remembered its name. It was a short word, soft and lilting and beautiful. Such a small space for so much feeling. She tried to say it, and, as one sound flowed into the next, something hot and wild took root in her chest, expanding, contracting, sending that glorious feeling through her entire spirit.
Love.
Yes, that was the word. She looked down at her newly-formed heart, brought into being by herself alone; she looked at the skin that was forming over the rest of her, soft and glowing with short, bright-burning life, and she smiled. She pulled one more cloud toward the valley and tore off after it, laughing and daring the elder gods to restrain her.
In the back of her mind, she felt them rise from their slumber, but did not slow her steps, and only laughed once more when she heard them grumble in clouds above:
What a nuisance, what a waste, is a heart.
The scorpion was already dead when Carmen found it, a tiny gray-green corpse on the linoleum, its tail stretched out behind it, its deadly instrument laid down like a weapon in surrender.
Still, the sight of it frightened Carmen, not because of the power and danger inherent in its form, but simply because it had gotten in. It had breached the barrier between her and the wild, come into the space where she was the most vulnerable, the space where she thought she was safe.
And if the scorpion had come in, what else might?
She called the exterminator, keeping a wary eye on the scorpion the whole time she was on the phone, seized by the irrational fear that it might spontaneously reanimate and come directly for her. The exterminator was nonchalant about the entire matter, removing the dead scorpion, checking the area for more, then treating the outside of the house. He was leaving as Carmen’s husband returned from work, and stopped to fill him in on the situation.
“So,” Carmen’s husband said, shutting the front door behind him, “I heard you had an interesting visitor today. Where was it?”
“Kitchen,” Carmen answered, a shiver running through her at the memory.
“Already dead?”
“Yes, but —”
“Huh. The last treatment was still working, then. But I guess it was about time for another.”
“Still working? Jim, the scorpion was inside. The treatment isn’t working if it doesn’t keep things out.”
“But it was dead. It must’ve picked up some of the residue on the way in.”
“How can you be so calm about the whole thing?”
“Because it comes with the territory, literally. Once you get out of the city, things like this happen.” Jim sighed. "You know that. And it never used to bother you before."
"That was when things stayed where they belonged. Us inside, them outside.”
“And that’s the case, most of the time. That little guy you found just got lucky — well, maybe not so much, considering the poison got him, anyway. It was a fluke, nothing more.” Jim reached out and pulled Carmen close. "But I know it can be unnerving. What do you say we just avoid the scene of the incident for tonight and go out to eat, instead?"
Despite her uneasiness, Carmen smiled. "That sounds like a very sensible plan.”
She couldn’t help glancing into the kitchen, however, in search of another intruder. There was rarely only one.
The mouse was a dingy brown, and popped out of the wastebasket as if its tiny feet had been fitted with springs. It scurried across the floor, driven by Carmen’s screams, and wedged itself into a small hole near the back door.
Another call, another visit from the exterminator, who, once again, found no evidence of infestation beyond the single specimen Carmen reported, but set out traps and patched up the hole near the door.
“Warm weather, and nearby construction,” he said, when Carmen asked what might have driven the mouse to her home. "A lot of people in the area reporting them right now. Just keep an eye on the traps, and call us if the problem gets worse. But I think you’ll be fine. I only saw the one."
There was rarely only one.
Several days later, it was a lizard lounging in the bathtub, which Jim trapped and escorted outside. Days after that, a dove crashed into the living room window, snapping its neck and leaving a greasy spread-wing stain on the glass. More days, more encounters: a snake slithering across the back porch, a spider on the bedroom sill, a sparrow flying into shelves and frames and walls, desperately trying to escape. Each one an intrusion, each one a message.
Carmen knew. As she watched the sparrow fly out through the front door, realization settled in her chest, laced with a leaden dread. It wasn’t warm weather, or recent construction, that had brought these creatures out. It was her.
She’d stayed too long.
The terms of the covenant had been clear, and back then, she’d eagerly accepted them: three years as a woman, to live among and learn from the people in the valley below her home. Three years to laugh and dance and sing; three years to ache and cry and want. Three years to touch the ground, feel the sunlight, revel in all the thoughts and sensations denied to her in her divine state, before returning, theoretically sated, to devote herself to her everlasting work once more.
But three years, while a snap of the fingers to the gods, was a long time for a human. A long time to experience all that she had desired, and a long time to learn to desire more. For while she laughed and danced and sang, and ached and cried and wanted more than she thought possible, she also fell in love.
