Thanksgiving, November 25, 2021 - Jackson Heights, Queens, United States

“Stop swearing at once!”

“Alright mom. Now let me and my friends play.” Harish’s voice was a bit whiny sounding.

“I should throw that thing out the door.”

Harish kept grumbling while closing the door which intensified when Ella coming around her mother stuck her foot in the way before coming in.

“Whatcha doin'?”

“What do you think I am doing? Playing games with my fam. What are you doing here? Guys? Guys? Great, they booted me since I wasn’t playing.”

“Not fam then are they?” Ella teased.

She watched as Harish loaded up another game and moved around.

“What happened to the game with the giant robot?”

“Nah. Now we are all playing super real stuff. This game is one shot, one kill, gotta use tactics and stuff. I hear Seals and shit use this to train.” 1

Harish went back to muttering in his mic, stating “Clear” multiple times as they went room to room. Then they hit the enemy and his partner got killed when they failed to clear a corner properly. Harish was at a standstill with them nursing ammo when mom called saying the turkey was ready.

After eating way too much turkey and stuffing and very, very delicious brussel sprouts2, Ella headed out for a walk. She felt restless and even still hungry. She felt like there was more she should be doing but only had limited time available. She was in the best physical shape of her life, she was starting to develop some decent hand-to-hand skills, and she had started hitting the range with Donna every so often. Donna was trying to get her involved in something called three gun, but Ella wasn’t sure how far to take her firearm training.

The clear gap was hand weapons - but the places she had looked into all seemed questionable. But she felt like magical stuff would involve swords and bows and other primitive weapons.

She had spent time combing the library for mythological stories and had come up short except for a lot of maybes. Even her limited experience already showed the limits of what was out there.

And then there was the whole royalty aspect. Did she need to start learning public policy? Economics? Legal theory? And she was staunchly anti-monarchist anyway - if anything she was a socialist. What the hell did that mean she should do?

Her footsteps took her along 25th Avenue and she eventually hit the BQE3. She could feel that strange feeling that she had felt elsewhere, which she recognized as drawing her across the expressway, but this time she refused to let it take control, and spent her time analyzing the sensation.

Cautiously and a bit terrified, she jumped over the concrete wall and made her way across the mostly empty expressway, hopping over the second wall at the median and the third across the way. The expressway was empty on Thanksgiving with a few cars and plenty of space, but it was not a place to be reckless. If any car had been closer, they would have seen the glow of her eyes which intensified.

Her footsteps trod on the fallen leaves around the cemetery. She came to a wrought iron fence which surrounded the property and pressed her hands against it, trying to figure out how to climb it. Eventually she managed to jump up and grabbed the top and hauled herself over, landing on the grass on the other side.

The grass took on a luminescent quality, almost a fluorescent green. The tombstones stood out in stark relief in the darkness, and Ella could read each and every single word. The slight breeze whistled by the markers and through the grass, carrying faint odors of earth and mown grass and roasting turkey and car exhaust. She could feel tension in her back and sweat began dripping down her face slightly despite the cold temperatures.

Behind a tombstone ahead, she could hear a scrabbling noise. Ella stepped back and the noise stopped.

She heard a woman’s voice, deep and sultry, “Madha hunaaka”

Ella kept silent. She started eyeing a path that would not make noise. She could feel her heart beating but it was not panicked, just accelerating the way it would before she would exercise. She shifted her weight forward and subtly relaxed her stance. Her right hand slipped into her pocket and grabbed her keys.

“Sa’idi child.”

The voice was behind her and Ella spun around bringing her hands to guard.

The woman standing right in front of her was beautiful. And very, very naked. It would have made Ella self-conscious except for the copious blood dripping from her mouth, and mixing with the dirt and grass that adhered to her.

The woman’s skin gleamed bronze in the night, her eyes dark and she had that perfect smoked makeup around them. Her long dirty blonde hair was done in elaborate curls.

And her smile was wicked. Ella had never ascribed too much emotion to expressions but this was as evil a smile as she could imagine.

“Well look what the night has brought to me.” Her voice was heavily accented from somewhere in the Middle East. Her hand came up and she traced a bloody and dirty finger, no claw, along Ella’s jawline.

