Iris grieves for Henry. The spirit of Eve, a former sister-in-arms, asks Iris to restart the Wild Hunt. Later, as Iris tunes her glitching senses at a coffee shop, she is attacked by an evil spirit.
Following Henry’s brutal murder, Iris grieves his loss, as well as the loss of her parents, who’d died a decade before Iris had resurrected.
The spirit of Eve, a former teammate who’d perished fighting against the Apocalypse, tries to convince a resistant Iris that it’s time to restart the Wild Hunt.
While visiting a cafe to meditate and tune her glitching senses, Iris encounters a threat with links to her past.
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Written by Steve and Robin Pool
Voiced by Emily Woo Zeller, with Freya Kingsley as Rigan
Sound Design and Editing by DSS (Dissecting Sound & Soul). Sound effects provided by ZapSplat
Intro song “Plastic Stars” by Corey Distler https://soundcloud.com/deadmentalkingpdx
Outro song “Seam” by dHaturus (DSS) https://soundcloud.com/dhaturus
Visit Sayonaraville on our website, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Copyright (c) 2022 by Uncle Robot Media, LLC.
SAYONARAVILLE: MANHATTAN
EPISODE 2: IMAGINARY FRIEND AND FOE
INTRO: The following series contains adult themes, strong language, violence, sexuality, and drug use. Listener discretion is advised.
[INTRO MUSIC: "Plastic Stars" by Corey Distler]
Iris hadn’t left the apartment in days. She’d hardly left her bed. Henry and Raul’s deaths hurt so damn much. It didn’t help that the police, in their typical terse way, had reported finding the body of the lycanth they had believed responsible for the attack. Somehow, that news had just made it feel worse.
Iris rolled over and stared at white: the bed she lay in and the comforter atop her, the room’s rugs and furnishings, the window drapes, the walls free of any art. But nothing about the room’s whiteness was harsh or cold. Rather, its color, one of every color, was a warm, soothing hue that blended perfectly into the soft, morning light that now streamed in. That helped.
It was strange being home again, back in her parents’ Upper East Side apartment...no, it was her apartment now. They were dead, too.
She'd lived here before, after she and her family had relocated from the Hamptons following an unfortunate boyfriend incident during her last year in high school.
There was a strange emptiness in the apartment, now occupied by only her, her entourage of souls and bad memories, and a handful of mute, invisible spirits who’d kept the place up both before and after her parents had passed away. Iris had spent the past few days listening for her parents’ voices, expecting to hear them over breakfast chatter in the small dining nook or in their offices as they rehearsed video presentations for work conferences or shouts from the kitchen alerting everyone it was time for lunch or tea or dinner. Her parents’ absence tugged at her apparently not entirely numb heart. She’d spent too much time away from them and had missed her chance to make things right. Too much time away. Too many things left unsaid and unresolved.
Get up, she told herself. She was hungry. That was a good sign, right? Something she should act on while she still wanted to eat.
Iris pulled back the bedding and sat up, shivering. It was cold this morning. She cringed as she hopped across the white, furry shag, fleeing to the bathroom and its steaming hot shower. Afterwards, she dressed in something other than a dirty sweatshirt and sweatpants. She even put on a bra. More good signs.
As she began to comb through her recently styled, recolored chestnut hair, she remembered something. Didn’t she used to have a great, golden permed poof? When was that? Back when she was very young, a teenager maybe? Before she’d defined her failed version of adulthood as the sprint between one ill-conceived misstep and the next, a blazed, burning path of rueful life choices. These she dutifully, stupidly, carried out under pressure from whack pre-existing conditions imposed upon her by a mean schitzo universe and whatever the hell madness had convinced her to definitely, blindly follow her crazy ex into his disastrous crusade. No, back before all that shit, she’d had shoulder-length flowy dark red hair with tips that flared out playfully. Iris had always loved that look. It was while she had still been dating Arawn, before they’d foolishly married, that she’d adopted the ridiculous mega-blonde “look at me” look. He was the one who’d convinced her to wear it like that...
Hmmm, that might have actually been our idea, done as a stupid surprise for him one day.
...Actually, she wasn’t sure who had wanted it, him or her or some crazy other her that she’d forgotten about. Not that it mattered now. Arawn was out of her life and she was her own self, so whatever.