The gods had never planned on that, though they had seen the sentimental folly play out before them millions of times over the millennia. Perhaps they’d thought her too smart; perhaps they’d thought her too ugly; perhaps they’d thought her too detached. She’d certainly thought these things of herself, but as she grew to know Jim, she also grew to feel affection, toward him and toward herself, and it was a feeling so grand that she refused to give it up. She refused to relinquish this emotion, this fullness, turning her back on her divine nature, sealing herself inside the constructs of man to prevent it being snatched from her.
Doing so made her mortal, she knew, and every moment she spent in this state, her body and spirit degraded further, but she didn’t care. She would die for this feeling. She would die a thousand times over, if necessary, only to experience this just once in each lifetime.
For a while, she thought she’d won. She thought the gods had given up on her, thought they’d allowed the western winds to grow stagnant in her absence, thought they’d created a new spirit to take her place, to do her work.
But since three years was a fingersnap to the gods, they simply hadn’t noticed when Carmen’s time was up. Now that they had, however, they would stop at nothing to bring her back home.
So, when the scratching sounds began above her bed, she grasped Jim’s arm and shook him awake. He groaned and turned over, muttering half a question.
"Do you hear it?” she asked.
“Hear what?”
“Scratching. Above us.”
Jim frowned and cocked his head. "Uh-uh. Don’t hear it."
Carmen held her breath, hoping that the sounds had been the vestiges of a fading dream, and nothing more. But as Jim closed his eyes, they started up again, from above and from the outer wall.
"It’s back,” she whispered.
“Still can’t hear —”
“Shh! Listen. No, really, listen. It’s quiet, but it’s there.”
Jim sat up, shaking his head, but soon blinked fully awake. Carmen watched his eyes follow the noise — directly above, to the far end of the room, to the wall beside the window.
“Maybe mice?” he ventured. "Maybe we did have an infestation after all?" He got up and walked to the window. "Or cats, on the roof. Could be raccoons.” He peered out the window, then shouted and stumbled backwards as a rotund raccoon hauled itself onto the window ledge and clawed at the glass, begging to be let inside.
“Damn, that scared me!” Jim began laughing. "See, that’s all it was. Some raccoons. I guess we’d better check the lids on our trash cans, keep them —" He stopped short and winced as the raccoon dragged its claws down the glass, slowly, deliberately, raising a high-pitched squeal.
Carmen clapped her hands over her ears and stumbled out of bed, out of the bedroom, and into the hall, where she slid down the wall and curled up on the floor, knees to chest, the terrible squeal ringing in her mind, even as her ears registered Jim shouting and pounding on the window to drive the raccoon away.
She stayed there even after he was successful. She stayed there until gray morning light crept through the living room blinds, and the world outside the house had gone silent in that space between night and day.
“Two nights in a row! Those are some of the most aggressive and persistent raccoons I’ve ever seen,” Jim said, stirring his coffee. "I hope they aren’t rabid. Just be careful, if you go outside."
Carmen nodded, staring into her own coffee, and seeing her weary reflection within.
"Still,” Jim went on, “it’s strange. It’s not like they’re behaving randomly. It’s like they actually want something. Something from in here.”
Yes, me. The thought flashed through Carmen’s mind, and her shoulders flinched. She wanted to say it, wanted to assure Jim that the raccoons posed no danger to him or to the neighborhood, wanted to tell him everything. But how much could she even get out before he grew puzzled, or before he stopped her and insisted she was speaking nonsense? Before he sent her to rest, to see a doctor? Before he concluded she was crazy and left her?
Not much.
So, she kept quiet and swirled the coffee in her cup, watching her reflection waver, and noticing a few more years on her face when it stilled again.
The smell was particularly strong that morning, but Jim attributed its strength to its recency. He had spotted the javelinas through the kitchen window not long after he’d gotten up, and told Carmen not to worry.
It was little comfort.
Carmen moved the curtain aside and scanned the back yard. A few plants had been uprooted, most likely the work of the javelinas, but she found no evidence of the animals themselves aside from the odor.
“I don’t know what you’re so scared of,” Jim said, fastening his tie. "They come around here all the time. We’ve never had any real problems with them."
"That’s true, but …” Carmen frowned, realizing how ridiculous her words were going to sound to Jim. “… something doesn’t feel right about these. Something feels off.”
“I can’t tell what. They’re acting normal, not like those damned raccoons a couple weeks ago. Never thought I’d have to call Game and Fish on a raccoon.” Jim sighed, then leaned down and kissed Carmen on the cheek. "Still, I think I understand where you’re coming from. It’s been a crazy few weeks with the animals around here. Hopefully, whatever’s got them in an uproar will settle down soon."
