Nano chapter two
II.
13:22 P.M.
Aniah Brynne Rickard was eight years old again while she slept, and her night was peppered with memories and bad dreams, and sometimes both at once.
She slept past sunrise, continental breakfast, and check out. It was well around lunchtime when she finally did wake, to the sun bursting straight past the curtains on the balcony door.
All in all, Aniah slept for fifteen and half hours, and seven spare minutes. The one night of unfed, restless sleep had cost her. It wasn’t just the money for not making checkout on time, no; it was other things, like distance and times and lives for which she felt responsible.
This oversleeping would no doubt cause her to lose her mother’s trail. Aniah, frustrated, sucked down another cigarette. There would be more dead bodies, now, more corpses dropped like breadcrumbs. There would be fires in places with dry grass and dry fall leaves, explosions, miniature natural disasters.
But her mother’s trail would resurface, regardless. Aniah knew that her mother could very well beg for attention without causing any real damage, but Aniah wasn’t likely to notice something like that, especially not from across the country.
Aniah stood in the bathroom (all white - so white as to be sterile, and half covered with mirrors so she could not escape her own reflection) and forced her fingers through the messy cowlick of her bangs.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with dark olive toned skin, Aniah had occasionally been pegged as Italian by many people who did not know her. Or half Italian, anyway. She certainly had not picked up her mother’s pale skin or freckled features. She was more masculine than feminine, asexual if anything, with her hair cut choppy and boy-style. She was tall, with a flat chest and bony, straight hips that fit better into men’s jeans than any low-cut bellbottoms ever had. Her nails were short and rugged, her fingers covered with calluses from years of auto work and home improvement projects on the suburban shack in upstate New York. Her face was sharp, her body all angular, her nose and chin pointed, thin, almost threatening. Even as a child, she had preferred contact sports, dirt bikes, and army dolls to any more feminine pastimes.
No, Aniah was not and would never be a beautiful woman. It was only sometimes, like this, however, that she ever regretted it. She did not envy her mother the attention her (stolen) beauty garnered, but she did dream sometimes.
Everything her mother owned was stolen or borrowed. Her house, her name, the social security information she had forged in order to obtain a job. The body she wore. Her mother never owned anything that was actually hers.
Samsara. A soul wears a body like a body wears clothes. Lives are outfits.
Aniah’s mother had been changing her clothes forever.
Though Aniah had always thought of her as one flesh, as one mother, this was not the case and never would be. Her mother’s soul was a demon, born before roads and airplanes and Christianity. She had been taking bodies for centuries.
Five years ago, when Aniah had been sixteen and able to understand, her mother had explained the how, but not the why.
“Dying people,” she had said, “are very lonely. When people die alone, they’re lost. They’ll beg for anything, welcome any visitor. They live on through me.”
Her mother, the unnamed demon, was currently parading around as Evelyn Rickard, a retired corporate sales manager. She had frequent flyer miles and traveled often. For business.
She’d published an article in a national magazine at least three months ago, and signed edition of the issue had been delivered to Aniah’s front door. The inscription had been crusty and rust-colored, and read:
“The dining here in Michigan is wonderful. Miss you. - Mommy.”
Over the next week, three corporate CEOs were found murdered in their living rooms, set on fire or torn asunder by an animal’s teeth. One had been half devoured by his pet Shepard dog by the time the authorities had been notified. Animals were terrified of her and her presence sent them into a terrible, almost rabid frenzy.
It was after that incident - there had been one or two before, convicted sex offenders with their chest caves rendered open beneath underpasses - that Aniah had realized the need for her to go after her mother. She wasn’t killing or eating to survive. She was killing for the pleasure of killing, to garner attention from the media, and so she could write cute little notes to her daughter back in New York.
Michigan had been a good clue to go off of, but once Aniah had started crossing state lines, the trail began to grow stale and cold. There had been nothing in the news lately, and she had overslept this morning. Her mother didn’t even move by road or airport, sometimes. Sometimes she found other ways to sneak halfway across the country.
She would never find her at this rate.
Not that she would have any idea what to do once she found her. Bring her to the authorities? Lock her up? Kill her?
If anyone was going to kill her mother, really kill her, take her out of the world entirely, then it was going to be Aniah.
It was a matter of pride.
She stripped her grungy driving clothes off, and left the wall-covering mirror and the echo of her gangly, boyish frame behind her as she stepped into the shower.
Aniah ended up taking an hour and half long shower, and when she emerged in a cloud of steam and clinging droplets, she felt relaxed and cleaner than she had in weeks. The muscles in her shoulders were still tense, wound into knots from sitting in the same position for hours on end. Clad in the hotel-provided bathrobe, check-patterned boxer shorts, and a pair of her own socks, Aniah stepped out onto the balcony, pack of Marlboros and a cell phone in hand. She had a phone call to make.
