Space Cowgirl
by Jennifer GomollI woke up to a mutated left hand; no dream, and no joke. The network of blue veins that had become so obvious across the back of it was not only gone, it had taken muscle and sinew and bone with it. I flexed my hand and the near-transparent skin stretched over joints that were no longer there.
"My fingernail beds are empty," I observed to no one, turning and placing the glassy appendage on the rumples left by Jerry's body. It was not unusual for him to up and leave without a word; no need to panic about that. Yet. No trace of his body's warmth lingered in the pillow he'd used, or the bedsheet - but then, I detected no coolness either with my heavy hand, which, if I didn't let myself think about it too hard, wasn't an overwhelming problem.
Oh, God.
By the time I got to the bathroom, the translucency had spread. It ran up my left arm and across my chest, reminding me of something I'd read about ancient Egyptians once in a magazine at the gynecologist's office. They believed a certain vein ran from the third finger of the left hand to the heart; wedding rings are worn on that finger in honor of it. Whether this bit of hokum was true or not, there was no ring on my finger and no obvious vein to my heart, but there was something funny going on in that muscle, whose shimmering outline still beat blood throughout my body...apparently. I had to look more closely into the mirror to believe what I was seeing, but there it was: a little stallion, galloping in place as if my chest held a 19th century zoetrope. I watched the horse's mane blowing and flickering in the wind (what wind?) and pressed my good hand to my chest. Felt normal. Then my left hand. Felt nothing.
As I showered, I rehearsed a phone call: Hello, Doctor? Yeah, I woke up this morning with a science fair project hand and a horse in my heart. I tried not to notice that neither very hot nor very cold water affected my strange new areas in any way. I chose to put on a long-sleeved flannel shirt which Jerry had left behind one night and never seemed to have noticed was missing. It covered my mystery to the knuckles. Because I was unwilling to waste expensive makeup on my fingers, I wore gloves instead. Or, a glove; I couldn't find its mate. The glove was a silly, stretchy thing shot through with gold-colored threads. I put it on and moonwalked into the kitchen, optimistic despite my condition and the way my sometime-lover had just left without saying goodbye.
Call in sick? Sure. No typing memos today. Call the doctor? Maybe. First, I decided, taking a walk was exactly what I needed to think about what was happening to me.
September, and the leaves were just starting to turn. No kids out; all in school. I began the half-mile walk through my town's narrow streets, past the charming red-and-white fire station and the less charming drinking holes that provided the main source of entertainment on weekends around here.
As I rounded the corner of Buttercup (yes, Buttercup) Lane and Privet, a feeling of being watched yanked at the hairs on the back of my neck. Was that a shuffling, leaf-crunching sound behind me? My heart began pounding, or maybe it was just the horse galloping in place, trying to break free of me. "Whoa, boy," I whispered, and put my good hand on my chest as if I could soothe him. No luck; I was beginning to panic, my mind racing with odd and unhelpful thoughts. I began to wonder if I ought to have had breakfast. What should I feed this horse? Oatmeal, maybe.
"Crystal Lynn!"
For the first time in my life I was grateful to see Annemarie Bouton. She was waving at me from a plastic table set up across the street in front of Cafe Paree, our town's one attempt at hipness. Not surprisingly, she was the cafe's only customer.
I took a glance over my shoulder as if checking the street for traffic before crossing; no cars and no stalker. No one at all. Then again, the shriek Annemarie passes off as a voice could scare away Godzilla.
"Oh my God, it's been so long, Crystal Lynn!" Annemarie beamed as I trotted up to her table, unable to help glancing back. That creepy feeling was hard to shake.
"Looking out for Jerry's ex-wife?" Annemarie smirked. There she was: the girl I went to school with, who poked my ass and called me fatty fatty fat freak in front of the cute boys. I knew she was still in there under that big red hair and big fake smile.
As usual, I couldn't think of a good, quick comeback. Something involving her own ex-husband might have been nice. Anyway, Jerry's ex didn't bother me anymore. Much.
Instead, I said, "Crys."
"What?" She sipped at her paper cup innocently.
"Nobody's called me Crystal Lynn for the past fifteen years. It's Crys."
"Oh. Oh, of course. Always doing something different, aren't you? Well, come sit with me and catch me up on all your news! You should get one of these mochaccinos, they're totally excellent!"
"Totally," I agreed under my breath, while Annemarie waved through the window at a bored barista, pointing at me and pointing at her cup and pointing at me again. The barista seemed to think she was ordering, so I decided to sit down and have the damned coffee. My fists clenched; I didn't realize it until I noticed my fingernails were biting into only one palm.
"So what's up with you and Jerrrry?" Annemarie grinned at the prospect of getting gossip out of me. "Going good? Wedding bells, maybe?"
