Furious - By Jill Wolfson Page 0,31

before I realize that it’s my own voice. The others are humming, too. There are words now with the song.

Our binding dance. The malignant music unfolding the terror.

I know that I haven’t moved from Raymond’s bedroom, but I also know that I’m somewhere else, somewhere I’ve never been before.

In.

Deep in.

But not alone.

In. With them. My others.

Their voices, the swirl of their hair against my arms, legs, and face.

I need them. We need each other.

To do what we were born to do. To move things to our will. To punish. To control.

My hair. It has come undone, the strands twisting with other hair, twisting with our voices, with the music, to create an inescapable net.

We trap the target.

We spin him with confusion and delirium.

We never touch. We never push.

And yet …

And yet …

Two words reach in and yank me back to the surface of somewhere.

Out.

Raymond’s bedroom. I touch my hair, surprised to find it still clipped back and braided, tight against my scalp, under control.

The two words are “Holy crappola!” and Raymond is yelling them over and over. “Holy crappola! Look at this. The ant is going nuts.”

We lean in and watch the bug. It runs left, stops short, then runs right. Then it begins moving in tighter and tighter circles, as if all its instincts have been short-circuited.

“So it’s true,” I say.

“I’m convinced. I’ve seen enough.” Stephanie hugs the stuffed animal to her chest. I know she’s feeling badly about the ant, but there’s also a conflicted look on her face. She’s fighting it, but it’s winning. Like me, like Alix, she’s proud of what we just did. And I know that also like me, she’s wondering what else we can do. And to whom? How far can this thing go?

Alix slams her palm on the table, crushing the ant, putting it out of its misery.

Raymond tunes up his violin. His slack jaw and dim eyes tell me that he’s slipped into deep concentration. He plays the tune that he heard the three of us singing. The nine notes played twelve times, the malignant music, the binding dance.

12

Nine notes in their binding song. Nine notes repeated twelve times. One hundred and eight in the melody. Three digits—108—that add up to 9, the product of three 3s.

Divide 108 by 3 to get 36; 3 plus 6, another 9. Another 3 to that ordained third power.

I bow to the malicious music.

You are expecting your stasimon, the curtain down between acts, the promise of clarity and comment. And here I am, your guide, going off on wild, arithmetic tangents.

What I want to say is this: I sure know how to pick ’em. Don’t you adore those three lovely, ugly girls? I do.

How quickly they learn. I’m thrilled to see the light come on behind their eyes as they begin to understand their capabilities. The way they got into that ant’s brain, twisted and tweaked it. They taught it a lesson: There is no escape from the terrors of the mind. Brava!

Let me reiterate where we stand at this point in time. And yes, it is only a matter of time.

Alix. Alecto. I hardly have to tempt her. Her fury has been so fine-tuned by others for so long. I ought to send her parents—and her parents’ parents and even her parents’ parents’ parents—fruit baskets for instilling in her so much animosity toward humankind.

And Stephanie, Tisiphone, sheer delight. We can thank so many for shooting down her earnest, peaceful attempts to bring about change. She’s a product of the whole world with its endless greed, materialism, lies, and unabashed self-interest. The warlords and presidents of countries; the lying media and corrupt priests; the insatiable real estate developers and corporate polluters; the autocrats, plutocrats, and bureaucrats; the fascists, communists, and every other ist—there’s no end to those who deserve my utmost and sincere thanks for creating Tisiphone. I could give them all hugs.

Which brings me to Megaera—quiet, still-developing Meg—with the potential to have the most fury of all. Abused by both individual and society, cast aside by parent and the system’s so-called parent substitute. Look what the human race is doing to her.

She is my third, the one I have been waiting for.

But she’s got this one blessing—a curse, in my view—that she manages to keep things in perspective. Damn her open heart and mind. Damn her optimism, the way it dilutes her well-deserved anger. I must get those moccasins off her feet, not allow her to walk the proverbial mile in someone else’s shoes.

I