May is National Short Story Month, and in honor of National Short Story Month, I decided to write a short story combining my interest in tarot and witchcraft with fiction. I hope you enjoy the result. Please be sure to check out Part I here and Part II here.

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That night, I followed Vee home like a street urchin or an orphan, and I suppose, in a way, I was. My own mother already gave me up once, washed her hands of me like Macbeth. The blood still stained her hands as well, though not nearly as violent as his, I suppose. My nonna had died – the ultimate abandonment, and my dad, well, who knows what happened to him.

Everything inside me that had felt crushed and stifled was suddenly expansive as the sky and unlimited. I felt like all the furniture of my heart that had been cramped into a dollhouse of an existence was suddenly opened up, and I didn’t know what to do with all of those emotions.

Vee looked at me, unadorned and plain, flat-chested, and dark-haired, and told me something no one had ever said before. She told me I was beautiful, and when her lips brushed against mine, everything inside of me unfurled.

Where I simply existed before, now, I had come alive. Her touch electrified me. This is what drugs felt like, I was sure of it. The slow honey drip of lust before the drop in the pit of my stomach, flipping me upside down like every cliché. My skin prickled with tiny goosebumps, and when she asked if I was cold, I looked at her in surprise.

Temperature was such a meaningless concept. I just felt alive and aloft with something as transformative as love. It was beautiful as every lyric that had ever been penned, and when her lips touched mine, I wanted to write her sonnets and villanelles and odes.

I wanted to kiss her everywhere all of the time.

And we started to.

We started to explore each other. Cartographers mapping curvatures and ridges. Learning hills and rises as well as the valleys and smooth spots. Her hands found my tunnel and explored that, caressing me sweetly as her lips made their home against my skin.

Again and again.

The spirits followed me here, too. I thought they giggled because I found “The One”.

I did not hear the cruelty in their laughter because I was busy falling madly in love with Vee.

Isabelle Palerma

This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.