Once she’d finished getting ready, Iris stepped from her pallid bedroom into a narrow, brown hallway.
The apartment had a really nice prewar vibe, with its thick moldings, wide baseboards, and rows of casement windows that let in the view of Central Park’s leafy tree-tops. Her parents, with the aid of their unseen magical servants, had always kept it immaculately clean and tastefully decorated. Books and valuable objects, some perhaps centuries old, were proudly displayed on dustless shelves. Thick, rich, intricately-designed oriental carpets overlay the deep, dark wood floors. Sweet, delicate scents of natural things -- flowers, fabrics, and old, carefully-preserved leather -- lingered in the air. Classically-themed oil paintings with beautifully-detailed, ornate baroque frames hung expertly in every room, under custom light fixtures that brought out the warmest glows and highlighted the deepest contrasts of each piece, some painted by Iris herself. A few meticulously drawn pen-and-inks rounded out this home’s exceptional art collection.
Iris now smelled fresh coffee and bacon and toast and berry jam coming from the dark marble, old oak, and stainless-steel kitchen.
And there, between her and the prizes she sought, was a slightly taller, slightly curvier, fashionable woman with blonde hair who appeared to be in her early 30s. She stood, arms crossed, apparently waiting for Iris to either say or do something.
Iris reached out and waved her arm back and forth through the empty space that the woman only appeared to occupy.
Annoyed at Iris’s rude gesture, Eve asked, “What are you doing?”
“Just checking to see that you still aren’t really here. Apparently I’m still the only one of our old gang that got to resurrect. Yay!” Iris moved straight through Eve’s projection to her breakfast set on old blue-lace china.
“Are you really going to start on that...? Hey! Don’t just walk through me.”
Iris began to eat. The coffee was still hot and the bacon and toast warm, despite no sign of anyone else having been in the kitchen. Golden-hued luminescent words appeared mid-air before her:
“Good morning, Miss Iris.” The house’s unseen servants were unfailingly polite.
“Hey,” she answered back to the floating text message. “Oop! I mean good morning,” she corrected. Iris was sure that the spirits of her parents must still be embarrassed by her habitually informal way of interacting with the staff.
Eve snapped, sounding kinda pissed. “Why are you being like this, Iris?”
“Being like what?”
“I don’t know...hostile, moody. And mean. I thought we were friends.”
“We WERE friends. But we both died...and then I, for some mysterious, fucked-up reason, came back to life while you...well, you came back as either a damaged soul wandering around in my head, or you’re proof that I really am just delusional.”
The invisible servants’ “text box” popped up between the two women. “We trust you slept well. Is there anything else we may get for you, besides breakfast?” They must have been programmed to try to defuse tension in conversations. Considering how often Iris’s parents had fought, that must have been a must.
“No, thanks,” Iris replied, barely paying attention.
“You know, Iris, you’re kind of being a bit of bitch right now.”
Eve, lovingly called “Songbird” in her day, had been the kind, beating, bleeding heart of the Wild Hunt, if there ever had been one. Apparently death had changed things for her.
“Funny thing for one she-wolf to say to another.”
Once more, the invisible servants tried to intervene.
“Looking at your calendar, Miss Iris..."
Iris snapped. “Kindly shut the fuck up, please, house whatevers. I don’t need you hassling me, either.”
The field of golden text instantly winked out.
After an awkward pause, Eve, who had not disappeared, said, “No one’s trying to hassle you, Iris.”
“No? Well, what do you call this? Why are you even in my house, Eve, if not to hassle me?”
“I’m not in your house. I’m in you. You know that.”
“No, I don’t know that. I honestly don’t understand any of this weird soulcatcher shit that goes on with me. I do understand that you want me to take the Wild Hunt over to Avalon and all those other big mover-and-shaker organizations, like the Northeast Coalition government, and partner up with them, just like the good ol’ days. But I don’t want to do that. So stop coming here if all you’re going to do is try to get me to change my mind. Go...go and finally find some happiness with your husband and your kids in the afterwhatever and leave me and my poor, fragile, broken mind be. Please!”
