Little Bird

by Tiffany Meuret

Genres: Dark Fantasy; Literary Fiction; Horror

Synopsis

The skeletons in the closet have nothing on the one in your backyard.
Freshly divorced and grieving the death of her father, Josie Lauer has caged herself inside her home. To cope with her losses, Josie follows a strict daily routine of work, playing with her dog, and trying to remember to eat a decent meal—and ending each night by drinking copious amounts of vodka. In other words, she is not coping at all.
Everything changes when Josie wakes to find a small shrub has sprouted in her backyard the morning after yet another bender. Within hours, the vine-like plant is running amok—and it's brought company: a busybody new neighbor who insists on thrusting herself into Josie's life, and a talking skeleton called Skelly that has perched itself in Josie's backyard on a throne made of vines.
As the strangely sentient plant continues to grow and twist its tendrils inside Josie's suddenly complicated life, Josie begins to realize there's a reason Skelly has chosen to appear. All Josie has to do is figure out what that reason is—and she has only a few days to do it, or else she might find herself on the wrong side of catastrophe.

 

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Release date: June 7, 2022

Publisher: Black Spot Books

Print pages: 185

Sample

DAY ONE

THE MORNING WAS always too bright after a bender. Well, perhaps not a bender, but a carefully controlled evening of adult beverages that had gone slightly off the rails. She’d allotted herself two drinks in which to imbibe, but after her second pour noticed she only had enough vodka left for half a drink and figured why not kill the bottle? The additional serving had been more than the half drink she’d anticipated. That was a packaging issue and she refused to be held accountable for their manufactured deception.

Sunglasses pinching the bridge of her nose to protect herself from a light-induced migraine, she went to sip at her coffee and remembered she’d yet to make any.

Po, her chihuahua, yapped at her from his usual spot in front of his empty food bowl.

“Coming,” she said, though this did little to soothe him. It wasn’t until the food cascaded into his plastic bowl that he quieted long enough to scarf down his breakfast, acting as if he hadn’t eaten in days. His last meal hadn’t even been a full twelve hours earlier, to which the vet would complain about his ever-growing weight again, but the vet wasn’t the one living with the mouthy beast. Life was too short to deny the little guy the simplest of pleasures, things like a good meal and a long nap, both of which he’d mastered in his two years of existence.

Monday arrived whether she approved or not, and though she worked from home she still needed to maintain some semblance of structure. She fiddled with her failing espresso machine, a wedding present regifted to her in the divorce settlement. The thing didn’t always turn on and sometimes needed to be unplugged and plugged in again before it’d power up, but she had a way with her patched-up appliances—a few good curses and a whack to its side always woke it up. She packed a double shot and waited for the water to heat.

Po, long finished with his kibble, leaped onto the plush pillowtop chair she kept near the kitchen table for him. Her coffee hadn’t even dropped before he began to snore.

Only eight in the morning and she was already dreaming of bedtime, but here she was, same as every day–Monday through Friday, eight to six, all federal holidays excluded. Her laptop whined as the fan kicked on, circuits daring to spark under the constant strain of use. The coffee tasted sour, but she chugged it down in a gulp before checking her email.

She called her service Premium Client Unlimited, a name so intentionally vague that nobody could hold her to any sort of standard, as no one could even describe what it was that she did. If pressed, she usually referred to herself as the silver-tongued spinster. Realistically, she was a glorified carrier pigeon, a messenger, emailing the clients of her clients to resolve disputes when business owners, independents, and freelance workers had run out of ideas. Sometimes she collected payments, sometimes aided as an intermediary when communications crumbled. The gold plan was $99—which was the package that most people still willing to entertain her nonsense usually chose.

For that price, her customers would receive one fifteen-minute phone call, three email translations, and her handy guide to navigating the modern customer, which was largely populated with spiraling analogies of her own creation, and a pocket guide to responding to angry complaints in the digital realm. She banked on the fact that nobody bothered to read it, but on the rare occasion someone asked her to extrapolate on her parable of pepper in the fan, she would respond with, “Think back. You’ve actually already answered the question yourself.”

