Victory

She dreamed of wine and cheese and Parisian sunsets overlooking the Eiffel Tower, and of the sound of her lover's laugh when she realized, "Damn it, Dee, I forgot the forks again."

She dreamed of the scent of her skin, of the softness that resided there underneath her rigid exterior, and how she'd only smile when Dee was around. She dreamed of spending countless days in bed, not wishing to remove themselves from the bliss of their body heat mixing like frost and fire, like rain and wind. Like stardust and moonshine.

And Joan dreamed of these things too, more than enough to last three lifetimes with the tranquility she found only in Dee. She loved her with every molecule that made up her body.

But Joan had a secret.

Not unusual for her, to say the least. She'd grown up collecting secrets like she collected shells at the beach, and she kept them concealed tightly in the most inconspicuous nooks of her mind. For such a long time she would forget that they even existed, until the nighttime came and brought upon her only faint memories of better times and vivid ones of the worse.

Joan was used to keeping secrets, this was true. But never had she kept one from Dee.

Perhaps that was how it all began.

***

The first sign of the Awakening happened on the balcony of their apartment, October 30th.

Having just finished baking a pastry recipe Dee had saved from her grandmother's belongings, she and Joan retired to the couch to play cards.

"We're not playing war again," protested Joan, twisting the ring in her ear.

"Why?" Dee shuffled the cards nimbly. "Scared you'll lose?"

Joan narrowed her eyes at her lover, feeling the competition rise between them, a friendly flower amidst a field of brush.

"Of course not," Joan retorted. "I was just hoping to expand my repertoire of card games that I can slaughter you at."

Dee raised her eyes, unimpressed. "Is that so? In that case, it might take some convincing on your part. I'm quite fond of war."

Admiring her steadfastness, Joan accepted the challenge with the quick beat of her heart. At once she leaned over to her lover and, cupping her cheek with one calloused hand, drew their faces near each other. Igniting that familiar, feverish fire between them.

Immediately, Dee's face began to redden and she found herself unable to tear her eyes away from her lover. That was okay to Joan. Both of them closed their eyes the minute their lips fit together like puzzle pieces arranged by destiny, and Dee got lost in the passion that accompanied Joan's every movement.

Dee seemed unwilling to break away from the kiss, but Joan did so anyway. A brilliant splash of pink doused Dee's cheeks. It reminded Joan of sunlight streaming through a window during the sun's golden hour.

"That's ... that's not fair," breathed Dee, still in shock even after the millionth time feeling Joan's lips against her own.

"Why isn't it fair, my love?" Joan smirked and stole the cards away from Dee, shuffling them in her own manner.

"You used my weaknesses against me." She tried to sound intimidating, but never could she be mad at Joan.

Joan's hands moved skillfully between the cards, folding them and twisting them in flipping movements. She smiled smugly over the cards. "And what are these weaknesses you mention?"

That little shit, Dee thought to herself warmly. She knows exactly what they are. God, I love her.

"You know you're my weakness," confessed Dee, feeling that familiar heat rise to her face. "You know I only have one and that's you, and you exploited it to change my mind by kissing me."

Joan pulled a pouty face, mocking remorse, before laughing lightly and kissing Dee once more on the lips. "You know I love you, Dee, right?"

Dee rolled her eyes and watched her lover's fingers glide effortlessly through the thin cards. "Of course I do."

"Well, I can't help that you look so cute when you blush, can I?" protested Joan with a smile. "And anyway, it worked on you so I can't say that I regret it."

"You're the worst."

"You know you love me."

Dee settled for planting a last, quick kiss on her lover's lips in order to hide the blush that had risen again at Joan's words.

"That I do," said Dee. Taking the cards back from Joan, she folded them neatly in her smaller hands. "So what game are we playing now, my love, since you dislike my games so much?"

Just as Joan opened her mouth to request they play a fine round of poker, a sudden, sharp thud hit the window of the balcony door, causing the two women to jump in alarm.

They both looked toward the sound. "What the hell was that?" Dee exclaimed in shock.

Joan gave no answer, but led Dee along through the doors and out onto the balcony to investigate the sound, grasping Dee's hand to conceal the shaking in her own ones.

A pigeon.

The bird, quite clearly dead, had become bloated to the point that it was nearly unrecognizable. Its eyes stared, empty black sockets which had been bleeding profusely at an earlier time, judging by the amount of dried blood caked inside each hole. The feathers were matted with this same dried blood, but it stemmed not from the empty eye holes, but from the long, deep fissure cutting vertically along the bird's throat. Dark streaks of blood had flayed out onto its chest and backside like lava from a disturbed volcano.

Dee made a small, whimpering sound in her throat at the sight of the mutilated bird and turned to Joan's shoulder to hide from the image now burned in her retinas.

