BY THE TIME I get back to Georgetown the party is almost over. A few stragglers are sticking around. Jer-Bear has gone from meditative ritualistic chanting to phone zoning. Gregory is saying his goodbyes. The Seattle Goodbyes that last an hour cus nobody wants to break off first. I get a few smug nods and one back pat from the white dreadlock guy. He's cute but I'm too gay to like dudes beyond admiring from a distance. Anything beyond the eyes and I'm like a cat who's caught in a shower.
I slag my way up to my room and close the door. I don't like people. I don't like party houses. I don't like social gatherings. I don't want people I have beef with crawling around my place. I can use the dumbest thing in the world to explain how I live my life. I got one set of codes I live by and I can sum them up with the Ten Crack Commandments by Biggie Smalls.
Number One, Never Let 'em know how much dough you hold. I don't want people in this small town knowing when I'm working, where, and how much I make. People I got beef with now know who I work for and where I live. They know I'm a witch. That I'm low on the ladder. Way low. That's a huge risk.
Number Two, never let them know your next move. Silence and violence are my life. Never let anyone know who you have beef with. Now everyone knows I'm on the side of The Family. They know I did Luke in. Brian The Pharaoh Dipshit Rapist knows I'm gunning for his minions. Now I can't cross those lines in the sand with impunity. My plausible deniability is done for.
Number Three, never trust nobody. This is a small town. Everyone here is gonna blab. Everyone is going to let people know what I'm capable of and what I've done. By tomorrow every gossip will tell anyone within hearing range. The people who like me will exaggerate it and insert themselves and their friends into the story. The people who hate me will make shit up and go out of their way to put a target on my back.
Skipping number four cus I've been clean for a year. But the rest can be summed up much easier. Five, don't sell where you live, guess what doing errands in your backyard counts as? Six, credit, shit, forget it. All these favors are never gonna get me any cash. My resume is fucked. Seven, my friends are my only family and now they're all mixed up in my business. Etc, etc, you get the idea.
Being a witch is supposed to be powerful. It's supposed to be liberating. Instead I'm a fucking magical fugitive who has got to hide behind the loose cabal of organized magical crime. The same people who I'm completely dependent on. I contemplate running away. I'm not going north cus I don't have a car and can't drive. Every city north of Seattle is pretty shite for public transport. Tacoma is too close. They'll catch up with me. Olympia can be gruesome. They say everything you do in Seattle makes its way to Olympia. Your reputation is waiting for you when you get there. I'll fucking drink bleach before I set foot in Oregon. Can't go back to The Bay, too expensive. I'm not going back east either.
I sit and look at the ceiling. I phone zone until I have a headache. After my eyes hurt I grab some loose paperbacks and force myself to read them. Nothing calms me. I'm too nervous to meditate. Too fidgety to play video games on my laptop. Too anxious to watch videos.
I focus on what my therapist says to me. “You just throw up your hands and run away when things get hard.” We focus a lot on me not running away. We work on lots of shit but that's a big one. Don't run away. I've quit or been fired from every job I've ever had. I have moved away from every city I've lived in only to move back a few years later. I've been homeless. Left perfectly functional housing situations and thrown myself into worse ones. My entire life has been chaos and instability. I'm used to it. Always having to adjust course. Always having to just lie my ass off to excuse my chaotic life. I run away from everything. My family, my friends, my lovers, my homes, my jobs. I'm an absolute coward.
There is no worse feeling than being pinned in place. Now I'm pinned like a butterfly in a display. If I run, it's all over. So I'm stuck here. Hell, I'm stuck with a name I made up. Claudia Kohler is dead. Now, when people see me, they just see Mary Abaddon. Another mask I have to wear. At long last I work up the nerve to get out my of room.
Gregory is waiting for me in the living room. He can't stop chuckling.
“Ohh man, ooh man. That was good. That was good. Oh man, he is done for. That was... I can't believe the water sports part!” His face is red and he's tickled pink. I put on the mask of Mary Abaddon and give a smug, cocksure grin.
“He sure does like to party.”
“You're probably gonna wanna play it safe in Georgetown. Just for a month. It'll all simmer down by then.” He warns me. I tap the side of my head in a “I know” gesture.
I go to the backyard and start chain smoking. The endless grey of the Northwest sky looks down on me. It's like a giant blanket. Well it is to me at least. A guarantee we're in that great bubble that's immune to reality. The Pathetic Northweird. What happens in the P.N.W. stays here. This place has its own rules. Luckily, I learned how to play them. You can't be part of it and not be in it. I've been on the sidelines too long. Maybe, just maybe, I should give climbing that ladder another go. I crumple up the pack and breathe deep. It's time to make a move and start carving out my future. That starts with staying put. That starts with facing down my old enemies. It all starts with a simple step. I need to stop running, turn around, and face everything I've done and said. And then I'm going to make all those fuckers know I'm back in it and I'm not going away.
Except it never works out like that in real life.
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