Free Shadow Falls: Badlands by Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff Page B

animalistic, feral, as the young girl from his past died in the filthy streets of her Veracruz ghetto.
    “Be still, you,” he hissed through gritted teeth just as he noticed he was down on all fours, like a dog, at the front door of the Gypsy's parlor. Looking up, Galen had no recollection of moving, let alone crawling, across the street to get there. The lock clicked before the door creaked open. Galen looked up to find the Gypsy standing before him, her body outlined by the light coming from her parlor—and from deep inside his mind, a little voice told him what he seemed to know all along: that his arrival here was an inevitability that he could not have changed if he had tried.
    “I don't think this was my choice,” Galen responded.
    “Understand that everything that follows is your destiny at work, and any attempt to fight it will only result in grave consequences.”
    “Please,” Galen pleaded, but the crone only stood and stared. Finally, she spoke.
    “Come in and warm your bones by the fire. I think I know why you’re here.”
    He had been sitting by a small cast iron stove for nearly a half-hour when the Gypsy brought him a steaming mug to drink. “This will warm your bones for sure.”
    Galen drank from the hot cup. What was inside was bitter, but he kept drinking because the warmth. Also, something in his mind told him he could not put the mug down even if he had wanted to.
    “What do you know about your past?” asked the crone. The question alarmed Galen, raising the hairs on the back of his neck.
    When he didn't answer she pressed him. “Where were you born?”
    “I don't know,” came the response.
    “Who were your parents?”
    “I don't know.”
    “What is the date of your birth?”
    “I don’t know!” bellowed Galen.
    “There is a curse over you,” she mewed, nodding her head. “One that is ancient. One that is unforgiving.” The Gypsy spat onto the floor. “You are an abomination!”
    To Galen, all this crazy talk coming from the crone buzzed about his head like flies. “I'm a man,” he blurted out. “Not whatever you're trying to make me out to be.”
    The crone's sickly laughter filled the air between them, which is when Galen smelled her breath’s rank disease. She now reminded him of a corpse, with her sallow skin wrapped loosely around her skull. It came as a sudden flash, but there he stood—in his mind's eye—over her dead body.
    He blinked and his eyelids suddenly felt weighed down. With effort he opened them, but the drowsiness was overwhelming. He could feel his shoulders go slack as the energy drained from his body.
    “Very good,” said the crone, grinning. She ran a bony finger down his cheek. “Very good.”
    ***
    Galen’s eyes opened to the sight of a small white mouse crawling out of a hole gnawed in the baseboard. Its nose wrinkled and its tiny red eyes stared back at him, as if examining him as much as he was examining it.
    “Hi,” Galen began to whisper before cutting himself off, startled when a shoe heel came down upon the white mouse, smashing it into the floor.
    Daisy stood there nude, shoe in her hand. “Duh— duh— dirty cuh— cuh— critter,” Daisy muttered, she looked at the bottom of the shoe, now splattered with blood and bits of fur before tossing it aside.
    She crawled back into the bed, pulling the covers over her back before straddling Galen’s naked frame.
    “Let’s guh— guh— go again?” she whispered into his ear. Any thoughts Galen had about how he had gotten here were pushed away by her misshapen breasts brushing playfully against his chest. She began to grind her hips into his and Galen could feel his natural response come to life. But as he entered he looked up into the ugly visage of the old Gypsy crone, her skin wrapped loosely around her skull, baring her stained and crooked teeth at him.
    “No!” he screamed.
    His heart pulsing with fright, he roughly shoved her off and leapt from the bed. But when he looked back he