Nosy little..."No." I didn't even think before saying it. It was true. I realized the horse in my heart had gone quiet. What was going on in there? Was he sleeping? It felt as numb as my hand. I wanted to take a peek but stilled the impulse.
The barista - no more than twenty years old, goateed, scruffy but cute - came out with my coffee. He smiled and crinkled his nose as I handed him the money with my sparkly-gloved hand, but didn't say anything. Annemarie, however, was not so discreet.
"Oh my God," she laughed, and laid a hand on my forearm. "How...quirky!"
"I have a rash," I lied.
"Oh!" She sat back in her chair. I knew she wanted to wipe her hand on her pants, and that made me smile. She got me back though.
"I thought you were making a statement, like you used to in school. You know, with the ripped-up shirts and the platinum hair. Gosh, we all thought after high school you'd blow this crummy little 'burb like that!" She snapped her fingers on that and waited for my answer.
I shrugged. She had a point, though. No wonder she had hated me, she and all her friends: they had really thought I would be the one to get out. Why hadn't I? Art school was expensive, but that excuse was at least ten years old. More like I was bad at making choices, opening doors, and stepping out there.
"You wanna see something weird?" I asked.
"Um. Sure. I guess." She eyed me funny, and I almost lost my nerve.
"I woke up like this." I turned the glove inside-out, revealing my ghost hand.
"Oooh . . ." Annemarie leaned forward again and stared, wide-eyed with fascination. "Where did you get it?"
"What do you mean, get it? It's my hand." I waggled my fingers.
Annemarie put her own hand up to her mouth a moment. "Your hand...your hand just went like that?"
"Yeah. Just the hand. Well, a little up my arm. Not much." I couldn't bring myself to mention the horse; I felt protective of him, my own special secret pet.
Annemarie jumped up out of her chair, jostling the table and sending my coffee cup flying into my lap. No problem there; it burned like hell.
"Freak!" She pointed at me, letting out her inner, ponytailed ten-year-old. "Freaky, freaky fat...fatty . . ." She lost her ability to speak and simply ran away, her flip-flop heels clattering down the street.
"You okay?" The barista had come out, bearing a roll of paper towels. Apparently he'd seen me jump up when the coffee hit my pants, but now he wasn't staring at the brown stain cooling over my crotch; he was intent upon my translucent hand.
"Wicked," he whispered.
The barista, whose "service with a smile" tag read WAYNE, unlocked the employees-only restroom for me so I could clean up. I couldn't do much but dab at my jeans with a cloth, wince at my reddened thighs, and dry off a little (very little) with a wall-mounted hand dryer.
Before returning Wayne's keys, I took the opportunity to unbutton my shirt and check on the horse. Grazing. He took no notice of me, munching at the bottom of my heart and swishing his tail. That crazy little guy couldn't chew his way out of there, could he? I shuddered and rebuttoned. Slipped the glove back on my hand, too, resuming my facade of normalcy.
"Thanks for your help, Wayne." I slid the keys across the service counter.
"Oh, I'm not Wayne. I just wear his name tag in case I get complaints or something." The clever moppet smiled at me.
"I can't complain," I shrugged.
"Douglas," he confessed. I liked Wayne better. Oh, well.
I turned to leave before I started getting ideas about spicing up my unsatisfactory life with an attempt at seducing this cheeky young thing. Besides, my horse seemed to be kicking me.
Then, I think, my horse fell down dead.
Standing frozen, I pointed at the plate glass window, where I could have sworn I'd just seen a dark shape staring in at me.
"Did you see that? Did you ever see a person that big?"
"Where?" Douglas craned his neck over the espresso machine, but there was no longer anything to see.
I've never been the fainty type, but I slumped into a chair nonetheless, spots enlarging before my eyes. "What's happening to me?" I pressed my hand over my eyes and let the darkness come.
Douglas came around the counter with a cup of ice water, setting it down in front of me as I was opening my eyes again. He doffed his apron before straddling a chair backward at my table. Without the apron to cover it, a green alien face stared at me with dark, empty eyes from the black cotton background of his novelty t-shirt. Cute. "I hope you don't mind me asking about your, uh, disability . . ." Douglas pointed at my gloved hand.
"Save the sensitivity training," I advised, peeling off the glove. "I don't know what this is all about." The hand shimmered under the fluorescent lights as I turned it this way and that.
"Wow." Douglas pulled at his lip ring, deep in thought. "Does it hurt?"
He ran a gentle finger over the back of my hand, reminding me of a high school boyfriend who used to play with my hands whenever we went to the movies, rubbing my fingers one by one in the dark theater. How pleasant that was then, I remembered. And now -
"Doesn't feel a thing."
"I've read about this." Douglas tapped my hand. "Freaky stuff like this. I have literature at home. Documented cases of otherworldly phenomena, interference with human life. And I've got a Polaroid camera. Would you mind - ?"