But Joan stared, transfixed, upon the creature, feeling that familiar prickle on the back of her neck. She wondered how the hell it had managed to reach their balcony if it was dead.

That was the first sign. Every one after that merely confirmed more and more Joan's own, private suspicions.

Dee suggested they bury the bird in the park nearby, hoping to bring some sort of solemn light into the horror of the situation. As she and Joan walked side by side in unfamiliar silence, holding the dead pigeon in a shoe-box, Joan's mind reeled back to the night just before:

Alone in her room like every evening, books splayed out before her along with numerous devices surrounding her body that would make a priest scream in terror. Hunched over and murmuring words of an ancient tongue under her breath. Joan's tongue had almost become accustomed to the second language written in the textbooks in front of her, but she wanted to get the pronunciation as perfect as possible before actually attempting the spells.

After a few more moments of practice, Joan decided to give it a try. Clearing her place, she sat up straight with the book on her lap and closed her eyes, envisioning the foreign words in her mind, on the tip of her tongue.

This is for you, Dee, Joan thought before beginning the ritual in her bedroom. Let's just hope this works.

The ancient speech flowed from her mouth the way she and Dee had fallen in love: shaky and dysfunctional at first, but with progression, becoming harmonious and in possession of some great power which neither she nor Dee could begin to understand.

But Joan and Dee began to understand their love once it was practiced. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for Joan and rituals she performed nightly.

With her eyes having been closed, Joan could not see how her words began to affect the mortal plane which she resided on, and how those words were tapping into some force of which hadn't been dealt with since the era of Creation. Curtains shuffled restlessly, books closed on their own accord with an impatient snap, and the room itself begun to freeze as the temperature dropped significantly, causing Joan to shudder in subconscious reflex.

The ancient tongue sounded almost natural upon her lips, as if she were destined to speak them, destined to Awaken the lurking ones who stirred in anticipation of chaos to come. The words preached of unburial, of dark forests which no longer stood today, and of the earth herself, the original habitat for creatures both physical and metaphysical. Before a Creator separated them into their own planes of existence, mortal and immortal forces used to coexist (though not inherently well) on the same plane, causing both species to adapt in their own ways to be able to survive these extreme conditions.

The words which Joan chanted, alone in her bedroom, were the testimonies, the laws, the Bible (if you will) of these metaphysical beings. Harmless they might have been on their own, but when given direct access to human beings and all those which were created with corporeal forms, these metaphysical ones began to cause mischief in order to harm the beings. For through wreaking havoc, the spirits and demons and ghosts which lurked on earth where humans couldn't see received enlightenment from causing them fear and doubt. Memories of the residence of the metaphysical beings on earth still linger in present day, in forms like Halloween and horror films and urban legends. But as many believe these adaptations to be merely hoaxes, they once did stem from millennia of fear and turmoil which humans were cursed with in Creation.

Joan believed she understood the origins of the words she chanted, but as a woman who lived in a world of materialism, where the metaphysical could not be directly seen, it was inevitable that she could not even completely understand the effect of her actions.

When she and Dee reached a relatively secluded patch of trees at the park, a feeling like creeping death seemed to hover over Joan, something dark and purple like a bruise. Her gut wrenched abruptly, sucking the air right out of her lungs. She stumbled back in shock and drew in deep lungfuls of air.

"Are you alright?" said Dee comfortingly. Her voice was still edged with the aftershock of the bird's appearance.

The uncomfortable feeling had withdrawn as soon as it had come. Yet it left Joan with an unspeakable feeling of wrongness, that something, at sometime, was not in the place it should be. Her heart thundered like the shoes of a marathon runner against the ground. She gulped and pushed her fallen glasses up.

"Yeah," she replied, feeling a headache coming on. "I'm fine. Let's bury this bird and get the hell out of here. I'm freaked out."

Dee nodded in agreement. "Me too."

Fingers stained with earth, Joan and Dee dug a grave for the deceased pigeon, but it was only Joan who noticed the strange marking on the underside of the bird's foot.

It was only a glance, before fresh dirt was dropped upon the corpse, cementing it underground for the worms to feed. But Joan would've known that marking anywhere.

It was the same one she'd studied in her spellbook the night before. A rune, she remembered. The one that meant victory.

***

She called Dee when pitch black clouds streaked across the night sky, and the moonlight pulsed like a forgotten memory through her window. She called Dee because she was sweating and shaking and she was unsure of what was real and what was not.

"There better be a good fucking reason why you're calling me at 2 am," groaned Dee, her voice thick with sleep. "If there isn't, I'm going back to bed."

Some knot in Joan's stomach loosened at the sound of her lover's voice. She's real, Joan told herself, taking deep breaths. She's safe. You're okay.

