Jasmine Tea

My first assignment is to scare the old woman.

As I'm handed the file, I consider quitting. I've been with the company for six years and not once have I ever considered the possibility of leaving the job but when the yellow manila file lands on my lap, the thought crosses my mind with such force it nearly cripples me. Derek is the one who hands out the files. I suspect his real name isn't Derek but he is kind and exotic-looking and pays well enough so nobody minds it.

I flip through the pages of the file. There's not much information here about the woman except that she was married twice and has four kids from three different men. The file puts her age to be around fifty but the picture of her fixed on the upper left corner of the front page tells a different story. If I didn't know better, I'd say she was already clocking her sixties. The woman's name is Esther and she lives alone.

First, I have to stalk her. Her apartment is in a nice neighborhood, the kind of neighborhood I'd like to raise kids in one day. I follow her home but wait outside, studying the neat garden by the corner, from which purple bougainvilleas have begun to fold around the fence and gate. My sister's child likes flowers so I pluck a few and stuff them in my jacket. Then, when the woman comes outside again, I follow her. She goes down to the gym but doesn't go in. She stays outside the building for five minutes before leaving.

I notice, after the first few days, that she's not exactly a very exciting woman. If she has kids, they don't care about her all that much anymore. She barely gets visitors. On the fourth day, I learn that she has a book reading club where they read Dostoevsky and Franz Kafka and pretend they can understand it.

On the sixth day, I strike. I put on my mask and knock on her door. Esther opens the door and gasps, clutching her chest and screwing her eyes shut. That is my first assignment.

My second assignment is to claw her heart out and take it back to the company. I don't know the exact reason for the hearts. I've never asked. But sometimes, like now, I wonder if there's a system to these kills; wonder if people like Esther aren't chosen at random but hand picked based on certain things.

Once I draw out my claws, Esther opens her eyes and smiles, and invites me in for tea. She tells me she's got Jasmine-flavored tea and biscuits. I'm shocked. I ask her if she can see me and she says yes and then she holds my hands—claws and pulls me into her apartment.

I've never been inside my prey's home. I do my job outside, on their porch, where the ability to be inhumane is a swell in my chest. The possibility of getting attached to the prey is as outlandish as it is non-existent. My prey is usually too frightened of me to care about inviting me into their homes for tea and biscuits.

The apartment lends itself to my sense of sight and smell. In the kitchen, there is a counter and a sink and cupboards too high even for me. In the living room, there's a sofa and a rocking chair. The TV is not on but I can hear music, soft, old, a little foreign, coming from somewhere in the house. I can smell the shellack on the walls. Esther invites me into her kitchen where she sets the cup of tea in front of me.

“Where are you from?” She asks, massaging her temple with a thumb and forefinger.

I point up to her ceiling and she mistakes it for the sky.

“I could tell,” she insists, tearing out packets of biscuits from a cupboard. “When my dear daughter was still alive, she used to believe in…things…people…like you. Aliens. That's what you are, right? I could see it the moment you came to the door.”

“What can you see?” She's right. About the tea smelling exotic and tasting like summer. She's also right about me not being like her but I like to pretend it's the mask humans see first. They die with the knowledge that someone like them has taken them out.

“Your skin—it glows, it's blue.” Suddenly I feel too small in her kitchen, like the chrome and steel has somehow restructured me from the inside. “Your eyes are big and round and bulging. I don't know what to make of your ears. They are lean and high, such odd shapes—”

“Why aren't you afraid of me?” I ask.

She shrugs like I'm expected to know this already. When I don't fill the space with words, she says, “I am afraid of you but I've lived too long on earth. I've lived a rather boring life, to be honest. You're the first real excitement in a while. I'm not stupid, please. I'm not one of those people that go looking for trouble. I mind my business but once in a while, I think I like to see things.”

She's exactly like the photo in her file. Her hair is neat and short and dramatically grey. It curls around the ends. She tucks loose strands behind her ears as she makes tea for herself. Her skin is loose with wrinkles and she's wearing a floral dress. I note her presence in every little thing in the apartment. Really, there's nothing to look for in the place except that the sunlight paints the walls a golden hue.

In her kitchen, I'm not a monster and she's not my prey. It's a strange feeling, having to not hide the claws or the bluish color. When I put my mask on and attack my prey, they see me as another frenzied human on the cusp of insanity. In a way, they're right but this woman—Esther—puts me in a spot. She sees me, the real me, despite the mask and she hasn't yet withdrawn so I get comfortable.

“Do you live alone? What if someone comes in here and sees us?”

Esther swipes a hand in front of her face, laughing to herself. “I live alone but sometimes my neighbor, Henry, pops in to say hello. You needn't worry about Mr. Henry though. He's out walking his dog.”

I suspect she wants me to know I could get caught if I try to attack her. I can't be sure of this, to be honest, since this is my first time drinking tea with a real human. I could tell her getting caught is out of the question because once I'm done with my victims, I slowly disappear but that might not go over so well. She's trying, in her own way, to accommodate me.

Esther says, “Do you walk around looking like this?”

“Of course not.” I'm done with my tea. Esther pours me another cup but when I bring it to my mouth, I get the feeling it's a different kind of tea. “People don't usually see…me.”

“What do you mean?” Esther jerks forward like she's about to hit me but stops herself too quickly, too soon. “Are you invincible? Am I dead already?”

“I don't mean in an invincible type of way.” I finish the tea and Esther pours me a glass of orange juice. She sits down on a chair and knits her fingers on her lap. “When I'm outside in the sun, people see me as one of them.”

“Am I the only one who can see you?”

“Right now, yes.”

Esther laughs, an excited glimmer in her eyes. “I can't believe this. Wait, I've got to show you something!”

Esther comes back with a photo album. She tells me to follow her into the living area. I sit down on the sofa and Esther comes to sit beside me. Her shoulders graze my arm in a non-threatening way but I flinch, breathless, consumed by this odd sensation that this is all wrong. I know I can't go back to the company without her heart but Esther is being kind and polite and friendly.

She opens the first page and points to a baby sucking its thumb. “That's my first child. Emily. She isn't in the country right now but she'd be obsessed if I told her about you. Do you have a name?”

“Dychlla.”

Esther flips the pages to another photo and points again. “That's Joyce. She died. It was a hit and run.”

I nod.

Photo after photo, I get a glimpse of Esther's life. Every picture is a memory and every memory is a map. When Esther laughs and cries, stabbing her fingers into the pages, it spells out her past life. I think about hugging her, pulling her into me, but know that if I do, she'll become me.

She gives me a tour of the apartment. There is nothing of note in here but she's excited to be doing this so I pretend to care. Finally, when she has nothing to show me and nothing to delay time, she lies back on the sofa and shakes her head.

I hear a dog barking just outside the window. Somebody knocks on Esther's door and calls out for her.

“It's Henry,” she explains, sitting up. “Should I answer it?”

“No.”

But Esther kicks up from the sofa and dashes toward the door. “It might be important. I should see what he wants.”

I don't expect her to come back to me but after sending Henry and his dog away, she crawls back to me, kneeling like a man on the altar. I tell her I'll come back tomorrow. Esther smiles and tells me she'll have more jasmine tea waiting.

Outside in the sunlight, I realize I didn't touch the biscuits.