Issue Three

JESSICA BOWERS
that his brain felt trapped in a razor
snare. The thing was faceless, but
scattered in the tangled mess of its fur
were dozens of beady black eyes that
blinked in disarray.
The thing sat on his shoulders
weightless and poised, settling into a
position that was almost completely
painless; as if it wanted to make sure its
host was as comfortable as
possible. As far as Eli could tell, it was
benign; and despite its appearance, it
seemed to cling to him not as a parasite
but as an eternal companion.
It was Eli’s creature; it was Eli’s
friend. He felt it could hear him despite
his silence; he felt they were both
entities beyond the sphere of spoken
language. Eli did not need to speak to
know that he and his creature were the
same, that they were unorthodox and
misunderstood, that they needed the
solace they’d found in one another. He
reached up and patted its mangled
mane, its wormy muscles coiling up
against his touch, then slowly
unravelling and beginning to relax.
Eli gently stroked the thing that’d once
haunted the dark skies of some
netherworld.
His mouth came open as if to laugh with
excitement, and as it did, a harsh,
warbling note came braying from the
creature’s rusty horn. Eli’s jaw locked
tightly in surprise; but in a glorious
moment, he understood in jubilant,
undeniable clarity. He opened his
mouth, his lungs crushing up in all his
effort. The horn blared acrimony,
bleating like a wounded
sheep. Sounds! He was making
sounds!
“Hello,” he mouthed, to which the
creature issued a brassy
dissonance. To Eli it sounded like a
golden hymn. “HELLO! HELLO!
HELLO!”
Eli’s face was plum purple, his tongue
flapping with the energy behind his open
mouth, his eyes rolled back in ecstasy
and his branded arms flung out and
clenched at the fists. In them he held
the fervor of quintessential passion; in
them he held his utmost gratefulness for
the Uglylights. He thanked them for
delivering him from the opaque veil that
keeps us all so blissfully unaware. He
thanked them because the Uglylights
had made him beautiful.
The living siren sang its sour song and
reached a fever-pitch; the woolly
creature’s hellish wings all aflutter with
the maelstrom of sheer sound. Fissures
shot up the walls like lightning bolts but
Eli did not relent; he yelled and yelled
until his lungs were shriveled butterflies
inside his chest. Yielding to his power,
the door to the room burst open; all of
the doors burst open and they were
free.
Eli emerged into the misty night air and
realized that he’d never been alone at
all as he looked at the three next door