story. Sometimes, we have to rely on instinct, Isa. Remember that?”
There’s a subtlety to my aunt’s words. Where she can be downright crass and rude, laying her personality on the table like tarnished silver that hasn’t been polished in decades, there are times I find her to be more shrewd than I am. Her comment is meant to give me pause, to remind me that, only a few months ago, I’d made the tragic mistake of ignoring my instincts.
A thought I cast aside. I don’t need those memories pulling me under and clouding a new start.
“You’re curious, too. That’s why you’re driving me.” I say, searching through the dark silhouettes of passing trees for distraction. Even with the sun cresting the horizon, the canopy of the forest still gives the impression of night here.
“I’m curious to know what would change your mind, yes.”
Inwardly groaning, I shake my head. “It’d take an act of God to make me turn down this cash.”
A black object swoops into my periphery, and aunt Midge slams on the breaks, sending me crashing forward into the dashboard. Hard vinyl thumps against my palms, and needles of electricity shoot up my unbent arms, as the car squeals to a stop.
“Son of a bitch!” Aunt Midge sits with her arms outstretched, both hands white-knuckling the steering wheel.
I lift my head to find an eerie swirl of fog dancing in the beam of the lights, before it parts around a black bird in the middle of the road that hops alongside the bloody remains of a dead animal. “Jesus. What the hell is it?” Unbuckling my seatbelt, I slide forward for a better view.
“Crow? I’ve no idea.”
“Not the bird.” The animal beside the bird is hardly recognizable, sprawled out in a pool of entrails that the wretched creature pecks at as though unfettered by the headlights.
“Who gives a shit? Damn thing almost ran us off the road!” She rails on the horn, but fails to move the bird.
In fact, it doesn’t even spare us a glance, still feasting on the carrion strewn across our path. A bulbous object is wedged in its beak--an eyeball, which it gulps back, and I grimace, imagining myself lying there in the road while it feeds on me.
“What in the Sam Hill?” As Aunt Midge idles past the bird, I stare down at it from the passenger window, and when it cranes its neck toward me, I frown, noticing one of its own eyes missing. “Never seen such a thing in all my life,” my aunt says beside me. “Wasn’t even bothered by us.”
Twisting in my seat, I breathe deep to settle my nerves and peer through the back window, where the bird still hasn’t moved. “Must’ve been starving, or something.”
With a dry chuckle, she shakes her head. “Act of God, you say. How ‘bout the devil himself? This bluff is cursed, I tell ya. Cursed. Every creature here bears the burden of it. I hope it won’t be you when all is said and done. You’re nineteen now, so I can’t very well be telling you what you can and can’t do anymore. But I’m strongly urging you to consider something else.”
There is nothing else, unless I want to work alongside my best friend, Kelsey, at Barnaby’s Baubles on the boardwalk, selling overpriced trinkets to the few tourists we get. Or better yet, slopping out bowls of chowder and beers at The Shoal with Aunt Midge.
“I’m taking this job.” The money is enough to clear some of her debts, get caught up on the mortgage, and save up for a car to get the hell out of this place, eventually. “I’ll be fine. Look, I get it, okay? You’re just watching out for me.” As she’s done since the night my mom left me on her doorstep and bailed on parenthood. “But this is it. All those times we talked about me getting out of here? It’s not happening with my music. Or working at some tourist trap in town.”
“It could, if you gave it a chan--”
“It won’t. It takes money to make money, remember? You told me that.”
“You don’t have to listen to everything I say, kid. You know that, right?” The glance she shoots back at me holds a smile that actually touches her eyes this time. “Sometimes, I’m fulla shit.”
“More than sometimes, I’d say.”
With a slap on my shoulder, she snorts. “Smartass.”
A few more miles up the road, the fog breaks, and the forest opens to a clearing. A black