Closing her eyes, Eve, in a calm voice, replied, “Why are you so resistant to the idea that the world and its authorities need the Wild Hunt, now more than ever, current Lord of the Hunt?”
“I am not resistant! I accept that the Hunt is now in my hands, though I still think that’s a terrible idea. I’m not sure if I should even be in charge of myself. But. Here’s the thing. I have a different idea for when and how I reform the Hunt than you seem to. I am not going to be partnering with anyone else any time soon. Turning the Hunt into some kind of a wind-up, cymbal-clapping bureaucratic and political toy would be a huge mistake. Really bad idea. Plus, even if I did think this was a good idea, there’s no way any of those suit-wearing sharks would ever take me seriously. And even if they did believe that someone like me could be the true Lord of the Hunt, they’d never accept it. So why even bother?”
“They won’t accept you!? Why the hell not? You have all the proof that anyone would need to show that you are who you say you are.”
“Eve! How long have you lived in my world?”
Eve began to tap her fingers. “Lessee..." After mumbling to herself for a bit, she answered, “Mmm, about 22 centuries?”
“How is it that you’ve been here THAT LONG and not figured out why a bunch of rich, powerful, self-serving public servants won’t respect someone like me?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean...?” Iris shook her head. “No one in all the time you’ve lived here in exile has ever given you shit because you are a woman?”
“No. Why would they?”
Iris looked at Eve, wondering who her friend really was. The one she knew -- the kind and righteous warrior who stood up for those who couldn’t -- or the one she was learning about now, who apparently had intimidated all the arrogant assholes into silent acceptance. Perhaps the number of vain mortal and Otherworld men, and perhaps jealous women, who had cursed her name behind her back would make a line as far as the eye could see. She’d never been a pushover. She’d been quick to engage any enemy when attacked, a warrior inside and out. And she’d had the respect of every soldier who’d marched under Arawn. Of course no one would have ever mouthed off to her face. Why couldn’t Iris be more like that?
“Okay, Eve,” Iris continued, “just imagine for a second me meeting with these authorities you’d like me to partner with and announcing to them, ‘Hi! I’m Iris Penner, your new Lord of the Hunt. Please ignore the fact that I’m a privileged, sorry woman who’d become an addict and a lycanthrope -- both recovering -- as fast as I could when I was young because I’ve always sucked at making good life choices. Yes, the rumors are true. I did disappear 22 years ago because I actually died fighting against the End of Everything. But I’m also back because, just like Jesus, apparently, I can’t seem to stay dead. And since I’m a conduit for powerful cosmic magic -- thanks for that, Mr. or Ms. Universe -- I also play host to the angry, grieving last member of the Morrigan and also a ghost detective who, sweet and cool as she is, doesn’t seem to have anywhere better to be, plus a bunch of nutty dead friends, like my bossy Tuathan BFF, Eve.”
Eve glared a bit at that crack but said nothing in response.
Iris continued her rant. “It’s also true that when I was 17, my 25-year old POS boyfriend at the time, who was, like, some kind of energy vampire, tried to stick his psychic tongue up my soul to drink from it but, instead, lit up like a dry twig-fueled forest fire. In my bedroom of all places. So, because that was really fucked up and also super inconvenient for my parents, they went out and hired this demigod they knew from work, Arawn -- unfairly cute but also irritating and demanding -- to be a kind of minder for me, because they’d finally had enough of my drama. And maybe have him try to act as some kind of mystical healer, as well, treating me for my acute mana poisoning. Of course I fell in love with him, dumbass that I was about pretty much everything, and only two years later, I became Mrs. Lord of the Hunt. For my 21st birthday, Arawn imbued me with the power to join his Hunt as a Hound. Nice, thoughtful gift, right? So romantic. Then, four years after that -- years filled with insane fights against crazy monsters and demoralizing fights with my stone of a husband -- I fucking died, as I already mentioned, fighting in that crazy battle in Brooklyn to try and save everyone elses’ sorry asses. But, I’m better now, and, since I’m back, I’ll just be taking up the role of Lord of the Hunt in place of my absentee ex so that I can save the world once more from the Apocalypse that’s definitely coming back. Because it’s sure as shit not done with us, no siree. Not by a long shot.”