"Joan?" questioned Dee after a few moments of silence, sounding more alert than before.

Joan's mouth was dry. "I just needed to hear your voice," she told Dee quietly. "I'm okay now."

Dee didn't speak for a minute. Her heart fluttered at these words, laced with sleep and affection. She could only imagine how Joan looked now, purple hair messy and matted. Face bare without her glasses, eyes cloudy with tiredness.

"I love you, J." Dee twiddled with a loose string on her blanket.

Joan sighed contentedly into the phone. "I love you too."

"Do you want me to come over?"

Joan involuntarily glanced at the moon which winked at her almost mischievously. She thought back to the books in her closet, filled to the brim with ancient text which withheld terrible, terrible information. And then she thought about how Dee's skin would look in her clothes and how her almond shaped eyes, brown as chocolate, would gleam in the darkness. And then she she realized that it was much too quiet in her room, alone. The things in her closet seemed to whisper seductively at her, urging her to unlock the secrets again and light the candles to begin another night of summoning. It loomed over her like the moon.

"Yes," answered Joan. "Yes, please come over. And bring your record player."

"Pink Floyd?"

"Obviously."

She could practically hear Dee's smile through the phone. "You got it, babe. I'll be there in fifteen."

When she hung up the phone, Joan snapped back to reality. To the darkness that swirled in her room like columns of smoke and to the low humming that came from the heater in her apartment. Once again, that feeling of wrongness hit her in the chest, and she thought about the bird and its eyes which were missing and the rune engraved into its scaly foot.

Victory. But who was victorious? And why had it appeared to her?

A low groan echoed off the walls of her bedroom, a sound gravelly like the broken transmission of a car. Millions of ants crawled over her skin, biting her flesh the way a winter breeze bites your nose. Spooked, Joan huddled under the safety of her blankets and shivered in anticipation for Dee's arrival, when she would no longer have to face the quiet alone.

***

It would have been the perfect morning to wake up to.

Dee in her arms, breathing in short puffs, eyes twitching behind their lids as she dreamed of something hopefully far sweeter than Joan did. The sunlight which knocked on the blockade of the curtains was fresh and bright and it made Joan relax a little. She thought about making a cup of her favorite tea and perhaps finally learning how to make chocolate chip pancakes from Dee's recipe book.

She thought of these things, these simple pleasures that life granted to her out of kindness, and she smiled. Worries about strange sounds and unfamiliar feelings melted like snow in spring. Maybe they were all just tricks in her brain. She hadn't been getting enough sleep lately; perhaps her brain was just telling her to take a nap and refuel.

Convinced of this theory, Joan re-positioned herself ever so slightly so that she could face her Dee, her beautiful, soft Dee who brought a kind of light in her life that was able to outshine the sun and the brightest stars. Her Dee, who knew how to speak three different languages fluently, but only swore in Chinese because she grew up hearing her mother utter them. Her Dee, who could connect with any animal she encountered and earn its trust. Her Dee, whose lips she liked to kiss and whose personality reminded her of chocolate laced with flaming chili peppers: she'd be the sweetest person you would ever meet, but she had a quality to her that told you not to cross her unless you wanted a broken nose.

Joan smiled at her lover, entranced in a feeling that all the songs diagnosed as love --

Until she felt something warm and wet slip down her cheek, splashing crimson onto the white bed sheets. Alarmed, Joan wrenched her hands from Dee and put them to her face to stop the rapid influx of blood streaming from her nose.

The sudden absence of Joan's warmth roused Dee. She groggily sat up on the bed and gasped when she saw the dark blood running through her lover's fingers.

"What happened?" exclaimed Dee.

"I have no fucking clue." Joan attempted to wipe the blood with the back of her hand, but it only spilled more and spread across her face. She looked like a clown whose red smile bore blood instead of innocent paint.

Dee rushed to care for Joan, not bothering to even put on a pair of pants first. After a few minutes of sitting in silence with Joan's head tilted forward ("you don't want to choke on the blood!" cried Dee), the flowing ceased and left Joan's face stiff with blood having dried. Dee exhaled in relief and began cleaning Joan's face.

"First a freaky dead bird on your balcony," she began, wringing a washcloth which vomited pinkish liquid, "then you get your first nightmare in six months, and then you wake up with a terrible bloody nose? What the hell is going on with you?"

She meant it as sort of a joke, but Joan understood that she was genuinely worried for her. And for good reason. If only Dee knew what was lurking in her closet just in front of her, she'd probably get her answer.

If only Dee knew...

Joan placed her hand on top of Dee's, stopping her gentle dabs at the caked blood. "Dee, I need to tell you something."

Dee stopped all her movements at the edge in Joan's voice and stared deep into her eyes. Trying to read her. Trying to figure her out.

