Calico God

I am being followed by a god.

Its eyes find me, no matter where I go.

First, it was the funeral director when I was collecting the last floral arrangements after mom’s service.

I could have sworn she had brown eyes. I had focused on them so hard during our planning meetings. But as they looked to me in farewell a blue and green eye stared at me, like a cat tensed at the first sign of mouse-shadow.

Then, it was the man at the bodega, he held a fresh hotdog with tongs, wearing a crescent-bent smile as he watched me get swept away by the coursing pedestrians down the way. I could feel each tooth of his wide smile sink into me, his rabid eyes gleaming bright on the gray metropolitan day.

Then, the freckled cashier, when I looked down as he sprinkled the change into my hand, his eyes were dark brown, almost the shade of trees at night. When I looked up -a pit opened in my stomach. All the memories of those eyes fell into it to keep me aware of the truth, the funeral director, the bodega man, and now, the cashier.

Animal instinct flooded my body, my muscles burned to run.

The question fell out of my mouth, “Who are you?”

The crescent smile contorted the cashier’s freckles. He tapped the syllables out on his name tag.

CAL-I-CO GOD.

Sweat seeped out of my pores, chilling me.

Metal clattered as I slammed the coins on the counter, staring into his grotesque eyes, muttering, “Keep the change,” before bolting out the door empty-handed, weaving through cabs to get to my apartment building.

Hank the magnificent, broad shouldered doorman opened the door for me, greeting me with his Russian accent like he always did. As I pushed through the door, I looked up to Hank in thanks.

Blue and green eyes stared at me, the way an owl looks down at the unaware rat.

My foot snagged on the threshold, I rolled onto the red carpet and froze on all fours, looking in a panic. Heads turned to me, the blue and green eyes multiplying in the lobby. Even the buttons on the elevator now illuminated blue and green.

The clerk behind the front desk prowled around the counter, and the couple walking down the stairs in front of me glared with their matching sets, closing in.

In unison they said, “Are you okay?”

The scythe smile drew across their faces.

NotMyHank lumbered behind me and hauled me up to stand. I turned to him. He closed the door, blocking the exit.

“H-Hank?”

NotMyHank tapped his name tag with a gloved hand.

CAL-I-CO GOD.

I took a step away from him. He tilted his head to the side, his pupils dilating to slivers.

The voices pooled together, muddled and echoing.

“Hello, Bette.”

My hands wrenched into my hair, my scalp ached as I pulled at my curls.

“Leave me alone!”

NotMyHank, the front desk clerk, and the couple began to pinch in around me.

My blood pounded in my head, racking against my temples, like a fist knocking to be let out of a room.

But this was no dream, there was no way to escape.

NotMyHank raised a gloved hand in yield, “Easy, Bette.”

The other voices had fallen, it was only NotMyHank who spoke.

I looked to each of them, squaring myself with NotMyHank. His crescent smile dropped, his head tilted to the side with sincerity, “We knew your mother.”

I bristled at him, pulling my fingers from my hair.

“My mom is dead,” I spat.

NotMyHank’s eyes dimmed. He nodded, looking away from me.

“Yes, I know, she was one of my most prized priestesses.”

“Priestess?”

Mom was a nurse, years of archived memories of watching her walk out in her scrubs flitted through my mind.

NotMyHank resumed, he looked me over, still in thought.

“Yes. She offered her services for protection.”

I scoffed. “So you are supposed to protect me now?”

NotMyHank’s eyes sharpened like knives, they jabbed a finger in the air, glaring in warning, their lips pulled back in a snarl.

I curled my hands into fists, hiding my fear by straightening my posture. I swallowed.

“I knew your mother and she was kind. What would she say when she knew that you-,”

I croaked out, “Why did she die then?!”

NotMyHank winced. He dropped the pointed finger. I could see the hurt in his eyes, it shattered his focus, and I could see that he was broken too.

I wiped away a tear, asked, “Was she kind enough?”

“No.”

I flinched.

He met my gaze, “I wasn’t fast enough.”

Regret burned where I had imagined NotMyHank would have prodded me, right in the center of my chest.

“Who are you anyway?”

A flash of lime-blue light erupted from NotMyHank’s body, and bolted over the walls of the lobby. I watched, my heart pounding as the light bounded in the form of a cat’s shadow, bolting across the wallpaper, the framed pictures, across the stairwell.

“I AM,” a voice thundered.

Everything intensified as the cat shadow passed it- the round bulbs of the chandelier were growing into supernovas, the numbers on the elevator were blotted out. The lime blue light grew, the cat shadow growing into the size of a lion until its frame was disintegrated by the blinding light, bleaching my vision.

“The Calico God!”

I tucked my head into an arm, bracing as I felt the light begin to roast my skin, the hum growing louder and louder until it pealed on a high note, I flinched as the bulbs of the chandelier erupted one by one, darkening the lobby.

“Look at me.”

I kept my eyes closed in fear as I peeled my face from my arm. A soft glow pressed against my eyelids. Slowly, I opened my eyes and felt a calmness wash over me.

Bright ripples passed over the unconscious body of Hank, until the glow enveloped him and a man phased out of his body, a wiry man with the ends of a magenta cape draped over his hands, standing before me in black clothes that blinked prisms of green, blue, and purple, like the feather of a crow. He threw his cape back, revealing the silver armor he wore on his shoulders linked with a thick chain that had a silver lion in the center.

Hank grumbled, his jacket rasped as he slid down the door, wilting onto the floor behind the god.

“Now, I will protect you,” The Calico God said. His pale eyes held me so carefully…as they had before…a man standing up so we could sit on the subway, the man smiling at us at the park as he played fetch with his dog, the cat with mismatched eyes that followed us at night sometimes.

I exhaled, “You.”

He nodded, knowing that I recognized him. I took his hand, and let him pull me closer to him. He smelled of rain and smoke, and there was a heat that radiated off of him like a lightbulb that had been on all day. I felt like I had found something lost, something that I didn’t know I was looking for. An heirloom my mom had left behind.

“Protect me from what?”

His eyes sharpened as he looked past me, his face twisting into a hiss.

“Them.”

I turned to see the clerk and couple glaring at me with hollow black eyes.

“They were following you too.”

*

This short story was inspired by this illustration by Daniele Turturici.

*

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