Iris paused to let that sink in.
“You know what they’d do if I said that? They’d laugh their asses off at me, then throw me out of whatever august meeting room I’d given my presentation in. None of those important people will ever want to work with someone like me. What they might want to do is have me locked up because they’ll say I’m likely a danger to myself and others. Honestly, I’d be hard-pressed to argue. And even if by some fluke chance someone actually does believe that I’m not some kind of mystical joke, like maybe Merlin, because he probably knows all kinds of weirdos, that person still wouldn't listen to me. Why? Because I’m not one of them! I’m not Arawn!”
Eve, irritated, crossed her arms. ”I can see why they might hate you. I kinda hate you a little bit after hearing all that. But, you know what, Iris? Doesn’t matter. The world has to work with the army it’s got. Someone famous said that once, right? Credibility and discrimination challenges, aside, you can’t give up right now. You won’t be able to live with yourself if you do, and I can tell you right now that if you’re still here after all the shit you’ve gone through, you aren’t leaving this world anytime soon.”
“Jesus, Eve, I’m not giving up. I’m just...looking for alternatives for addressing the impending problem of ‘the fuckin’ world’s gonna die soon.’ Without having to subject myself to the contempt and scorn of jokers who fancy thinking of themselves as the real guardians of this world. On that point, Rigan agrees with me one hundred percent.”
Eve seemed surprised. “Rigan doesn’t trust them, either? ...She elaborate on why?”
“No. I mean, there’s the obvious stuff. These are powerful people, politicians and the leaders of huge bureaucracies and military branches and law-enforcement agencies, who became powerful in part by acting selfishly. That’s enough to make me doubt their motives and their general humanity. But I don’t think that’s the only thing that troubles Rigan.”
“Meaning that maybe she suspects that some of them are secretly working for the bad guys?”
“See, to me, that’s just spy novel shit or a plot device in any number of first-person-shooter games I played as a kid. I’m not sure if I should take it seriously...On the other hand, what’s that saying? Enemies can kill you but only your friends can hurt you. Maybe it’s smart not to trust your allies too much.”
A look of pity crossed Eve’s face. “You sound really angry.”
Iris looked at the floor. “I don’t want to be angry, Eve. But I don't know how else to be. Except maybe super fucking sad. That’s why I try so hard to stay busy with P.I. cases and demon hunting and volunteer projects at an elementary school where I don’t even have kids of my own in attendance because these are the only things right now that distract me.”
Eve nodded, then turned to look over to a collection of boxes, each filled with books and craft supplies and sweaters and toothbrushes and toothpaste, stacked in the hallway. “Are those for the school?”
“I meant to drop them off yesterday, but it’s hard to get to Hoboken these days unless you really plan ahead for it."
“You really care about those kids, don’t you? I commend you for that. I think that’s great.”
“Yeah, well the school, especially the kids, really helped me out a lot, to get re-grounded just after I’d been resurrected. I owe them all. And times are really hard in Jersey right now.”
“All the more reason for bringing back the Hunt.”
Ignoring that, Iris continued, “I do worry about them. And I’m doing my very best to keep them all safe.”
“From monsters and tooth decay.”
“Yes. Though, honestly, even with everything I have at my disposal -- including remaking and invoking the Hunt if I don’t have a choice -- I still fear it won’t be enough.”
“What do you mean?”
“...None of us can stop what’s coming, Eve. Whatever it is that is coming back to finish humanity -- the world -- off...I don’t think we’ll be able to stop it this time. Doesn’t matter who tries or what is tried. We will all fail. I know this. I-I don’t know exactly how to explain it, except that...I know because we didn’t stop the last Apocalypse. We lost that fight.”
Eve looked confused. “I don’t understand. We couldn’t have lost. Otherwise...all this would be gone. Wouldn’t it?”
“That’s the thing, though. No one besides me seems to know or remember what really happened on that awful day. We were all decimated by that doom thing. All those soldiers and sorcerers and drones and golems and Otherworld mercenaries who’d hired on to help fight, every Knight of Avalon on the front lines, every member of the Hunt...all of us...we were like windblown leaves stripped off an autumn tree. Something else...or someone else...stopped the Apocalypse. It wasn’t us.”
