Issue #29

Carolyn Boone stood in the cavernous study of Demetrius Giannopoulos, her wedges sinking into the plush blood-red carpet, and knew that her goose was about to be cooked. Again. For the last time.

She was wholly unprepared. Sandra had assured her that this would never happen. Carolyn was only a fledgling. Demetrius Giannopoulos, Grand Sire of the Baltimore clan, the most powerful undead lord of the entire Mid-Atlantic region, had no reason to know she even existed and would likely never know her name.

She met the Grand Sire’s cold blue eyes as he looked up from his desk. “Carolyn. Please, sit.”

He gestured to one of the chairs in front of the desk. She sat gingerly. She wasn’t alone. Sandra took the seat next to her. When Carolyn looked at her, Sandra offered what nearly passed for a bracing smile, but Carolyn could see how anxiety frayed its edges.

And then there was… Quentin, Carolyn recalled. They were of some high rank but dripped “executive assistant” from every pore. They shut the door, trapping them all inside, and then took up a position beside Demetrius’s high-backed chair.

When he stepped out onto the Guineaman ship’s deck and into the sunlight, Tilamin, then Lamin, could hardly see; so used to the dark of the ship’s hold was he, a seaborne coffin stuffed with the nearly dead and barely living. He inhaled deeply through his tingling nostrils, his lungs struggling for the next breath. The sea breeze was sharp. The salt stung, making his eyes smart and nose run as he stepped into one of the smaller cargo boats. These transported him and the other captives to the shore of Île Marie-Joséphine. From the boat, he looked back one last time at the Guineaman ship, a timber water castle from whose dungeon he had emerged alive.

I wonder where you go when your matter untangles from itself and is carried up into the solar winds. Are you traversing the cosmos? What are you when your body disappears? Who are you?

All summer, I’ve thought about this. Since the last time I saw your body fade away with the northern lights. I haven’t been able to figure out what you are anymore. Ghost? Spirit? Some celestial being out of phase with time and space?

Best I can figure is that your very existence is tied to the northern lights. When they appear, you appear, always in the same spot. When they fade into the distance, so do you. Seems easy enough to understand, though I still don’t understand why it has to happen to you.