The girl’s name was Susie. She had brown curls that snaked out from her head like Medusa and strange eyes, too light for brown, too murky for green. She was not quite human, not quite demon. Her left wrist bore tattoos inscribed to keep the demon’s nastiness at bay and, near those, scars from where she’d attempted to slice, burn, or chew them off at various stages of her life. Nothing worked. One day she’d gotten fed up and attempted to hack off her arm, but the tattoos simply migrated to her neck.
Go on, behead yourself, they dared.
Susie sat like a pretzel, legs and arms twisted, a violin resting on her lap. “What do you want me to play?”
“Whatever you want.” Brian rubbed the back of his neck.
“Anything?” This seemed a hopeful question. Her lips pursed with pleasure.
“Well, not the Devil Went Down to Georgia, but basically yeah.” He was still residually high on a mixture of marijuana laced with PCP and he was concerned that the Charlie Daniels Band didn’t make for happy thoughts.
( The Right Notes, the Wrong Thoughts )“
What?” Susie stood up, alone and out of place in a reconstructed drawing room.
“I’ll call you later.” He jumped off the stage, which might have been a bottomless pit, a dark chasm, the way his brain was misfiring. He started up the aisle. Outside, the sunshine shrank his pupils into black dots. He was sweating. In a hurry.
The door drifted closed.
Susie kicked her violin case.
“Asshole.”