Ella reacted without thinking and sprayed the small pepper spray at whatever was right in front of her. The woman’s jaw unhinged and opened far larger than would have been possible and she began howling the creature emitted was both in a woman’s voice and something animal at the same time. Her clawed hands came up to her eyes to cover them.

Ella wasted no time and took her keys between her fingers in a fist and struck the creature in the gut over and over again, using the keys to stab. The wounds opened dark and rotten with no blood.

The creature lashed out with its claws and Ella shuffled back but she misestimated the reach and she could feel the claws tear across her stomach.

Ella stepped in after the swipe and followed with a left open handed strike to the side of the creatures head, shifting her weight to the right and torquing her hips as if it was textbook. Her palm went numb from the strike but the creature fell to the ground. Before it could get up, Ella stepped in and started kicking. Her hiking boots thumped against the creature over and over and Ella did not stop until the creature stopped moving entirely.

She then stepped carefully back and grabbbed a large decorative rock from one of the graves and slowly approached the creature. It lay still on the ground but she lifted the rock overhead and brought it down once onto the creeatures head. Again. And Again. No movement.

Perhaps she had watched too many movies but she did it a couple times more. The head of the creature was flattened and cracked, dark not-quite-normal blood and brain matter spread across the ground

When the adrenaline calmed down she suddenly felt the pain and blood dripping down her stomach. She sat down on the ground and took repeated slow breaths.

The creature reverted to looking like a woman entirely. Although one long dead.

After a while, Ella staggered over to where the creature had been. A grave had been dug up with a young child’s fresh corpse having been pulled up and gnawed on.

Ella felt the vomit in her back throat and managed to get to the manicured hedges before throwing up.

“I don’t know what is going on at all. Why did I get this? Why am I constantly getting drawn into these things? How the fuck am I supposed to survive?”

Ella sat with Jae-Young’s arm around her. She was close to blubbering and knew it but felt helpless. After what had happened in the cemetery, she had called him and he had taken the subway over and was now sitting next to her on a park bench. Their breath puffed out in the cold, night air.

“Shit, Ella, I have no idea. You know, most of the time I didn’t even think about myself as something different. I lived for months and years without taking off this ring and when I did, I wouldn’t recognize myself in the mirror.” He hesitated, “when I close my eyes and think what I look like, I don’t see my true self…”

They sat together quietly.

He continued as if there hadn’t been a pause, “If I can’t even accept that, know that truly, how can I know anything that can help you?” He took a deep breath, “At least you kicked its ass.”

“Yeah…” she started laughing which quickly turned to sobbing.

They sat together for a while in the cold winter air. A small drift of snow started falling and Jae-Young quipped, “It’s a Christmas miracle!” which led to a small quiet laugh, and she snuggled in for warmth and comfort.

Neither saw the tall, gaunt person watching them from the alley across the street.

When she walked back to her home, her family was up watching television. She had carefully wrapped her jacket to cover her bloody shirt and had stopped in a late night cafe to clean her face from dirt.

She said a quick goodnight with an over exaggerated yawn and went to the bathroom where she pulled out antiseptic and looked at her wounds. They were shallower than she had thought - three transverse streaks across her stomach. She washed them out in the shower, hissing as the soap caused them to sting and then cursing as she treated them with betadine and carefully bandaged them with gauze.

She made her way to bed and fell asleep instantly. Her dreams were of the beautiful woman’s vicious smile as she ate Ella’s entrails.

VBS by BiSim. Realistically you can’t actually get this game since it is not available to civilians, but let’s just pretend Harish pirated it.

The recipe for Easy Roasted Brussel Sprouts

Ingredients 1 1/2 pounds (675g) Brussels sprouts, trimmed and split in half 3 tablespoons (45ml) extra-virgin olive oil Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper Preparation Adjust oven rack to upper position, place a foil-lined rimmed baking sheet on it, and preheat oven to 500°F (260°C). Toss sprouts with olive oil and season to taste with salt and pepper. Remove baking sheet from oven and add Brussels sprouts, working quickly to turn them all cut-side-down. Return to oven and roast until tender and deeply browned, about 20 minutes total. Serve immediately.

3. BQE = Brooklyn-Queens Expressway