Iris let that sink in before continuing.
“Did you know that I can sometimes hear the universe speaking...thinking, Eve?”
“No. I didn’t. Not even Arawn...could do that.”
“Crazy, huh? And I’ve heard it mumble to itself many times that this world has gone on long enough and that it’s time to end. And if Creation wants you dead, I think you’ll be dead.”
Iris looked sad as she fell back onto a barstool next to her kitchen island. “Just like with Henry and Raul. Fuck.” Trying not to, she began to cry.
Eve, not knowing how to answer, how to respond, reached over with a hug that went right through Iris.
The next day, when Iris woke, Eve was gone. Where she’d gone and when, or if, she’d be back, Iris didn’t know. That wasn’t uncommon. Most of the souls that found their way to her instead of the afterlife wouldn’t...or couldn’t...speak or even interact. She sensed them, felt them, but that was all. Most of those that did communicate only stayed for a few hours or days before vanishing once more into her soulscape’s deeper places. Only Ash and Rigan came with any regularity. Both also possessed the singular trait of manifesting themselves through Iris’s body with her consent. In essence, she would become them.
Ash -- her smart, serious demeanor, aside -- was funny and warm and a little zany at times. She knew how to have a good time. In life, she had been just a little older than Iris. They had a lot of shared interests regarding art and culture and fashion and literature, though she didn’t paint as Iris did. She wrote poetry and could play the violin, instead. She’d also changed her name, likely for less than great reasons. She seemed cautious of Iris’s own wealth. Ash had once said that she’d been born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and that her mother had been a housekeeper for a rich family, leaving Iris the impression that Ash’s mother had likely come to the U.S. from China through less-than-legal channels, principally so that she could give birth to Ash and her sister, providing U.S. citizenship (back when there had been such a thing). Many of Iris’s parents’ early household staff -- before her parents had learned how to summon spirits for the job -- had similar stories.
Iris knew far less about Rigan, though Rigan had been with Iris for much, much longer. What Iris knew was that Rigan claimed to be the spirit of a Celtic goddess -- a claim that instinctively felt true -- that she was a fierce and brave warrior skilled in all manner of combat with a strong sense of right and wrong and a desire to protect. She’d watched over Iris, both on the outside and the inside, since Iris had been a young child. As the sheriff of Iris’s soulscape, Rigan kept everyone pretty much in line. Iris had heard Rigan speak with crows, and she knew Rigan was quietly very sad.
Staying home wasn’t making Iris feel any better, so, after getting dressed, she finally decided to leave the house.
She smelled the coffee shop long before she entered it. From it came the overwhelming haze of strange and beautiful aromas that had greeted her. Ever since she’d returned, Iris’s senses had not been right. At times inflamed, aching, crying out in pain whenever some sensorial stimulus became too much. Sight, sound, touch, taste, and worst of the bunch, smell. Lately, nothing smelled right. Nothing smelled good or sweet or pleasant. Everything reeked. Sometimes intolerably and indescribably. Sometimes Iris had wished she could just rip her nose out of her head. Considering her already-compromised mental and emotional states, this sensory impairment could be dangerous.
There was something else, too. Her own scent had become foreign, weird, alien. She no longer recognized herself. She didn’t think she was reading it incorrectly, especially where the markers were strong and clear, like in her sweat and urine. But it was as if she had left her old scent behind in whatever grave she’d been lying in -- if she’d even had one -- and found a completely new scent waiting for her once she’d returned to life.
Her sense of smell wasn’t broken, per se, but just really out-of-whack, like a badly-tuned piano. Eve had been no help, no more than a dozen or so other disappointing, equally clueless spirits rolling around in Iris’s soulscape. Only Fuschia, the spirit of some kind of trippy-dippy Otherworld pixie or sprite, had offered a reasonable suggestion. No one else within Iris’s soulscape seemed to like Fuschia very much, but Iris did. And she liked Fuschia’s idea to ground herself in safe, controlled surroundings. So, every day for the past few weeks for a few hours at a time, before Henry and Raul had died, she’d left the house and gone to the park or the library or a diner to practice quiet mindfulness.
