Signs of Spring

“Dog Shit,” the grizzled man said, turning into the stiff March breeze. He cupped around the flailing blue flame of his zippo, lighting his cigarette.

I jammed my hands wrist deep into my pockets, hoping he wasn’t talking to me, but there wasn’t anyone one else at the bus stop. Well, no one I could see. “Excuse me?” 

“Dog shit,” he repeated, a thick plume of smoke spiraling out behind him. “My daddy used to always say, soon as the snow melts, first thing to show up’s dog shit. Screw robins, they’re like number three, maybe four, depending on your preference.” He smiled at me as he brought the cigarette up to his lips, chin spiky with stubble. 

Looking around the chippy green bench I couldn’t disagree about the shit, and briefly wondered what made number two. I bit back a snicker and he chuckled wetly. Nice. My gaze traveled past the collection of piles further down the sidewalk, the rising sun stinging my eyes. Where was the bus? I shifted the pack over my shoulder, the weight of it heavier than what was inside.

He plopped down on the iron slats with a grunt. They had to be freezing, but he didn’t seem to mind. As the wind changed direction, I had a pretty good idea why. Man smelled pickled. 

“Store in town sells these little bags. Pink, blue, hell, some have dog prints on the damn things. Go in dispensers you can wear on your belt. No excuse not to pick the stuff up, Christ, there’s a trashcan right there.”

I glanced over. It was actually a ballot drop box, but I wasn’t about to clarify. The thought of some poor elections official opening the thing up and having to sort through bags of crap gave me a moment of respite from my own steaming pile of problems. 

My fingers tightened on the nylon strap over my shoulder. This was the last time. I had to break it off. In the distance a pixelated banner appeared. The bus came to a slow motion stop in front of the us. Brakes making that ‘tchuch’ sound before the door opened. The pack caught on them as I shot up the steps, slamming my coins into the fare box. I just wanted to have done. A middle aged woman in a bright magenta puffy coat occupied one of the brown vinyl seats towards the back. The rest were empty. I took a seat in the middle. The bottom cushion was slathered in tape and someone had pried up a corner of the sticky stuff. I tried not to sit on it, holding the pack in my lap. I didn’t look at it. Couldn’t. 

“Mornin’ Joe,” the driver said. The bus rocked a bit as the man from the stop followed me up. He leaned back, trying to focus on the coins in his hand. After a moment the driver reached over and plucked the fare from his palm, chiding him about forgetting his glasses. I rolled my eyes. Yeah, that was the issue. The man, Joe, clapped him on the shoulder and didn’t quite fall into the first seat, back against the window. 

“Where to today?” The driver asked Joe’s reflection in his mirror, pulling out into the street. 

Joe pursed his lips, fingers in front of them like they still held a cigarette. “End of the line.”

I felt sick. That was the warehouse district. My stop. I glanced down at the navy blue bag. End of the line.

“Oh, yeah? Bit off the regular beat for you, ain’t it?”

“Milleton’s out, wife had the baby.”

“No shit.” 

The bus lurched to a stop with a hiss of its brakes. The woman from the back clomped past, taking all the color with her. No one came up the steps to replace it or her, and the driver pulled back out into the street. 

“What she have?”

“Girl, God help him.”

The driver laughed, and I could see his bridgework in the mirror. Outside, the parks and two family houses had been replaced by low warehouses and train tracks. I shifted closer to the window and my jeans took some of the tape with them. Damn it. It left a swath of sticky grey across the back of my thigh and my fingers snicked together when they met by the time I’d gotten free of it. 

Hissss… tchunh. 

The end of the line.

A sour dryness filled my mouth as I stood, looping the pack over my shoulder again. My feet thudded hollow on the aisle, down the steps, out the doors, and into the biting wind. I stood there, feeling it on my face. Cold tightening my skin.

The wheel of a lighter striking flint, smell of a cigarette. Joe walked past me, trailing smoke in his wake, wind slashing the stream into a noxious cape furling out behind him. My feet trailed after, and I was bizarrely grateful I wouldn’t have to travel this last bit alone. 

It wasn’t far. He turned the corner ahead, and I stopped, feeling the gaping slice of the alley on my right. Swallowing down bile, I went into its maw. The buildings cut the wind, but it was colder there in that valley of brick. A dumpster loomed on my left, a sickly maroon spattered with things best not thought about. Strips of plastic buttoned bracelets and glow sticks were ground into the pavement. Drifts of sodden flyers lined the walls, castoffs of a crowd long gone. As I went deeper, colorful tags appeared on the brick, all of it leading to a set of heavy, grey fire doors.

I stood for a moment staring at the stylized K on its face. The ebony swirls seemed to move of their own volition if you stared at them long enough, even without a huff. I hadn’t touched a cube since that night, hooked on something far worse. My eyes slid past the doors to another, smaller one half hidden behind a dumpster and a stack of mouldering crates.

That’s where she’d be waiting.

All at once I’m in front of the door, watching as my arm reaches out and my knuckles, white, knocked against it. Two dead metal thunks. Pause. I rapped the third nail into my coffin. 

There’s a heavy click from inside and it swung open just enough for me to squeeze through, then slammed behind me. As always, the heat stole my breath away and I immediately began to sweat. The bellows somewhere deep in the building were being pumped at a furious rate, and hot dry air sizzled up through the metal grating on the floor. It seared into my lungs flavored with the tang of hot machinery. I gripped the nylon strap of the bag and started across the toothed panels. They clanged together above the rhythmic thud of the bellows as I walked, trying to peer into the shadows thrown by the smelter. 

“Do you have it?” 

A shiver of frost down the side of my face, and with it one of longing. I’m frozen by it, save for the rivulets of sweat snaking down my body. 

“Yeah.” My voice cracks along with my resolve.

“Give it to me, my love…”

I crouched down, placing the bag on the grating in front of me. My fingers fumbled at the zipper. The creak of it was very loud as a dark slit followed its progress across the bag’s top. A building sensation of something peering over my shoulder made the hair on the nape of my neck rise. Jasmine and myrrh teased my nose.

My eyes closed, swallowing the saliva that’d gathered from the wanting. God it was wrong, this was wrong, so wrong.

“This is the last time.”

A whisper of her lips on the side of my throat and my body burned. “Are you very sure?”

No. I wasn’t. Not this year, and not the last. The two of us trapped in this dance of death and rebirth… She laughed, knowing I was weak. My head hung, a line of salty moisture dripping to the tip of my nose. No one was there when I opened my eyes… no one I could see. Not yet, anyway. My hand had disappeared into the bag. The darkness of it eating me. I felt the smooth surface of what lay inside and its residual heat. Another moment and it would spark inside her, dreams made flesh, feeding upon mine until winter’s chill stole her away from me again, and another innocent soul was needed to quicken her, my demon lover.

There was a click behind me and a flurry of cold flittered around my body. “Quickly!”

My eyes closed again, fighting the wanting.… my movement slowed, the iciness of her fury stabbing at me even after I’d hit the grating hard, the sharp metal slicing into my cheek, the bag skidding from my reach.

I watched my blood drip down into the darkness as they cuffed me. There was a horrific wail and then a pop. A pall lifted from my soul and I began to weep as a uniformed man hauled me up to sit. Police? Another held up a glowing crimson containment cylinder. The light inside battered furiously against its sides.

“How many that make this week?”

“Six. Every damn spring we get a run on succubus.”

“Yep. They turn up right after the dog shit,” Joe said, lighting his cigarette in the shadows. He came over and slapped me on the shoulder. “Police are number three, unless of course, you’d prefer the robins.”