"I hope you’re right.” The words were bitter on Carmen’s tongue. A futile hope, when she already knew the truth. Still, she refused to surrender to the gods’ tactics. She’d found something here that she would never be able to on the divine plane, and they were not going to intimidate her into giving it up. She could weather the storm, wait out their wrath. She would stay put, lock herself inside the house, if need be, but she was not going back.
She hadn’t even noticed Jim leave. But his shout from outside pulled her from her thoughts, and when she looked out the window, fear coursed hot through her limbs. Jim was halfway between the house and the car, and making progress in neither direction as a herd of javelina surrounded him, grunting, lunging, snapping their teeth. He swung his briefcase at them, but this only angered them more. He continued shouting, trying to drive them away, and Carmen could hear the panic rising in his voice as the javelinas pressed inward.
She ran to the door and flung it open, hoping to distract the javelinas long enough for Jim to get into his car. Several of them turned toward her, ears flattened, hair rising on their backs. They grunted and gnashed and advanced. She heard Jim tell her to shut the door, heard his words dissolve into a scream as the javelinas knocked him down and descended upon him. Those who had spotted Carmen broke into a charge, squeezing past the door before she could close it, knocking her feet out from under her. She cried out and swatted at the javelinas, prepared to feel their teeth tearing into her flesh, determined to let the gods destroy her body before they could reclaim her spirit.
The javelinas did not attack, however; they simply stood on her chest, pinning her to the floor, filling her sinuses with their odor as she listened, helplessly, to Jim’s screams outside, and the cries of concerned neighbors. She heard a gunshot, then another, followed by voices at her doorstep, fists pounding on the door, hands rattling the knob.
But … she hadn’t locked the door.
We think it’s best you don’t see the damage you’ve caused. The calm voice of an elder god reached her mind as one of the javelina’s nosed at her cheek. There is no point to that. You are back now.
What have you done? she thought back. What have you done to Jim?
We have done nothing. You have caused this. The javelina snorted. If you had come willingly when your time was up, if you had forsaken the mortal realm at the time we agreed upon, all of this could have been avoided. Why did you stay?
I stayed because … because I felt like I belonged here. I found things more wonderful among mortals than I have ever seen or felt among the gods. But now … now, you’ve taken —
Correct. Remove the temptation, reclaim the soul. Come now, child, return with us. The western wind has grown stagnant without your spirit to guide it.
Carmen shook her head, feeling the javelina’s hoof dig into her chest. No.
Another snort. Foolish. We’d thought you, of all the lesser spirits, would have been immune to the folly of human emotion. What a nuisance, what a waste, is a heart. The javelina raised its leg, then brought it down hard, with the force of forty of its kind. Its hoof broke through Carmen’s skin, cracked the breastbone beneath and crushed her heart. Carmen cried out, loudly, pain and happiness and desire draining from her spirit as the blood drained from her body. Darkness hovered at the edges of her vision, moving inward with each unsuccessful gasp until her sight failed her, and she slipped away.
The clouds above were fat and white, laden with cold rain. The spirit stood upon the mountain and raised her hand above her head, hooking her fingers into the clouds and pulling them forward, eastward, to nourish the valley below. She watched as the people reacted to the rain, some celebrating, some cursing, and felt, for a brief, shimmering second, a flutter deep inside, a memory without a home.
She’d answered to a strange name, once, for the space of a fingersnap, though she couldn’t recall the sound of it now. She remembered a concept called pain, which she saw reflected on some faces below her, and one called happiness, reflected on others. And she remembered another feeling, something that tugged at the very core of her being, one she thought she saw in the couples that walked hand in hand, in the mother cradling a child, in the old woman petting a dog.
She might have remembered its name. It was a short word, soft and lilting and beautiful. Such a small space for so much feeling. She tried to say it, and, as one sound flowed into the next, something hot and wild took root in her chest, expanding, contracting, sending that glorious feeling through her entire spirit.
Love.
Yes, that was the word. She looked down at her newly-formed heart, brought into being by herself alone; she looked at the skin that was forming over the rest of her, soft and glowing with short, bright-burning life, and she smiled. She pulled one more cloud toward the valley and tore off after it, laughing and daring the elder gods to restrain her.
In the back of her mind, she felt them rise from their slumber, but did not slow her steps, and only laughed once more when she heard them grumble in clouds above:
What a nuisance, what a waste, is a heart.
