The Maltriarch
"For the last time, I'm not your Mal-truck or whatever. I don't even know what that means."
"Silence, Maltriarch," the figure in front of her hisses.
Gretchen huffs. "No, I will not silence. Do you know how stressful of a week I've had? I think I deserve a Friday afternoon chilling with my girlfriend, but NO! My notebook is stolen by imps, I get ten percent taken off of my grade, and now I'm kidnapped by a literally shady group of weirdos who can't tell their Antichrist from a sleep-deprived Physics major!"
The toy gun swings in her direction once again. "Cease your wretched speech or I will shoot."
"Good luck with that thing," Gretchen grumbles, leaning back in the chair in resignation.
There's a weighty pause. Within the patch of haze, the toy bobs from one spot to another, as if it were being examined. The little red button on the (empty) bright yellow water gun is pressed. Surprise, surprise… nothing happens. The toy is violently flung to the floor. A series of overlapping whispers emanates from the figures, and Gretchen rolls her eyes.
She should probably be a little less antagonistic, but honestly? She's so done with life right now that the stupid sentient patches of haze may as well shoot her with a real gun. At least then, she may get extensions for the metric crap-ton of homework waiting for her. She got sick last Monday, so sick she barely even remembers anything beyond a blur of snot-filled tissues and miserable suffering, and two weeks later she's still trying to catch up.
She tugs half-heartedly at the suppressor cuffs holding her hands together and watches idly as the other three figures in the room fall silent. They're still drawing those symbols. Well. "Drawing" is a loose term. They're hovering near the walls, and symbols are just kind of... appearing? The shadowy figures are really just floating patches of greenish darkness that kinda look like people if you squint. They don't have distinguishable hands. Or distinguishable faces. Or distinguishable anything, really.
'This is your fault,' she thinks angrily at Tasia. 'I told you not to mess with that book and now they think I'm their Mal-truck.'
'I already said I was sorry, okay?' Tasia responds. 'I'm trying to find you.'
'Well, work faster. Our Netflix time is rapidly approaching. You're lucky these cuffs don't work on thought projection.'
'You're not exactly helping, you know. You haven't given me much to go on.'
Gretchen bristles. 'I'm sorry that I was so busy being KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS and KIDNAPPED that I couldn't see where these weirdos were taking me.'
'Okay, jeez. Touchy.'
'Oh my god.'
'…I really mean it, though. This is, what, the fourth time? I'm sorry this keeps happening.'
Gretchen's annoyance abates (slightly). Is getting kidnapped to be used as bait to lure your girlfriend to her doom incredibly inconvenient? Sure, especially when it happens multiple times. It's not like Tasia ever means for this to happen, though. Gretchen wouldn't normally be so snarky; she's just been having a really bad week.
She didn't think anything of it when the odd quartet of shadowy figures started showing up in her favorite study spot. She'd just assumed they were a new group of inter-dimensional students.
The alarm bells should have started going off when she realized they never actually had backpacks or studied. They would just stand in the corner, not appearing to be doing anything. Or maybe they were doing something? It's hard to tell when they don't have clearly discernible tangible forms. And anyways, she was a little more focused on her essay on arc pair grammar.
This Friday afternoon was supposed to be a minor breather. She and Tasia were planning to have a short Netflix marathon to celebrate making it through the week, before Gretchen would start working her Physics problem set and Tasia would continue her quest for the source of the imps terrorizing people on campus (and hopefully find Gretchen's linguistics notebook in the process). But of course, the world just hates Gretchen's guts this week, and that's why she's currently tied to a chair in a dark room with the aforementioned shadowy figures.
Consequences of having a magical emissary girlfriend with a little too much curiosity about old books full of Latin necromancy spells, Gretchen supposes.
She should probably stop complaining. She's not dead, unlike Paulo Garcia whose body Campus Security had to fish out of a tree last week after the imps were through with him. She never liked him, anyway, and he's continuing classes registered as a ghost so she doesn't have to feel guilty for thinking that. And anyway, the suppressor cuffs on her also aren't actually suppressing her mental abilities, so they're pretty much just normal handcuffs. That's something she can use to her advantage.
"So… could y'all tell me your names?"
'Wow. Points for subtlety,' Tasia comments.
'Shut up.'
'Fine,' Tasia chuckles, and falls quiet.
"We will not allow our name to be sullied by your tongue."
"I mean you could have just said 'no,' but okay."
No response.
"Alright. Where are we, then?"
"Basement," one of the figures answers after a long silence.
"Well, yeah," Gretchen says, looking around at the cold stone walls. "I figured, but I mean the basement of where?"
There's a sound, but it's violently cut off as the haze jerks suddenly. Gretchen is pretty sure that was the equivalent of one of the figures elbowing the one that spoke.
"We don't think we should tell you that."
