The Half That You See by Rebecca Rowland (best summer reads .TXT) 📕

walker. Derek was there, bandaged himself and wearing his psychic wounds with a Shakespearean verisimilitude, and bolstered by his upstanding pater familias, Deputy Chief Peter Sonke. If not for the judge, a raven-haired, sharp-featured woman from some European micro-country, Rima wouldn’t have had a chance in hell. As it stood, visitation exchanges occurred only at public safety facilities, and Derek was denied information about Rima’s living rearrangements.

A conversation ticked its way through Rima’s head, verbatim:

“How is that poor woman going to be able to enforce that protection order? That family essentially owns this town, this whole county.”

A woman’s voice, almost familiar. Rima concentrated, from a corner outside the courtroom, still scrambled from the concussion. An Assistant District Attorney, powerless to make any charges against the slippery Derek stick.

“With a gun,” came the reply. Another woman, voice rich and authoritarian. The Honorable Lenore Ristani.

“Your Honor, you can’t be serious!” The shocked whisper found a marble wall to bounce off of.

“What else can she do? She tries to call the cops, who’s going to respond? A Sonke, that’s who. She’ll be the one in jail. They’ve already arrested her for trumped up charges, black-listed her at every possible place of employment. I’m telling you, Sandra, she would be better off killing the bastard and going to prison. She’s safer there.”

Rima’s walker squeaked and the two women turned to her, then disappeared behind a locked courthouse door.

From the yard, a flap and another corvine clacking.

Moving day! Moving day!

Rima had to leave. She rummaged through her handbag, pushed a pill into her mouth, as questionable as the couch, and dragged ten-year-old Haylee out the door. The raven led the way.

The modest road lost itself carelessly in the Missouri vastness, passed farmhouses, fields. Rima and Haylee rode its redolent back, spoke to the tired livestock and their tired stewards as they wandered. One outcropping distinguished itself: tents and trailers in a dustless impermanence, impertinent in the face of so much Midwestern boredom. Rima and Haylee skipped to a carnival that appeared from nowhere.

The raven, sitting on a white pipe gate in front of colorful tents, spoke in a clear voice.

See the show! See the show!

Or did it?

Rima turned her head, saw trails, and wondered what the hell she had taken. The contents of her purse were a continuous adventure since she left Derek and found a new group of friends, hard-partying singles like herself. She steadied her eyes on the raven.

The light refracted from its oiled plumage was not the light of Tornado Alley’s epic skies, not of any known world at all. Alien as starlight, it also wavered around the structures of the carnival, strangely proportioned, now that Rima looked at them. There was a feeling of crowds, yet she saw no one. The music was loud, unfamiliar.

She patted her worn sweatpants, ugly as sin, but chosen by her alone. She had no money, was too poor even for pockets. “I have money at home…”

Your bank account

isnevermore.

Rima turned at the voice. Did she actually hear it? She faced the raven, all hematite sheen and marcasite eyes. It cocked its head, and the profile reminded her of someone.

Judge Lenore.

The raven was a woman, Rima realized, yet how she knew that was another puzzle. She stared, and the raven wavered in that X Files light. The wings spread, jeweled. She really was a woman, beautifully robed and crowned in stars. A new moon slivered the backdrop.

Celestial.

A bell-like aria from the sharp beak:

The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,

Death and despair flame about me.

If Sarastro does not through you feel

The pain of death,

Then you will be my daughter nevermore.

Disowned may you be forever,

Abandoned may you be forever,

Destroyed be forever

All the bonds of nature,

If not through you

Sarastro becomes pale! (as death)

Hear, Gods of Revenge,

Hear a mother’s oath!

The aria was in German, yet Rima understood every word, and recoiled in horror.

Haylee kill Derek?

She glared at the raven, that blowsy Queen of the Nightclub, in her cheap rhinestone stars and cardboard moon.

“What kind of chickenshit bitch do you think I am? I’ll do my own killing, thank you very much!”

Rima then gagged, vomited glitter. With a tacky flap, the raven, now just a grimy bird again, flew off. Rima knew she was to follow and drag her umbrage with her.

Animals and people meandered around them, their progress watery, amoeboid. The weird light distorted, perjured known colors. A dog paused in front of Rima and Haylee, his face disproportionately large. He stared up at Rima.

You should have been sterilized at birth. Better yet, aborted. The world doesn’t need more imbeciles like you. You can’t even get a fucking coffee cup clean!

The canine mouth was rubbery around Derek’s voice. The dog nipped at Haylee’s ankle and the blonde girl squeaked.

A woman with watermelon-sized tits jiggled into view. She hoisted the gargantuan milk sacks and gave them a wobble, whispering.

Pirate’s treasure, who wants that sunken chest? Who loves the Queen of Complacency?

Her voice was too deep.

Derek again.

A beautiful Friesian horse passed by, led by a thin, almost emaciated man.

If you got up off your ass once in a while, you could lose that five pounds.

An ovation of wings drowned out this latest incarnation of Derek, and the horse went liquid movement, nothing more than ravens flapping away.

More people in absurd clothing and animals of impossible shape glimmered in and out. A zonky, lop-eared and tiger-striped, sidled up from behind, rubbed its rough coat on Rima’s shoulder.

So this is what you do when I’m working my ass off for you, hang around nasty bars and spread your skinny legs for indigent bums? Sleazy slut!

The zonky kicked Rima airborne, farting in Haylee’s face in the process. Rima landed face down in piss-smelling grass.

Roadhouse whore!

The raven hopped over the grass to stand in front of Rima.

This is that very Mab

That plaits the manes of horses in the night,

And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,

Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:

This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,

That presses them