Standing before the coffeemaker-cashier golem (because no humans seemed to work at service counters in Manhattan anymore), Iris had no idea what to order and blindly accepted whatever drink had been thrust into her hand. When she had been a kid, her parents had almost exclusively drunk unpleasant, bitter coffee made from freeze-dried instant coffee droppings. As an adult, before she’d died, Iris had drunk that same stuff, as no one had told her that there was anything better. The phenomenon of overpriced, fresh-ground coffees and espressos with pretentious Italian names mixed with all manner of weird non-dairy milks had yet to become a thing.
This morning, she had also ordered a cranberry-orange scone, another miraculous modern thing that had been warmed up just for her. Iris couldn’t help but beam. This place was making her very happy, and she thought that she might like to make visits a regular habit.
Treats in hand, Iris made her way to a corner table and began to tune her sense of smell.
She closed her eyes and started to “feel” her way around the shop, using the fragrant clouds around her for reference. First with the farthest scents, Iris worked to distinguish each thing and person from every other thing and person, using only the air’s chemistry: concentrated and dispersed odorants; somatosensory variations in temperature, air pressure, acidity, and salinity; oxidation; photolysis; chemesthesis; and sound-smell convergences. Though she could not name any of these elements nor explain what they were, she possessed a profound understanding of them all.
Before she’d died, Iris could have tracked the identities, locations, and movements of a dozen targets at once based on smell alone. Sight and sound had almost become hindrances, and there’d been times when she’d actually gone on hunts blindfolded. Much of that confidence and strength, however, was now gone. Iris could no longer remember what it had been like to do something amazing and crazy like that.
She let herself drift through a kaleidoscope of olfactorily-created images, detached from either visual input or any conscious thought except for those used in recognition and categorization. Carried along by these bottomless, overlapping scents, Iris touched and was touched by everything around her.
It was the scent of water, Arawn’s and Rigan’s element, carried inside the store by a strong breeze, that finally broke Iris’s reverie. The coffee shop was only a few blocks away from the Hudson River. Iris had always had a great love for water. She’d been entranced by every ocean and sea that she’d visited and always stopped to watch slow-flowing rivers and tiny mountain streams. Iris inhaled deeply...
Something was wrong. The expected tangy sweetness of melted snowdrift and rainwater and seawater was still there, like ozone before a summer downpour. But beneath that hid the unmistakable stench of necrotic magic, spilled blood, and terrible rot. It was as if the air...was soaked in gore following a killing spree. Was that a result of the terminated apocalypse? Iris had heard that the Hudson and New York’s Harbor had become corrupted and contaminated once The End of Everything had dropped its bomb on nearby Brooklyn and Staten Island, but she hadn’t really believed that. It was true that the Manhattan she now lived in was fully encircled by a concrete-and-magic barrier called the Tall Wall, and no one on either side of the Hudson was ever allowed near it. You couldn’t see it even from the fully enclosed, magically-protected Holland Bridge, which had been built as a replacement for the collapsed tunnel. If you asked anyone with knowledge or authority about it, you’d get nothing but evasive answers or cold stares.
The whole world began to spin. Iris’s eyes itched, then burned. A wave of nausea drove her out of her seat to her knees. As she fell sideways, her elbow slammed the table, sending her coffee and her scone flying. Other customers stared with disbelief or disgust. Her roiling stomach consumed her entire world.
A high school girl stood up from her textbook at a nearby table to take pity on Iris. As she came over to help, her friends whispered and smirked.
“Are you okay?” Seeing Iris trembling, she added, “Here...have some of my water.” Iris drank. It tasted like metal and soap, but she downed a good-sized gulp.
More figures approached, including two coffee shop golems. Barely comprehending, Iris allowed herself to be lowered back into her seat. Someone pulled out a phone and called 911. Others began to ask questions, but she couldn’t speak, only nod or shake her head.
She couldn’t breathe, dammit! Her nose and lungs burned from the corrupt and twisted smells that fumed about her. She could smell -- hell, feel -- ghosts of all of the river’s black-magic-dosed toxins centuries in accumulation, remnants from before the Age of Magic: the PCBs, mercury, cadmium, lead, and other unidentifiable heavy metals; the dioxins, pesticides, industrial solvents, and dry-cleaning compounds; sulfurous jet and boat fuel; fetid sewage; countless expired, dissolved prescription pill sediments; and decomposed bodies of God-knew-what. Everything bad from before that had been made infinitely worse by the aftermath of the Brooklyn Calamity.
