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, Part II here, and Part III here.
This next portion might be potentially triggering to some readers, so, if you are sensitive to intimate partner violence or domestic violence, please read with caution or don’t read at all. And remember, I do have resources available if you need helplines.
But falling in love was like falling into a pool – you never know its depths until you’re already submerged. I was drowning, and I couldn’t even raise my hands above my head to show I needed someone to save me.
Yet something so beautiful as falling became as hideous as looking a monster in the eye day after day, night after night. When she first swung at me, I think it struck us both by surprise. The look on her face was pure shock, and when I cried, she begged me to forgive her.
I didn’t know how to form words. How do you say anything when you’re choking on the water from drowning? How do you speak when you’re submerged?
This was no longer beauty like stained glass, but broken like the shards of glass I had swept up all my life. This was the impossible, ugly thing I told myself I never wanted in the first place but here I was, a broom in my hand, sweeping up her sins and my mistakes.
I wanted to forgive Vee, but another part of me wanted to run. Nothing about it made sense. I was entangled in this relationship, but I felt as though I needed to escape it before things deepened darker than a bruise.
It could be beautiful.
But it could be so ugly, too.
And even here the spirits followed me, listening to the tears fall. Listening to me choke on my own failings and watched me disentangle myself from the girl I thought I loved.
Was this avenue worth pursuing or should I escape before I submerge completely?
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
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.
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.
You dress hurriedly, button your shirt hurriedly, and you run.
You run without thinking. You run home. You run past your doorman. You run into your apartment. You run into your girlfriend’s embrace. You run into the smell of her shampoo. You run into her open arms.
And you cry.
The wings are gone.
But in their place, you feel a small pair of wings flapping on your neck. You slap the back of your neck as though bitten by a mosquito. Shiloh looks at you, surprised. You have no answers for her, but you loosen your hair from its ponytail to hide the feathers.
You discover quickly you’re molting. You’re losing feathers, and laughing lightly, Shiloh scoops up some black feathers that trail behind you wherever you go. “Did you sleep with a dark angel?” she teases.
You don’t reply. Maybe they’ll just fall out on their own. But still, you feel the wings beat against the back of your neck. You hope beyond hope she doesn’t notice them. The dark wings should blend in with your hair.
But still the question remains – why? Why have they appeared?
You wonder what is happening to you.
Micah said he had answers.
You have to find him again.
You need to know what’s going on.
But first, you must go to your mother.
As you rush to the hospital with Shiloh, she tells you more of the details. Normally, lyrical, Shiloh is short with her words. “They thought it anxiety,” she explains, “she couldn’t slow her heart. Your mom isn’t the anxious type. She still can’t get it to slow.”
“A heart attack?” you wonder.
“They don’t know.”
“You seem distracted,” Shiloh confronts you in a way that is unlike her, “is it the dark angel?”
“Something like that,” you admit.
***
A few hours later, as you are walking out of the hospital room and toward an intern, you feel a strange sprouting sensation at your ankle. You yank up your pant leg and see a handful of ivory feathers clustered into a thick wing fluttering in the cool, sterile breeze. Luckily, Shiloh is glancing at her phone, and the only other person around is a beautiful intern pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair.
She smiles at you, her grin radiant, and blushing, you pull your pant leg down. Hopefully, she didn’t see anything. But the damage is done – you feel the swift quivering of the wings on your skin.
At first, you think it’s something fleeting and embarrassing – something akin to an erection. But when Shiloh and you make love that evening, you notice the wings fade. They don’t return that evening.
Or the next morning when you awaken to make her waffles for breakfast.
However, you do notice something odd, when you walk into the hospital to visit your mother, a new set of wings have grown on your eyelashes. Luckily, they’re black and curl up near the corners of your eyes, so they blend in with your eyelashes, but you feel their every movement.
And they appear only when you’re talking to your mother’s cardiologist.
She’s sweet, but unassuming. She wears a white lab coat and plain scrubs, and an engagement ring. But when she smiles, you think she seems nice. And you wonder what it’d be like to be her wife.
That’s when you know the wings aren’t a strange, sexual thing.
But when a new pair appears on your pinkie just like the first time, you grow curious. The same colors too – the lovely turquoise and brown.
Micah reappears as well.
You have so many questions for him, but he does not speak. He merely walks with you. He follows you to a coffeehouse. One you have walked to several times.
Photo via Vintage Lenses
But this time, when you see Jacqueline, the barista, your heart begins to palpitate, your hands grow sweaty, and your lips feel dry. You have so much you wish to say to her, but you have lost the nerve.