To this day, no one had contested this assertion. Well, no one besides her ex-husband, Stuart, who managed to challenge everything and anything about her as if he was looking to impress a corporate sponsor in the sport of it. But she wasn’t thinking about Stuart today. The divorce meant she was done thinking about Stuart. Period.

This was where the magic happened, where her clients emailed her their customer service woes, often in expletive-filled rants, that she, in turn, translated into professional soundbites to encourage positive discourse between her clients and her clients’ clients. This, of course, was impossible, as clients were terrible creatures with discounts-for-brains and herbivore teeth that weren’t terribly sharp, but so persistent and dull that the thought of hearing them chew up another complaint made one want to scream until their voice box radiated itself to death. Naturally, her clients were no exception, but they paid her bills—most of the time.

Her Monday inbox was an impressive sight—swollen under the load of business-casual bickering and hurt feelings. A normal Monday populated about two-hundred-and-fifty orders, most of which were simple one-off conversations that she could spin in her sleep. Completing these would take her into lunch, and she’d spend the rest of her day responding in varying degrees to follow-up emails and new orders.

Today was slightly more boisterous than the norm, a cool three-hundred-and-sixteen orders already populated. Sometimes, she marveled at her success at filling a niche in the industry that nobody knew they needed. In all actuality, they did not need it, but they didn’t know that. Some days she reveled in her good fortune. She, a bonified, platinum business bitch, spewing arrogant slogans like: “A fool and his money are easily parted,” but that never lasted. Most of the time, the concept of her business just made her sad. She’d feel guilty, like a vampiric con-woman looking for the next mark. Then, one of her clients would email her something utterly obscene and she’d forget all about her previous reservations and ensuing existential crisis.

Until the next day, but that was for her to worry about later. For the moment, she was flush in the center of a confidence boost, proud of the small uptick in business.

The hours whizzed by with the furious clicking of her typing. One of her more consistent clients, Jackie, was at it again, and once he got rolling, he was a tough boulder to stop. One of Jackie’s customers was disputing an invoice and threatening to call the cops on him for theft. This was a bluff, but it was bluff enough to send Jackie into a fury spiral so monumental he mentioned to Josie he had a few buff cousins up north that would be thrilled to assist him. This, too, was a bluff, and it was Josie’s job to translate his attempted assault into a professionally appropriate message.

Although, committed to memory, she checked her pocket guide for a proper translation. Sometimes physically looking at it helped clarify her instincts.

PREMIUM CLIENT UNLIMITED

HANDY TRANSLATION GUIDE

• I see your point= And it’s stupid
• I understand why you feel that way= And it’s stupid
• I just wanted to check in= to see what stupid shit you are going to make me deal with today
• Is there anything I can help you with= I’d rather eat my arm off the bone than help you
• Would you like to schedule a meeting to discuss further= I would like to tell you how wrong you are again, but this time to your face
• Can you please clarify= Explain your nonsense
• I do not like to leave an unhappy client= Not because I like you but because you’ll trash me all over Yelp
• I apologize for the inconvenience= The inconvenience to me for having to deal with you
• What would you propose= I hate your presence in my life and will give you whatever you want to ensure that I never have to speak to you again
• Cordially= fuck you
• Warm regards= fuck you
• Hello= fuck you
• How are you= fuck you
• As per our last email= Can you read? Also, fuck you

It was a working list, scribbled and scratched and written in the margins of a formerly white scrap of paper taped to her laptop. The responses were instinct now, and she’d provided a less offensive outline of them in a PDF to all her gold-level clients. On occasion, she would lose business to the proactive few who utilized it, but those were usually the most satisfied of any of her clients, and the ones she pursued for testimonials and reviews, of which most happily obliged. Therefore, bringing in more new clients and replenishing her well.

Then there were the Jackies. He was the type to keep her on retainer as if she were a posh New York lawyer. His business is what would eventually replace her espresso machine.