A malevolent presence weaving itself throughout the miasma began to caress her and whisper horrible things. Shocked and terrified, Iris cried out, “N-No! Stop!” The girl who’d been helping flinched away, and those who’d gathered around took a good step back. “Leave me the fuck alone!” But Iris wasn’t speaking to anyone in the cafe. Her unfocused gaze darted left and right, trying to see the demon presence that molested her, arms swinging wildly in vain to brush it away.
Then Iris stilled, and her eyes stared straight ahead. A single tear rolled as her mouth twitched. She lunged for the nearest garbage can and let loose a torrent of vomit. Satisfied, the evil spirit retreated.
Why hadn’t Iris noticed any of this before? Why hadn’t she really smelled all of the harmful things that constantly surrounded them, until now? The dark, terrible stench was literally everywhere, biting, clawing, burrowing to get in, even with the Tall Wall’s magical protections keeping the worst of it at bay. The Hudson wanted to eat everyone and warp their carcasses into terrible monstrosities. It had marshaled the worst elements that mankind had thrown at it over the decades and centuries and had weaponized them. And now Iris knew this. What would happen to her if she couldn’t shut the Hudson out?
With her nose now amped up to maximum, everyone around her reeked. Body odors could no longer hide beneath the sacchariferous deodorants and fake-flower perfumes applied to conceal them. Breath, feet, and hair secreted mashes of sweet, sour, bitter, and salty odors. Menstrual blood in women’s wombs curdled as it thickened. Unnatural chemical clothing fibers fumed. Oxidizing, acid-burned metal vapors leaked out of every electronic device with a battery. All of it hit Iris’s nose like a cannonade.
Worse, Iris now smelled metastasizing cancer cells in the breath of a nearby woman of Iris’s own age, no more than fifty. Asthma perfumed the exhalations of the sweet girl who’d come to help her. Telltale odors of early-onset diabetes and heart disease emanated from several others. At least one person nearby was harboring a curse.
It was all too much. Iris had to get out. An approaching siren wailed that it was coming to get her. Grabbing her backpack, she leapt to her feet, pushed past several bystanders, and then reformed as an intangible black cloud version of herself, flowing into the coffee shop’s plate-glass window, which bowed out impossibly against Iris’s magic before exploding.
Outside, she raced away in a streak in her Great Hunt form of a shadowy wolfhound, fleeing north and east towards the middle of the city, vaulting over crowds, cross-streets, cross-traffic, anything in her way. Only once did she look back, with regret, at the coffee shop that had earlier made her very happy. There would be no going back there now.
Skidding to a stop at the corner of Madison and 54th, Iris came face to face with her reflection, floating against the background of this season's latest purses and color-blocked frocks in the window of a fancy women's boutique. She'd finally returned to her human form, huffing and puffing and wiping her eyes. She bent over, trying desperately not to throw up again. What had happened earlier at that coffee shop didn’t matter, she reminded herself. What was important was all of that strange shit that the Hudson River seemed to have been saying. It was crazy. What it said. That it could say it. Was she going crazy? Once she got home, she’d call Henry and ask him to recommend someone who could make sense of whatever the hell had happened.
No...Henry was dead. She wouldn’t be able to call him. Ever again. Tears of grief rewet her eyes, replacing those from nausea and fear.
“Are you alright?”
The ancient Celtic lilt could still surprise Iris, coming from a time and place that had existed long before even the idea of a modern England or New York. A few feet away, crow mask pulled up to reveal her face, stood Rigan, Iris’s mirror image other self -- apart from the red instead of brown hair.
Breathing heavy to the point of panting, Iris snapped. “Does it look like I’m doing alright, Rigan? I’m sick, if you can’t tell. My stomach feels like a rock tumbler and my nose is all kinds of fucked up. I can’t turn it down. I can’t turn it off.” As Iris continued to cry, she began to change. Her features became leaner, and her eyes took on a slight yellowish glow. Her teeth and nails began to sharpen. Her heaving breathing became heavy huffs.