"Why not? I'm only curious."
Suspicious silence. Gretchen is sure they'd be giving her the stink eye if they could.
"You are in your place of reckoning," the figure in front of her finally says.
The first tendrils of serious fear start to worm through Gretchen's ribs as it clicks. This really isn't about Tasia. This is about her.
"What… who exactly do you think I am?"
"You are the Maltriarch. Reborn to wreak havoc on the earth."
"Why would I suffer through college if that was my plan? And what makes you think it's me?"
"You made your first kill. You've released your imps to cause chaos. Your energy reeks ill intent."
Gretchen stares. "...Are you talking about Paulo? Look, I've never killed anyone. The imps got him, and besides, I was literally sick the day he—"
"LIES!" comes the responding hiss. "You have taken your first life, and you must be stopped. We have been thwarted before, Maltriarch. It will not happen again, we are sure."
"What... thwarted by who...?"
The rest move away from the symbols that Gretchen suddenly suspects aren't drawn with red paint, because when is it ever just red paint? They move to stand at four points around her. She vaguely remembers Tasia saying something about the sanctity of the four cardinal directions.
'Hey, Tasia? Could you hurry it up?'
'Working on it. What's wrong?'
The figures start chanting, and Gretchen pulls frantically at her bonds. The symbols on the walls start glowing. A wind starts up starts up out of nowhere.
'They're CHANTING and stuff is GLOWING and I'm kind of MILDLY FREAKING OUT.'
'That doesn't sound mild.'
'TASIA!'
'Sorry! Tell them to like, stop.'
'What?'
'If you can come up with a valid excuse for them to stop, then they will.'
Gretchen wants to question it further, but her skin is glowing the same color as the symbols and more symbols are appearing on her arms and everything h u r t s so she blurts: "Can I at least go to the bathroom!?"
The chanting stops. The wind stops. The glowing stops. The pain stops.
"...what?" one of the figures asks quietly, sounding genuinely confused.
"Can I go to the bathroom? Before you like, kill me or whatever you're doing."
Silence.
"Fine, I'll just pee myself I guess. I hope you like the smell."
"Wait, no, ew, fine, just… ugh." The haze moves towards her back. "Human vessels and their disgusting bodily habits."
The cuffs around her feet clack to the ground, and the ropes fall afterwards. Her hands are still cuffed behind her back, but she'll take what she can get. She stands, wary.
"You can go in the corner," the figure that freed her says.
"What? With y'all here?"
"Yes? I do not see the problem."
"She wants us to leave," another figure says. "I took Vessel Physiology. Human vessels in particular place high value in privacy. We have to vacate before she will do anything."
"And let her do just try to escape? I refuse."
The figures start arguing. Gretchen stares in disbelief. At least she was right about them being inter-dimensional students, though she's not really sure if that counts as an accomplishment.
'...okay. I need you to listen to me,' Tasia's voice says in her head.
'Yeah?'
'Kill them while they're distracted.'
Gretchen's stomach does a funny, flippy thing. She starts feeling lightheaded. She's not sure if it's because of whatever the figures did to her, or because of Tasia's demand.
'What?!'
'Kill them. Do it. All you have to do is want it to happen and it will.'
'Tasia—'
'I'm not going to be able to protect you from them forever. You gotta learn to do this.'
'I... wait...'
'Chickadee, come on—'
'Did I kill Paulo Garcia?'
Tasia doesn't answer, which is all the confirmation Gretchen doesn't want. Panicked, she ends the connection again and wildly searches for something she can use, to get her out of this situation, anything, other than just... willing the figures to die. Everything is clicking into place and she hates it. The weird symbols in her linguistics notebook that she doesn't remember writing but just assumed were part of her notes about the International Phonetic Alphabet. The other times she was kidnapped, though seemingly unrelated.
The fact that she doesn't remember most of the day she was... sick. The day Paulo died.
"If she actually had to go so badly, why isn't she doing anything right now?!" comes the voice of one of the figures. She is suddenly sitting back in the chair. The cuffs click back into place around her ankles and the ropes are wrapping around her again. "She is lying, and if she urinates in the middle of the ritual then so be it."
There's a faint murmur about refusing to be the one that cleans up, and then they're chanting again and the wind starts up and the symbols and her skin are glowing and it hurts.
In the end, it happens accidentally. All she'd thought about was making the figures stop, just to give her time to think, and then they'd just dissipated—exploded?—in angry screeches. She doesn't remember crying, but when Tasia eventually appears, bloodied and somber, Gretchen realizes her cheeks are wet and there are dark spots on her jeans from her head being bent over it.
Neither of them speak. Tasia frees her from the handcuffs, and they walk back to Tasia's dorm and the Netflix marathon in silence.
A version of this short story was published on Odyssey in October 2018.
Photo Credit: Luis Vidal via Unsplash