Jackie,

I understand your feelings here, and I, too, would be very frustrated. Yet, instead of upsetting the situation further, I suggest letting your client lead this conversation. This will promote a sense of being heard and foster satisfaction, which in turn, fosters money into your bank account. As you admit, this is the only reason you show up to this business day in and day out, through all the bullshit. Please see my attached recommended response. Please follow up with any questions or concerns!

She attached her most popular form letter—resolving financial disputes was her most prolific service—knowing full well Jackie would ignore all of it. He had a knack for upsetting his customers beyond recognition and then paying her hundreds of dollars to avoid a lawsuit costing thousands. She liked Jackie, yet couldn’t stand him. She supposed she felt that way about most people.

Conveniently, as if sensing the wayward thoughts of her daughter from her San Diego marina, her mother texted her.

I saw a seal today

Was it a seal or a sea lion?

Probably a sea lion I guess why

Curious

It was spitting water around like a whale

A whale?

You know like a whale with their blowhole it was cool

Neat

Did you get the toilet fixed?

NO but I use the marina bathroom. Arv said he would

fix it next time he was up

Who’s Arv?

My neighbor

Oh

You should come visit me

Maybe in the spring

So a few months

Easter break

okay

k

Josie set her phone face down on the table, hoping to discourage any further conversation. The phone buzzed several more times, but she ignored it.

Po squirmed in his seat, well attuned to her shifting moods, which signaled the time for a treat and a cup of tea. Her morning dose of ibuprofen was no longer containing the foggy lull following the previous night’s bender. She tossed a milk bone to Po, who didn’t deign to remove himself from the chair, then prepped her electric kettle and a fresh set of pills. This would get her through the second half of the day with as little ass-dragging as possible.

An entire row of her pantry was dedicated to tea, both bagged for convenience and loose. Green tea was her favorite, followed closely by almost any other form of tea, with black tea making the list only due to obligation. She drank it rarely, usually only when her sinuses were jammed up and she couldn’t taste it very well.

As she gazed out the window overlooking her brown yard, she spotted something odd. For years nothing had grown in the neglected dirt lot Josie called a backyard, and she had no idea why anything had sprouted now. A green bud surfaced dead center in the brown expanse, standing out like a marble in a riverbed. Probably a weed. It’d been a wetter winter than her desert town was used to, but even then, this weed must possess fortitude far beyond her negligence. She wondered what kind of plant would spontaneously bloom in such a way.

This weed must be a renegade, which was respectable.

Ibuprofen digested, she chose an oolong tea as the end cap to her short work break. She was about to resume the daily grind when the measured beeping of a reversing truck interrupted her rhythm. It was close, very close. Like, in her front yard close. She did not appreciate this at all.

Over the few years she’d spent in this cul-de-sac, she’d grown quite attuned to its daily schedule. The house to the west kept a timely, evening routine. A small car left every evening around seven p.m. and arrived back around seven a.m. The one next to that housed iguanas and an old married couple who largely kept to themselves aside from major holidays. The two houses directly across from her were infested with children that sprinted banshee-like through the streets every evening and weekend, but all were school-aged and blessedly absent during working hours.

Then, there was the house to the east of her—a ramshackle thing overrun with untreated termites and oil stains, serially rented out to the lowest bidder, none of whom ever lasted more than six months. The landlord made infrequent appearances when it was unoccupied to prune weeds in the hopes of attracting another sucker to sign his likely illegal rental agreement. Josie had witnessed many a type wander through those walls—some with families and kids, some with coolers and midterms, and some with nothing but folding tables and a few boxes. The place was a black hole—sucking at the tit of decency until it was nothing but a used husk of its former self. It’d seen some shit, that house, and it’d stolen a bit from every person that had ever dared to leave it.

Without having to look, she knew it had found another soul to claim. The beeping stopped, and the rumbling engine of the moving truck cut away. Tea in hand, Josie pulled her front curtains back a finger’s length to snoop.