That was the beginning of the worst to come.

***

"Strange," drawled the voice in a low hiss. "Strange, indeed."

Dee couldn't move. Couldn't think. Was her heart beating? She wouldn't know. Her eyes didn't seem to be capable of leaving the image of the specter.

The thought of ghosts brought images of transparent beings, forlorn and tired, into her mind. Floating like balloons above the ground, their heads shaking in disbelief as their shimmering hands passed between all solid objects.

But this ghost was not like that at all.

She wasn't prepared to see a ghost. Much less, the ghost of her mother. Tears pricked at Dee's eyes of their own accord, but she hadn't the strength to send them away.

Her mother's voice was positively inhuman. It sounded as if there were five of her, all the voices overlapping in a haunting chorus of syllables. The ghost of Anita Yang inspected her newfound form, flexing her fingers and stretching her neck. She looked not once at her daughter, almost as if she was invisible.

"Thank you, I suppose," she spoke, "for granting me with a corporeal form to visit you with. You are quite skilled in your summoning, I must say."

Joan said nothing. Dee looked between her mother and her lover in disbelief, unable to comprehend that Joan had summoned an actual ghost just so Dee would be able to communicate with her mother one last time.

"How are you, De?" asked Anita. "It's good to see you have finally found a partner."

She regarded Dee with a mixed look of amusement and distaste. Dee, like Joan, did not reply. Both women knew not how to communicate with the specter, intimidated by the worry that she might be potentially dangerous.

"Why so quiet, De?" asked her mother almost teasingly. "Won't you give your mother a kiss? Won't you tell me you love me? I never hear you say it anymore."

Some burst of courage allowed Dee to regain her breath. "I don't want it," she said to Joan, looking pale and motionless beside her. "I don't want to talk to her. It's unnatural. It's dangerous."

The upsetting thing was that Joan did agree with her. She knew it was going to be dangerous from the start, summoning people from the dead. But she loved Dee so much, she believed in making this one thing happen to give the love of her life the thing she yearned for ever since Anita's passing.

But Joan agreed. Anita looked too real to be a ghost, too solid, too comfortable with being torn from the afterlife into this mortal plane of existence.

"Quite rude," chided Anita. "I only just arrived here. Tell me how you are. I want to know everything."

It was the way in which she spoke that last word that finally drove Joan to the edge. She opened up her spellbook, searching desperately to find the words to send poor Anita back where she came from, to rid her mind of the terrible sight of seeing the bullet wound in her head, blood dripping and down the side of her face. Blood so real that you could smell its coppery odor.

The book was suddenly smacked out of Joan's hand by a pair of invisible ones. The book, which contained everything Joan needed in order to fix the horrible mistake she had made, suddenly levitated and flew straight into the hands of Anita. She grinned an evil sort of smile and fingered idly through the thick yellow pages.

"Let's see here," she droned as the corners of her mouth sent ripples of age into her face. She suddenly looked ten years older than she did when she died, at forty-two.

Joan suddenly understood what Anita planned to do, why she was smiling so profoundly at the spells inside that book. Heat rushing to her face, she begged, "Please don't do it. It was my mistake. I only meant to bring you back for Dee. Don't harm her. Please."

Anita shook her head and clicked her tongue chidingly, still looking through the book.

"You should have thought about what you were tapping into, foolish girl. It's your own fault now." She looked up at Joan and locked her in a constricting gaze. Joan felt her throat close up. "But don't worry. You have finally granted us the power to take back our freedom again. We inhabited this plane before you did, until we were exiled into isolation. Don't worry, foolish girl. We're going to have a wonderful time watching everything burn."

Anita finally found the page she'd apparently been looking for and cleared her throat. Her head slowly was raised by something that wasn't the sheer force of her own will, as if she were being possessed by something that controlled her movements. But she couldn't be possessed, thought Joan. She's the one that possesses.

Anita opened her mouth widely, and out emitted a plume of thick gray smoke. And like a mirror having been uncovered behind that same smoke, suddenly there appeared that rune again. The one written on the sole of the pigeon's foot. The one that Joan kept reading over and over in her spellbooks, but which she had never quite understood.

The rune of victory. It was woven with tendrils of black smoke. It floated there for a moment of two longer, before it burst into a cloud of mist which emitted a noxious smell of poison and sewage and the thick aroma of rot.

"I'm afraid my time has run short, De. What a pity we could not speak for long," spoke Anita in all her different voices.

"I believe it's feeding time."

Joan hugged Dee closer than space allowed, just before the lights dimmed out and the world was just the same as it was before, millennia ago, when the metaphysical and the physical were entrapped on the same plane of existence. Only now the ghosts and the spirits and the ravenous demons had but one motivation:

Victory.