"No. No pictures." I began to realize my mistake. Hang around this kid long enough and I'd probably wind up taken away to research labs where I would be poked and prodded for the rest of my miserable life, while ex-barista Douglas Moneybags grew fat on book sales and TV appearances.
"I gotta go." I shot out of my chair, pulling on my glove.
"You misunderstand," Douglas called as I hurried out the door. "I can help - "
But I didn't need his help. Or anybody's help. Well, maybe Jerry's.
"Jerry Newcastle."
"Oh Jerry, I'm glad you're there." I sobbed into the phone. I couldn't help it; my horse was getting fitful and wouldn't stop nipping at the walls of my heart. "Something's happening to me, I don't know what to do."
"Now, now, calm down." Pause. "Is this some PMS thing?"
"That's not what this is about!" I pounded my numb fist into my bed, right where Jerry's head usually lays.
"Okay, okay, let's not get hysterical. Hang on." Jerry began to hold a distant-sounding conversation with someone who probably had just walked into his office. That's what I got for calling him at work. "Okay. Crys?"
"Still here." And in a fetal position.
"Are you mad at me?"
"Huh?"
"Now calm down..."
Sigh. "I am."
"Now don't be mad at me for leaving this morning without waking you. I didn't want - "
"I don't care about that!" Suddenly, I sat up. "Jerry. Did you notice anything...strange? Anything at all?"
"Well...there was this...nothing's happened, has it? Should I call the police?
"Police? Jerry, what are you talking about?"
"Well . . ." The guilty tone in his voice was making my teeth grind. "See, I heard something around dawn. A noise like, like I don't know. It woke me up out of a sound sleep and the first thing I saw was the window, and outside...outside I thought someone was there. But then he was gone - "
"Like a big, dark...shapey someone?"
"Large, yes. But I think it was only a dream. I got dressed and looked around outside before I left, but..."
"But you took off and left me alone with that thing outside!"
"Now, now, let's not get hysterical."
"I'll damn well get hysterical, you...you..." Once again, my brain was too slow with the insults. So I slammed down the phone instead, and resumed my fetal position.
I watched the afternoon slip away through my bedroom window, waiting for the dark thing to come get me. I left this vigil only twice, once to use the bathroom and once to answer the door when the pizza I'd ordered for dinner arrived. The pizza guy was disheveled and possibly drunk, but not a malevolent dark shape thingy, so I tipped him well.
As I ate, I reflected on all the bad things that could happen besides getting caught by the dark shape: Douglas could track me down and make a supernatural project of me. Annemarie could spread gossip about my condition. Jerry could come over and patronize me some more.
Suddenly the dark thing didn't seem so bad. I wiped the pepperoni grease from my fingers and resolved to face this thing head-on...before the horse began suffering from pizza heartburn, anyway.
Pulling my baseball bat/home security system out from under my bed, I felt a rush of adrenaline I knew I would have to take advantage of fast, before it wore off. I stopped only to pull on my fringy leather jacket before heading out the back door into the dark night.
I spent about five minutes standing stock-still under the security lights outside my building, probably looking like a stoned Casey at the bat. Finally I moved out toward the open, weedy space that was more or less a yard, noting how difficult it was to get a grip on the bat with my left hand.
"Well, there y'are!" The voice was so loud, and sudden, and inexplicably Western that...well, my bladder gave it up. Thank you, bladder. "I thought I was gonna have t'knock, and yeh know how hard that is when yer made of goo?"
As I swung my bat around uselessly in the direction of the voice, I learned that urine cools pretty quickly in a pleasant autumn breeze. Now I was shivering.
"Who are you? Where are you?"
One shadow extricated itself from surrounding shadows. Yep, it was him, my dark shape.
"Now, now," it said, holding up something vaguely resembling hands. Great. Another Jerry, telling me to relax.
I lowered the bat, slowly. Somehow it didn't seem much use anymore.
"Tell me about this," I said. I touched my hand. I touched my heart.
"This'll clear it all up for yeh." The shape held up a yellow circle. It came closer - kneeled? - and took my ungloved left hand.
I opened my mouth to say Oh come on, marriage isn't the answer, but when Mr. Shape slid the ring home, a blue spark shot from my ring finger, up my arm, straight to my transparent heart. Something screamed and screamed, and it was probably me. But when it was all over, my horse, fully grown, stood beside me, innocently nuzzling my face with its long nose.
"Oh," I breathed, transfixed by the sight of this translucent creature. He was the embodiment of every glass horse little girls collected and focused their fancies upon, until little brothers smashed them to bits or the girls grew into women who sold off their childhood dreams on Ebay.
"He's beautiful." I patted his smooth, hard shoulder.
The shape chuckled. "That there's a fe-male horse, missy."