The moving truck was on the smaller side, not big enough for a large family with equally large amounts of crap to move. One, two people tops. She waited for someone to reveal themselves so she might get an idea of what kind of neighbor she’d have for the next few months. College kids were loud little assholes that didn’t care about the weeds or the termites or much else either. Single men were depressingly silent, yet tolerable because of it. Single women, however, especially older white women, were the ones Josie detested the most. They were chatty and lonely and demanded attention at every possible opportunity. These were the neighbors Josie observed through her peephole, waiting for them to disappear into their home long enough for her to escape to her car. These were the type to demand camaraderie in their singleness, to demand friendship, reciprocity optional.

When her new neighbor finally walked into view, Josie cursed to herself before taking a long, bitter sip of tea. “Of fucking course.”

A salty-haired woman, perhaps sixty plus years old, appeared at the rear of the truck attempting to coax the back latch open. She wore a purple fanny pack and a beige camping hat with a feather dangling from one side. Josie pulled back from the curtains, afraid the woman might catch her spying and want to chat, but the woman was more enthralled with the latch of the truck than entertaining neighbors. After pulling on it for a minute with no success, the woman kicked the latch with her steel toe boots and it popped free.

Josie let the curtain fall and went back to work.

The woman emptied her truck in a matter of two hours. Josie knew this because she had been watching her through the curtains the entire time—in between emails, on her way to and from the bathroom, just to stretch her legs, or because of a loud thud that made Josie wonder if the woman had gotten herself crushed under a refrigerator.

Po was also distressed, sprinting toward the window at every scratch, sniff, bang, or creak, hairs standing in a line down his spine as his snout pulled the curtain up from the back of the couch. He constantly yapped as if perpetually forgetting this woman existed despite having barked at her all afternoon. The new neighbor had probably already figured out Po’s name just by the sheer amount of times Josie had shouted at him to knock it off, a command he adamantly refused to obey.

By six in the evening, the moving truck had sputtered away, and Josie relished the thought of some peace and quiet. Queuing up her favorite post-work playlist, she fixed herself a vodka soda and ate a granola bar before diving into a bag of stale tortilla chips.

By the time dinner was eaten, she’d already refreshed her drink twice. Her third vodka soda—a little less soda in every iteration—left sweat rings on the arm rest of her suede couch, long since destroyed by both the dog and her drinking. She hadn’t bothered to keep Po off the couch in a year, not after she puked all over one of the cushions and stained it strawberry daiquiri pink.

“Sensible,” she said to Po simply because he was the only other one there. “Tonight, I need to be sensible. No hangovers. Right, Po?”

Not that it mattered much. None of her Tuesday customers would know she was hungover. In fact, she often performed her best work when a little wrung out. Still, it was never wise to start a week off in the same fashion she ended the weekend.

The television blathering in the background, she decided to toss her third drink in the sink and call it a sensible evening when headlights darted across her window. The new neighbor, probably coming home after returning the moving truck. They flickered again, and a third time shortly after that as if the woman was circling the cul-de-sac.

Po launched himself at the windowsill again, seemingly appalled by the interruption. Josie clutched her glass and pulled the curtain back to see what the hell was going on.

“What … the fuck is this?”

Sipping her drink, Josie watched her neighbor circle the cul-de-sac two more times before finally stopping.

In front of Josie’s house.

The wrong house.

Jesus Christ Almighty, this woman was a trip.

Her little Subaru still humming, she poked her head out of the car window and cursed, then backed out. One last, crawling loop later and she’d finally gotten it right, successfully parking in the correct driveway and disappearing into the house.

By the time Po had finally collected himself, Josie had unthinkingly finished her drink and was running a nervous finger over the rim of her empty glass. She had a bad feeling about this woman, something guttural and instinctual was telling her that this lady was an invader. Before she’d even rinsed her glass and loaded the dishwasher, Josie envisioned five different ways in which she and this new woman would clash, from mailbox hostage situations to inviting herself over for cookies to regaling Josie about every bowel movement her grandson in Tallahassee ever made. Josie cringed so hard she might have sucked her teeth down her throat.

This was going to be a nightmare.

Which was certainly true, but not for any of the reasons she expected.

DAY TWO

THE WOMAN WAS standing in Josie’s front yard, staring at something. Nothing.

