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Kardi Bradshaw

6 July 2024

Ever since I walked in, I felt like people’s eyes were following me, like I was a criminal. I couldn’t quite sit still, sandwiched in the leather booth between Hannah yapping about her wonderful boyfriend who wished he could join us tonight, and Lilith kicking my tight-crossed legs on accident; and as the Pink Floyd cover band took the bar’s stage and lights shone in my face and the beer-perfume-weed atmosphere got into my skin, my stomach clenched with the feeling that I actually was guilty of something. 

Let’s be clear that I didn’t want to come with Hannah’s pack tonight. But I had done excruciatingly little today: walked clear across Nashville, trying everything to feel less anxious and only making myself feel worse. It didn’t help that Rafael hadn’t…my phone buzzed against my leg…well, speak of the…yes, the devil.

Last time Hannah asked me about Rafael, I said “We’re in a relationship…well, okay, it’s a situationship.” It was more like every Taylor Swift song ever: we don’t speak for weeks, break up, get back together and kiss in the rain, then he acts like it never happened. This time, I swore we were never (ever, ever) getting back together.

But before you think I’m dating Satan, I should admit that all the drama has been partly my fault. Our second date was like something out of The Great Gatsby. Or the Cliffsnotes thereof. I show up to his house and he meets me at the door holding a candle. He grandly conducts me inside, where the living room is covered wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling in ginger flowers, lit with tall flickering candles. And me in my jeans and Converse. Note to self: ask him about the dress code next time. His eyes are like the Yin and Yang: beauty and beast rolled into one perfect dude, except there’s something mischievous about him that I can never predict. Within five minutes, he’s got me laughing louder than I thought I could, then he comes closer and we make eye contact, but we don’t kiss: he gets shy and turns away, goes to bring the wine. 

Rafael. He then starts to get restless, distracted while I’m talking, and finally says he really has to be somewhere else. We walk to the front door, then suddenly we do kiss.

That was February. He’s been honest enough to tell me that he wouldn’t have stayed in our situationship if I hadn’t been leading him on somewhat. But last week we made up again (I promised to pay him better attention if he’d promise not to cheat again), and here I am, chewing my lip over his text, thinking should I stay or should I go? I find his bestie Virgil’s house on Apple Maps: twenty minutes’ walk. Absolutely I should go.

Paulina Meredith

Later That Night

When Rafael said “party”, I was thinking of a pool-and-PlayStation kinda party, not a liquor-cabinet-emptying, property-desecrating, lights-off orgy. It’s always been my fantasy for someone to finally invite me to one of these parties, but after a few minutes of being yelled at over music by drunk guys I despised anyway, I escaped onto the front porch, where I was only disturbed by the scent of strawberry vape while I waited for Kardi to show up.

A boy creaks the screen door open and sits next to me with an extra red Solo cup. “Hey, ya wanna drink?” He says with the worst pickup-line intonation ever.

I stand up to leave, trying to use my extrovert voice, “Thanks, but I’ve gotta go.”

He stands up too, “Like, I don’t know if we met, my name’s Virgil. You really should try this.”

I turn to leave and he grabs my wrist. A split second later, my Krav Maga kicks in and I send an elbow and fist smashing into his self-satisfied, wet nose. But he’s the quarterback type. He catches my next punch and shoves me into the wall, but at that moment I hear a chilling wolf-like cry, and something leaps at Virgil’s face and takes him to the ground.

Kardi stood up and licked the blood off her face. She still looked like a wolf, utterly inhuman, for a moment before her eyes cleared.

Maybe I should explain, because Kardi probably won’t. On Kardi’s left wrist, there’s a barcode tattooed under her skin, too close to the artery to remove. It was her ID in a place she calls the Labyrinth, a government-or-deep-state-lizard-people-run facility somewhere down South. She doesn’t know exactly where because she was so high on compliance drugs when she escaped, but anyway the point is that they (she calls them the ‘Caretakers’) imprisoned her there for twelve years. They did twisted, horrifying experiments on her, until they succeeded in turning her superhuman. Well, she’s pretty lame compared to other superhumans: twelve years and all she has is wolf abilities.

“Paulina?” she said.

Some people say your name a certain way, and it’s the best feeling in the world. Oh, I forgot, we’ve gotta deal with Virgil-turned-bleeding-puddle now.

I say, “I don’t wanna call an ambulance without also calling the police on these idiots.”

I dial 9-1-1, but Kardi stops me. She’s got this look I don’t like, and not a bloodthirsty one. “I wanna go inside, just for a while. You should go home.”

“Kardi, please don’t do it tonight. You know it won’t make you feel any better. Come over to my house?”

Kardi glanced at something moving near the house: it was a white moth, fluttering manically around the porchlight. Kardi says, “I’m gonna go have fun.”

I say goodbye quietly, and she walks up the porch.

If anyone has critiques they're absolutely welcome; the final version of this chapter will look nothing like this either way ;)