13:22 P.M.
Aniah Brynne Rickard was eight years old again while she slept, and her night was peppered with memories and bad dreams, and sometimes both at once.
She slept past sunrise, continental breakfast, and check out. It was well around lunchtime when she finally did wake, to the sun bursting straight past the curtains on the balcony door.
All in all, Aniah slept for fifteen and half hours, and seven spare minutes. The one night of unfed, restless sleep had cost her. It wasn’t just the money for not making checkout on time, no; it was other things, like distance and times and lives for which she felt responsible.
This oversleeping would no doubt cause her to lose her mother’s trail. Aniah, frustrated, sucked down another cigarette. There would be more dead bodies, now, more corpses dropped like breadcrumbs. There would be fires in places with dry grass and dry fall leaves, explosions, miniature natural disasters.
But her mother’s trail would resurface, regardless. Aniah knew that her mother could very well beg for attention without causing any real damage, but Aniah wasn’t likely to notice something like that, especially not from across the country.
Aniah stood in the bathroom (all white - so white as to be sterile, and half covered with mirrors so she could not escape her own reflection) and forced her fingers through the messy cowlick of her bangs.
Dark-haired, dark-eyed, and with dark olive toned skin, Aniah had occasionally been pegged as Italian by many people who did not know her. Or half Italian, anyway. She certainly had not picked up her mother’s pale skin or freckled features. She was more masculine than feminine, asexual if anything, with her hair cut choppy and boy-style. She was tall, with a flat chest and bony, straight hips that fit better into men’s jeans than any low-cut bellbottoms ever had. Her nails were short and rugged, her fingers covered with calluses from years of auto work and home improvement projects on the suburban shack in upstate New York. Her face was sharp, her body all angular, her nose and chin pointed, thin, almost threatening. Even as a child, she had preferred contact sports, dirt bikes, and army dolls to any more feminine pastimes.
No, Aniah was not and would never be a beautiful woman. It was only sometimes, like this, however, that she ever regretted it. She did not envy her mother the attention her (stolen) beauty garnered, but she did dream sometimes.
Everything her mother owned was stolen or borrowed. Her house, her name, the social security information she had forged in order to obtain a job. The body she wore. Her mother never owned anything that was actually hers.
Samsara. A soul wears a body like a body wears clothes. Lives are outfits.
Aniah’s mother had been changing her clothes forever.
Though Aniah had always thought of her as one flesh, as one mother, this was not the case and never would be. Her mother’s soul was a demon, born before roads and airplanes and Christianity. She had been taking bodies for centuries.
Five years ago, when Aniah had been sixteen and able to understand, her mother had explained the how, but not the why.
“Dying people,” she had said, “are very lonely. When people die alone, they’re lost. They’ll beg for anything, welcome any visitor. They live on through me.”
Her mother, the unnamed demon, was currently parading around as Evelyn Rickard, a retired corporate sales manager. She had frequent flyer miles and traveled often. For business.
She’d published an article in a national magazine at least three months ago, and signed edition of the issue had been delivered to Aniah’s front door. The inscription had been crusty and rust-colored, and read:
“The dining here in Michigan is wonderful. Miss you. - Mommy.”
Over the next week, three corporate CEOs were found murdered in their living rooms, set on fire or torn asunder by an animal’s teeth. One had been half devoured by his pet Shepard dog by the time the authorities had been notified. Animals were terrified of her and her presence sent them into a terrible, almost rabid frenzy.
It was after that incident - there had been one or two before, convicted sex offenders with their chest caves rendered open beneath underpasses - that Aniah had realized the need for her to go after her mother. She wasn’t killing or eating to survive. She was killing for the pleasure of killing, to garner attention from the media, and so she could write cute little notes to her daughter back in New York.
Michigan had been a good clue to go off of, but once Aniah had started crossing state lines, the trail began to grow stale and cold. There had been nothing in the news lately, and she had overslept this morning. Her mother didn’t even move by road or airport, sometimes. Sometimes she found other ways to sneak halfway across the country.
She would never find her at this rate.
Not that she would have any idea what to do once she found her. Bring her to the authorities? Lock her up? Kill her?
If anyone was going to kill her mother, really kill her, take her out of the world entirely, then it was going to be Aniah.
It was a matter of pride.
She stripped her grungy driving clothes off, and left the wall-covering mirror and the echo of her gangly, boyish frame behind her as she stepped into the shower.
Aniah ended up taking an hour and half long shower, and when she emerged in a cloud of steam and clinging droplets, she felt relaxed and cleaner than she had in weeks. The muscles in her shoulders were still tense, wound into knots from sitting in the same position for hours on end. Clad in the hotel-provided bathrobe, check-patterned boxer shorts, and a pair of her own socks, Aniah stepped out onto the balcony, pack of Marlboros and a cell phone in hand. She had a phone call to make.