Josie awoke in a surprisingly good mood that morning, attributed entirely to the fact that she’d forgotten all about her weird neighbor. Once she remembered, her first instinct was to peek through the curtains to get a gauge on this new person’s morning routine. This woman had already managed to make an impression on Josie just by unloading her moving truck, so she was expecting something slightly off—grabbing her paper from the yard in her underwear or summoning up an army of lawn gnomes the neighborhood kids would steal or powerwalking the cul-de-sac at ungodly early hours. What she did not expect was to look through her front window directly into the back of the woman’s windbreaker.

Minutes passed before either of them moved—the woman staring at whatever held her attention, and Josie staring at the woman. Thankfully, Po had bypassed this debacle entirely and waited impatiently by his food bowl, otherwise, he would have lost his mind and given away Josie’s position. Finally, having deduced whatever it was she came to deduce, the woman nodded knowingly and tromped back to her property, careful to walk lightly on the gravel.

Whatever reservations Josie initially felt now quadrupled. This lady was a shitshow. Josie already counted the days until she might move away. Six months, tops. That’s all anyone ever lasted, and then this woman, whoever she was, would be nothing more than a curious memory.

Po barked from the kitchen, increasingly impatient as the seconds passed.

“It’s not right,” she said as she filled his bowl. “Standing in another person’s yard like that. She doesn’t even know me.”

She beat at her espresso machine. “What if I was crazy? She wouldn’t know if I had a gun or whatever.”

The espresso machine obeyed. “She practically tiptoed back to her house, so she knew how inappropriate it was. She didn’t want me to know.”

Ceramic clinked together as she searched for her favorite mug in the dishwasher. “So, what was she doing there? And why did she pull into my driveway last night?”

A double shot of medium roast coffee leaked into her waiting mug. “Oh, I got it!”

To this Po allowed a small pause to his eating and glanced up at her.

“She’s fucking batshit.”

Josie patted Po on the top of his lemon-sized head. He growled possessively in return. Someone obviously had his tiny panties in a twist, but she let it slide. Something in the air today was bringing out all the oddballs. One glance at her laptop made her chest tighten—who the hell knew what awaited her in there. Maybe Jackie got into a fist fight with that customer of his. Or maybe she was getting threatened with her own lawsuits. Or maybe she had some new bad reviews. Who knew? That was the rollercoaster ride of customer service—thrilling for one second and then you throw up.

The weed that had captured much of her attention the previous day had all but evaporated from her thoughts. That was until she glanced through the window and saw what it had accomplished since the last time she looked at it. The thing had exploded. Green tendrils laced from the epicenter in an intricate web nearly ten feet in diameter. The tiny bud of yesterday was now a foot-high shoot, aggressively reaching toward the sun. Josie stood dumbfounded in her kitchen trying to process it all. This was beyond her—she explicitly avoided all gardening due to her inability to keep anything alive, well except for Po, but that was more a success on his part than hers. Otherwise, she’d been miserable at keeping even the simplest flower alive for longer a day. Her ex used to bring her flowers until he found a vase full of them in the trash and mistakenly believed it was because she didn’t like them. She was missing that nurturing gene imbedded in most women, it having whizzed by her DNA at top speed, a vacancy so grand that no baggie of powdered flower nutrients could save her.

It shouldn’t have surprised her then to see such magnificence bloom in her absence. In fact, it made every sense in the world.

Po shot between her legs the instant she opened the door. Panic activated in her chest as he sprinted for the plant. What if it was poisonous? Dangerous? Some kind of mutant plant with sentient vines excited at the thought of a nice, puppy meal? Before she could crystalize a warning, he had already trotted up to the nearest tendril, extended it a haughty sniff, and pissed on it. He was back at her feet before she’d even said a word.

Again, she found herself leaning over the curious growth in her yard like a surgeon to a tumor, considering the best way to handle her predicament. It was vinelike, almost tropical in appearance. It certainly wasn’t reminiscent of any other naturally growing plant in this area, most of which were of the pointy succulent variety. Curiouser and curiouser.