"Oh." I blushed and changed the subject. "So uh, you sound unusually unlike a...a dark thing." I pictured a more refined, understated voice coming out of that menacing shape; Anthony Hopkins's, perhaps.
"You couldn't imagine any better."
"The hell I couldn't. I thought you'd sound more - "
"Refined? Understated?"
Stupid smug being. I began to wish he'd leave me alone with my dream horsie. "I have an imagination." Then: "It's about all I've got."
"Shoot, missy, you couldn't even imagine yer way outta this town." It grinned, and I saw teeth.
Three for three: I had no comeback.
"But we can fix that."
"Are you going to abduct me?"
"No, no, I ain't taking you nowheres you don't want to go. But let me tell you. Ever wonder who your daddy is?"
I eyed him. "Mom only said he got deported when I was three."
Mr. Shape rubbed where his chin ought to be. "Well now that's true, in a way. He was sent far away when his job here was done. Now I've got nothing but kind words towards your mother, rest her soul, but I don't think the little lady quite knew anything about your paternity."
"It's not...you're not..."
Old Shapey laughed at me. "Now, that's mighty sweet'a you, seeing as I'm past my prime and all. Haven't sired a thing in over two thousand years, I haven't, but that's sweet. So you understand now, don't you? You're part of a very special breeding program, young lady. Just like all your schoolgirl friends said, like that one with the red hair today. What was that word again?"
"Freak." I buried my face in the horse's neck. "So I'm, what, half like you?"
"Halfways, that's right. But you're more than guys like me can ever be. We started a whole new kind, do y'see? And there's a whole new territory for us out there, most beautiful place you ever saw." He waved an amorphous limb at the stars.
Well, finally. My ticket out. The one I wanted when my chubby little pre-adolescent self still believed my father would come back to get me. The one I thought Jerry the self-absorbed divorcé would be. And now this creepy-but-cool thing which was neither father nor lover, yet -
"I'm sorry. I need to think about this." I pulled at the yellow circle on my finger, but it was only some buttery goo now. I wiped it off on my pants.
Old Shapey didn't like that. He got bigger and darker, if that was possible.
"Think about what? Your lack of progress in this no-horse town? You don't belong here, among these...listen, Missy, if you think I'm swinging by this corner of the universe again - "
"She doesn't need you to. As long as she's got that horse."
I whipped around. Douglas! Boy, anyone could find out where you lived in this town. He stood there, pushing his glasses up his nose with a shaking finger, clutching some lame paperback like a tiny shield over his narrow chest. God, he was cute.
I gave Shape a tentative poke with the end of my baseball bat. It was like stirring up tar. I let the bat go and Shape engulfed it. Ugh. "I think I want you to go now. Please."
For something without a face, Shape was able to give me a very convincing look of contempt. Then he threw himself onto my crystal horse, whose head snapped up in alarm.
"I'll be taking this." Shape wound a tendril of himself around my horse's glassy mane. "So this little to-do won't have been a total waste."
I almost grabbed for the horse; almost, but remembered the fate of my baseball bat. Maybe this guy wanted me to get stuck; I couldn't risk it.
As he rose into the air on my beautiful, bucking horse, flashes of light strobed the night air.
Douglas again. Taking pictures with a disposable camera. I didn't have the heart to tell him no tabloid would pay for his undoubtedly underexposed shots of this extra-terrestrial horse theft.
Shape and horse disappeared. I could swear I heard a "yee-ha!" It may have been only the wind.
In his haste to play paparazzi, Douglas had dropped his book. I picked it up. Space Cowgirls, the Untold Stories of. . . something, the cover was splattered with mud. Nonfiction.
"Sorry about your book." I handed it back.
"Sorry about your horse." Douglas appeared genuinely sorry for me - or for some missed opportunity, I wasn't sure. "I bet you really could have ridden it out of here."
My heart fluttered. It didn't have anything to do with Douglas's brown eyes. Or, not much.
"I'm not sure it's gone." I put my hand to my heart. That little organ had never felt so powerful as it did just then. "I don't think it's something I can really lose."
"We should talk about this. Do you, uh, wanna get some coffee?" Douglas looked pink and hopeful.
"Yeah. But...not tonight. Like I told the Shape, I want to think."
"But - "
"Later, please."
I walked back to my apartment door, like I did every night of my life, but this time, it was different. I turned the cool metal doorknob with my fully restored left hand. It felt wonderful.
I could grow a wild animal in my heart. The horse had done something to it; I'd never felt it beat so strong and sure. I could leave if I wanted - this town, Jerry, my excuses, my doubts.
Leave for a whole other world.
©Jennifer Gomoll
Jennifer Gomoll lives and works in Chicago. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of literary magazines and websites, most recently TheDeepening.com, The First Line, VerbSap.com, and InkPot. She also writes the occasional review for NewPages.com. Someday, perhaps, the novel in her closet will see the light of day.