Rigan put an arm on Iris’s shoulder. “Never let the Wolf out, Iris. Soothe her.” Rigan began to chant-sing ancient words. “C’mon, Iris. Sing the words with me.”
Iris joined the chant. In her mind’s eye, she saw herself raking long claws across Rigan’s unmasked face. She began to tremble. Rigan squeezed her arms. Glowing motes of magic, tiny runes, like snowflakes, drifted down, coating Iris in a shimmering blanket of soothing tranquility. As the horrid smells faded and her roiling stomach quieted, she stopped trembling, stopped transforming.
After a moment, Iris grabbed Rigan’s hand, and whispered, “Thank you.”
“You were demon cursed. It can be scary. Even I was scared.” Rigan paused. “...I think that demon, or whatever the Hells it was, hiding within the river’s stink was hoping to trigger you, Iris."
Feeling suddenly very vulnerable, Iris began to pat at her face, checking her cheeks, nose, and teeth.
“Moreover,” Rigan continued, “when you...took ill...I’m certain that someone escaped.”
“Someone...escaped? I-I don’t follow.”
“One of the wards you’ve been protecting is missing.” Pausing, stress in her voice, Rigan continued. “I believe that demon must have lured it out while you were being violently sick.”
“I lost a soul in my care? ...Shit.” Iris looked crestfallen. “...Maybe it didn’t escape. Maybe it’s just gone quiet for a while. Or it moved on and didn’t say anything.” After a moment, she sighed. “No. You would have known if someone had been ready.”
Rigan stroked Iris’s hair. “I need you to do something for me. I need you to take us to some old friends of mine. The Sorcerer of Midtown and his dragon oracle companion. We need to talk to them. Get their advice.”
Iris tilted her head up towards Rigan. “I didn’t know you had any friends.”
Rigan frowned. “I do. We do. Will you take us to them?”
“Yeah. Yeah, of course.” After a moment passed, Iris asked, “Who was it? Whom did I lose?”
“I don’t know.” Rigan lowered her head, clearly upset. “This is on me, too.”
In Five Points, the coffee shop that Iris had burst out of less than an hour earlier was abuzz with activity. Several police cars, sirens flashing, sat directly outside. One officer, with the assistance of a magic-sensing tablet computer, was taking energy readings from the fragments of the shattered front window. Another worked hard to restrain the growing crowd of curious onlookers. Two more inside took statements from the customers and golems who’d witnessed the event.
No one noticed the quivering garbage can that Iris had thrown up into. If they had, they’d have seen that it wasn’t vomit but a sickly, gray orb of ooze she’d regurgitated. A lost, confused soul that hadn’t seen this side of life in quite a few years. The ooze could not see or hear or smell or even think, but it could feel, and it sensed that it was back. It was impatient to hatch, to be reborn, but it didn’t know how. So it sat, trembling, in the bottom of a garbage can full of spilled coffee and discarded cups and food wrappers.
“I can help you.”
A voice it had never encountered spoke in a soul language that the ooze easily understood. Without being able to verbalize, the ooze asked the voice how.
“Before I help you, I need you to agree to do something for me.”
The orb waited.
“I take it that silence means I can continue. What a marvelously uncomplicated soul you are. So this is what I need. Once I help you regain your physical form, I need you to work to free me from my captivity. Do you understand what that means?”
The orb remained still.
“No matter. You will once you are restored. So will you agree to my terms?”
The orb quivered, yes.
[OUTRO SONG: "Seam" by dHaturus]
Several shots into a bottle of Black Label, Iris fell asleep on the living room couch. An unseen servant turned off the television, pulled a blanket over her shoulders, and dimmed the light.
The buzz of Ash’s phone jolted from under the couch pillow. A text. Ash sat up and put on the tortoise shell, cateye glasses that Iris never needed. A few lines into the message, she dialed the sender’s number.
“Hello? Marla Hendry? This is Ash Chen. Hi. How are you this evening? I hope I’m not calling too late....I just got your text regarding your cousin Dierdre’s disappearance. Can we set up an appointment to talk?”
NEXT EPISODE: DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
Written by Steve and Robin Pool. Copyright © 2022 by Uncle Robot Media