“What is this, Po?” she asked. His response was to march toward the door and demand to be let inside.

Josie tapped the perimeter of the growth with her foot—it sprung back into place with ease. Before joining Po, she snapped a picture with her phone, both for research purposes and for posterity. If it had bloomed this quickly in one day, what might it do in two? Or five? Or thirty?

She felt compelled to lock the door behind her as she started her day, always keeping a wary eye toward the yard. Then, she googled it for answers.

The results of her search revolved mostly around some grass types and a few flowering plants. Not at all what she was dealing with. So, then she tried ‘Sonoran Vines,’ which produced a list of varying desert flowers.

Josie searched the best she could for anything matching the ninja vine in her yard. Vampire flowers. Underground vines. Aggressive plants. The only plants that even came close to matching the description of the thing in her backyard were only found in the deep recesses of the Amazon.

Checking on it again, it seemed to have stalled its growth, as if too shy to do so under her watch. At the rate it had appeared, she assumed it must be writhing with newness at all hours of the day. Instead it was stagnant—as permanent to her yard as the brick wall surrounding the property.

But she’d have to deal with this thing later as it was time to get to work. She was already thirty minutes behind schedule, and as predicted, Jackie had indeed further inflamed his customer. It took ten minutes to formulate a response email for him to send to his customer, who was now threatening to not only sue him but go to the local news. Not that any news station would give two fucks about a minor billing dispute, but it was enough to send Jackie into aneurism territory, which was exactly the point of it. Josie knew from the outset this customer was going to get exactly what they wanted, even from Jackie, a person always gunning for a good fight, because at the end of the day the customer has only one person to focus on. The business owner has dozens/hundreds/thousands of moving pieces assaulting them throughout the day, and their willpower always gives out first. But she couldn’t state so outright—Jackie had to come to that conclusion himself. He would eventually. And he would hate the hell out of it.

The morning zoomed by, she nearly forgot about the plant until it was time for her afternoon tea. Inspecting it through her kitchen window, it looked like it had spread somewhat, oozing like an oil spill.

While waiting for the water in the kettle to boil, she stepped outside to give the weed another look.

It consumed nearly a quarter of her yard now. At this rate, it’d be crawling up the sides of her house by dinner time. What began as a curiosity now bloomed into a sprawling dread in her gut. Things were getting out of hand—her day was completely thrown off. What if this plant never stopped growing? Would she have to call someone? Who do you call for things like this?

Excuse me, 911? I need someone to come handle this plant situation. No, I’m not injured, but I am quite cross. What do you mean this is not an emergency? Hello?

She resolved to handle this growth herself immediately. She grabbed the sharpest steak knife she owned, then donned rubber dish gloves and stormed into the yard prepared to slice the center stalk in the hopes of killing the whole beast. It seemed logical. Thorough. A decent enough plan to keep her mind at ease.

Turned out to be none of those things.

Leering over the plant, she considered her options—what if its sap is poisonous? Or its leaves? Or maybe it releases a toxic cloud as a defense?—and figuring an immediate poisoning was preferable to this stress, lowered herself to the ground and took her blade to the stalk. She hadn’t so much as kissed the metal to the shoot when a noise vibrated throughout her body. An insistent, startling cough as if another person had appeared just over her and was trying to steal her attention.

She shot to her feet, dropping the knife to the ground, and swatting blindly in all directions. Someone was there—the noise was unmistakably human. She heard it. She felt it—felt it as if she’d been the one to make it. Felt it within her bone marrow. But as she spun about, thudding heart overwriting the rest of her senses, she found nothing but dirt and plants and Po scraping his tiny paw across the back door. Nothing frantic about the way he behaved—he just wanted to be let out. If there had been another person in the yard he’d have been snarling and squealing with such vigor the entire neighborhood would have heard him.

Happy for the company, she darted toward the door and let him out, hoping his heightened sense of smell and hearing might pick up on anything she would have missed.

But Po simply trotted to the edge of the patio, took a dump on the concrete, and lazily worked his way back toward the house.