You stand outside the coffee shop, heart in your throat. That is before you see your reflection in the window. That is before you see the six foot tall pair of wings the color of milk attached to your shoulder blades, glimmering and shimmering like stars.
You gasp.
“It’s never been about lust,” Micah whispers, “your seraphic metamorphosis. It’s been about love.”
end.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
You take a deep breath, not sure whether to believe this man named Micah, but what choice do you have? You cannot stay locked in his bathroom with a pair of nail clippers forever.
As you trudge out of the bathroom, he offers you a weak smile – not the generous grin from before. “You’re not a mutant,” he says, as if that’s going to make you feel any better.
“Gee, thanks,” you mutter.
He shrugs. “I’m trying here.”
That’s when it hits you with all of the strength of a bullet train. Yes, you might have slept with Micah last night, but you’re in a relationship.
Your girlfriend won’t be mad. She probably is sleeping with someone else too, but she will be jealous you slept on silk sheets and the guy you slept with has a bidet, which probably cost more than your rent and monthly utility bill.
Anyway. You should probably hurry back to Shiloh, but right now, you have more questions than answers, and he’s out of bed and making eggs that smell to die for.
Finally, you say, “What do you mean you know all about the feathers on my finger?”
He turns to you, flipping the omelet. “I mean,” he says in a pedantic tone, “I know what they are. Why they showed up.”
You want to find out more. Your mouth is watering. You’re hungry. You’re not sure if you’re hungry for details or for the cheddar-and-ham omelet he is preparing like a three-star Michelin star chef. But before he can elaborate, your phone begins to blare your familiar melody, “A Seraphic Metamorphosis”, by your favorite band, Compensated Endeavor. He grins and grabs you by the waist, grinding against you.
Photo via Luis Zheji
You smile, the tiny wings on your pinkie fluttering. Sheepishly, you jam your hand against the skin of your hip, wishing you were dressed. “It’s my ring tone,” you mumble, “I better answer that.”
Shiloh’s voice floods your ear, breathless and frightened and small, “Hey,” she says, “it’s your mom. Something with her heart.”
You listen to her breathing and can hear your own heart whooshing in your ear. This is not good. You look down at your hand – the flittering feathers have vanished.
Like they were never there at all.
… to be continued.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
You wake up in a strange city, in a bed that doesn’t belong to you, and you feel a strange tickling in your pinkie. You glance down – a small pair of turquoise and brown feathers are fluttering on your nail bed. “What the…” you begin to murmur, but before you can complete the sentiment, a stranger slides back into the bed beside you.
“Oh,” he says with a big smile, “you’re awake.”
You writhe around, trying to find a way to keep the stranger from discovering what you just found out for yourself – that over night, you’ve developed a tiny pair of wings.
You try to smile back, but the stranger recognizes how uncomfortable you are. “Would you like to freshen up?” he offers.
How magnanimous, you think. Maybe he has some nail clippers in the bathroom and I can just snip the wings off. You nod and hide your hands behind your back as he gestures toward the bathroom. You nod and scurry to the bathroom, slamming the door behind you. “Sorry,” you call over your shoulder.
“No worries,” he replies. At least he seems like an easygoing enough guy. You find a hairbrush and untangle your snarled hair. You make do without a toothbrush. Then, the most important reason – you start hunting for a pair of nail clippers.
You find them and easily snip the wings off, but even in the yellow light of the bathroom, they are oddly beautiful – the turquoise is the color of the ocean and the brown is even lovely, the shade of a wren’s feathers.
Even weirder is the pain that sears through you when you cut them off. Like a scorching, sizzling sort of pain. You bite back a gasp.
Then, the unthinkable happens.
The two tiny feathers that had been beating against each other grow back.
Image via Kat Smith
“You okay in there?” the stranger calls.
You are speechless but finally swallow your fears and call back, “Yep. I’m fine.”
You think about it. This is a stranger. You probably slept together. You don’t really remember much. The night is a little hazy. You are naked. You did wake up in his bed. He was naked when he came back to bed.
“Did we have sex?” you ask because why the hell not? That’s safer than asking him if he knows anything about pinkie feathers.
“I was that memorable, huh?” he replies, his voice teasing. “We sure did. Next thing you know, you’ll tell me you don’t remember my name.”
Shit. It’s like someone wiped your memory clean.
What is his name?
“You’re going to hate me,” you respond, your voice decidedly not teasing.
“I’m Micah,” he tells you, “and you can come out of the bathroom now. I know all about the feathers on your finger.”
…to be continued.
Isabelle Palerma
This short story is entirely my own content – no A.I. used to create this.
Isabelle Palerma 