A mindfuck was all it was. A record skip of the brain, like the sudden loud bangs that jolt her awake just as she was falling asleep at night. The noise was a misfire and nothing more.

Josie was more than happy to accept that notion and move about her day, but as she brushed her palm to the door handle the noise returned and graduated to a fully-fledged voice.

“You forgot your knife.”

Josie froze. Po showed no indication that he had heard a thing. This was no brain trickery—this was a concise, spoken sentence. The words rang throughout her body. They sang inside her, something close and intimate. Nothing like the faraway voice of a stranger spoken across the yard. This was like an articulated thought, almost cartoonish as if someone was narrating a thought bubble over her head she didn’t know was there.

In the face of such oddities, miracles, and wonders, people have varying responses. Josie imagined a slew of rational directions to take, including but not limited to screaming, running away, or firing a gun into the air—if she’d owned one, that is.

Instead, without turning away from the door, she said. “Excuse me?”

“I said you forgot your knife, although I don’t know exactly what you wished to accomplish with a steak knife. It’s so dull, it could barely butter bread.”

“It’s the only knife I had.” Jesus fuck, what was she doing? Too terrified and confused to face her accuser, she found herself equally irritated at their boldness. The reflection of her glass window revealed nothing behind her. Shocking, considering the closeness of their voice.

“Well, you forgot it.”

“So?”

“So, I figured you might want to come get it.”

“If I wanted to come get it, I would have.”

“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“I have every right to feel however the hell I want, thank—” Josie wheeled toward the yard, incensed, and immediately regretted the decision.

Squatting center in the yard, surrounded by the mystery vines, was her intruder.

A skeleton.

A Halloween decoration. A toy. A fake.

Josie considered this for a few seconds, gaping at it from her spot on the patio. A skeleton. This couldn’t possibly be real.

“I am real, in case you’re wondering.”

The voice zippered up her spine, then down again so that her skin bubbled. But the skeleton didn’t move—its mouth remained clamped shut, its barely-there body as stiff as cardboard. Or bone.

This was completely fine.

“You read minds?”

“People are predictable.”

Definitely fine. “You do this often, do you?”

“Depends on your definition of often.”

Okay. Sure. “What are you?”

“What do you think I am?”

“A skeleton. That talks.”

“That sums it up nicely, I’d say.”

“Nothing to add?”

“Your description was sufficient.”

Po tapped his untrimmed nails on the patio, dancing in anticipation of being let inside. If he noticed the skeleton there, he didn’t seem perturbed by its presence. Josie wasn’t sure what bothered her more—the fact that Po portrayed more unease toward a slight breeze than this inexplicable creature of myth, or the fact that he might not see anything at all.

“I’m going inside.” Go inside. Drink her tea. Sit down. Go back to work. She had a day to finish, and by golly, she was going to no matter what this scientific aberration lingering in her yard had to say.

Perhaps she was suffering a mental breakdown. Maybe she needed a nap.

“See you later.”

The pique of the voice flourished a new wave of chills throughout her body. She believed the skeleton when they said they would ‘see her later.’

Josie refused to look back as she fled inside her house, not sure if she was afraid of the skeleton still being there or of it not being there. Both options were bad. She was either crazy or she was talking to the dead. Either way, she was utterly fucked.

The kettle had shut off, leaving tepid tap water for her tea. Carefully avoiding the window, she refilled her mug and waited for the new pot to boil.

She didn’t know what to do. How do people handle shit like this? How do they know if they are going insane?

In that moment, she did something she’d carefully avoided for many, many months—she thought of her dad. He’d been like her—a pragmatist and a debunker. Spirituality was not something either of them could subscribe to, and most of the time she didn’t feel any worse for it because she was like him, and he was like her. And they weren’t alone.

But now he was gone, and she was alone, and an apparition on her property was demanding her attention. A lot of moving parts to this delusion.

While her mind whirled, her motor functions kicked into high gear and prepared her tea.

What if this thing was her dad, coming back to haunt her?

The idea repulsed her so profoundly, she restrained the bile creeping up from her gut. No. He wouldn’t do that. No.

But could he?

Unable to stop herself, she peered through the window overlooking the yard only to confirm the skeleton was still present. It hadn’t budged. From where she stood, it looked like a bad practical joke, a prop meant to startle the next unwitting fool to cross its path. She thought if she watched long enough it might give something away to explain its presence. No footprints were leading to or away. There were no visible strings or props. She saw no wires or metal, nothing to maintain the squat position in which it waited. Shadows pooled discordant and chaotic, as the skeleton filtered the sunlight through its bones.

She was counting its fingers and toes for inhuman anomalies when her doorbell rang. Po bolted for the front door, both to cuss at the intruder and to avoid the tea and broken bits of ceramic as Josie’s mug hit the tile. Her hands trembled. The doorbell had scared the shit out of her.

With Po snarling between her feet, she trudged to the door and looked through the peephole. The new neighbor stood there. Of course, this is when the lady decides to stop by. There wasn’t ever a good time to stop by in Josie’s opinion, but immediately after discovering a sentient, passive aggressive skeleton in her yard was probably one of the worst.

Josie wished she could pretend she wasn’t home, but her car was parked in the driveway. Instead of taking a hint and leaving, though, she waited a few minutes and then rang the doorbell again.

The noise gave Po a new life, and he barked as if on fire. Fine. Josie flung open the door with such immediacy that anyone with sense would know that she’d been just on the other side. She prayed the puzzle pieces would fit together for this woman, so she’d understand the gravity of her intrusion.

“I’m so sorry to bother you,” the woman said, the smile on her face suggesting she, in fact, wasn’t sorry at all. “But I was wondering if you had a screwdriver.”

The woman was disheveled and dirty as if she’d been tending a garden all morning. Dark fingermarks littered the front of her smock—a frumpy flowered thing that avoided her body as if allergic to it. Her frizzy hair was stamped to her head underneath a green sun visor.

Josie didn’t miss a beat. “No.” She wasn’t even sure if that was true, but she wasn’t about to tear her house apart looking for one for this lady who had already irritated her beyond measure.

“You don’t have a screwdriver?”

“Neither do you. I don’t see why that’s so shocking.”

“I just moved. It’s lost in a box somewhere.”

“I don’t know what to tell you.”

“Do you not have one or do you just not want to lend it to me?”

Exactly who was this woman? Josie’s wispy patience all but evaporated, but that didn’t bother the woman. Her smile creased the edges of her face in the same, easy way as if she’d just been handed a flower from a new suitor. “Ask next door. He fixes his truck sometimes. I bet he has a few.”

The woman tilted her head to the side, considering, then shrugged. “I’ll do that. What’s his name? I don’t want to be rude.”

Josie’s brows furrowed into another dimension, and the woman immediately corrected herself.

“Oh. I know your name. You’re Josie, right? I found some of your mail on the ground.” She produced a folded-up envelope from the pocket of her smock, not even bothering to smooth the creases. “Here.”

Josie glared at the envelope, recognizing the value coupon logo on the front—junk mail which usually bypassed her kitchen table altogether and landed directly in the recycle bin. “And who are you?” she asked, plucking her mail from the woman’s dusty fingers.

“I’m Sue, your new neighbor.”

To Josie’s eternal appreciation, Sue did not bother to extend a hand.

“His name is Max,” Josie said. “Or Matt. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure it starts with an M. Anyway, welcome to the neighborhood and all that.”

“Good to meet you, Josie,” she said.

Josie detected nothing but pure sincerity in Sue’s voice, even as she shut the door in her face, and such earnestness made Josie feel like a moldy sponge. She hated feeling like a sponge. It was her job, her self-made career, to make everyone else the sponge. And here she was making a gigantic ass of herself.

Po, unperturbed by human social constructs, wagged his tail as she faced him. So what if she was awkward? The woman—Sue—wouldn’t be here long anyway. Besides, this was the absolute least of her current worries. This exchange wasn’t anything to agonize over, considering the circumstances. So, it was fine.

Totally fine.