Free Boyfriend from Hell (Saturn's Daughters) by Jamie Quaid

mirror.
    rethgad s’nataS was painstakingly inscribed across the glass beneath the backward Justy .
    Max never could spell worth a damn.
    Satan’s daughter? Me? Literally or figuratively? Was Max cursing me as I had him, or warning me? Either way, I freaked. Forgetting the shower, I dived under the covers rather than face any more mirrors. Even Milo couldn’t comfort me.
    • • •
    After another night of tossing and turning, insanely wondering if Satan—who I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in—had marked me as his, I remembered the weird message from Themis Astrology. I got up, found my glasses, and opened my netbook before I braved the shower, but I didn’t know how to retrieve a deleted instant message impossibly sent from someone who didn’t exist. Maybe the Zone had moved into my apartment. Maybe I’d carried shampoo chemicals and other pathogens home. Or maybe I was cuckoo and should check into a nest.
    But my legal mind wanted logic and explanations. I recalled the message had said something along the line of: Your Saturn transit is almost complete. And conga-rats, newest daughter.
    Daughter. Saturn? Satan? Coincidence that the words were almost identical to those in the mirror phrase? Could Max read my computer from wherever he was? Of course, that was assuming Max was behind the glass, which was pretty far out even for the Zone. Cuckoo territory.
    Exhausted from too little sleep, under too much pressure from looming finals, I was on the very edge of freaking out all over again. As far as I was concerned, the devil was a figment of Bible Belt imaginations. How could anyone be a daughter of Satan?
    Maybe my mother never spoke about my father, but given her free-spirited tendencies, I figured that was because she didn’t know who he was. Still, I kind of thought I’d have had some clue that he was the devil by now. My mother had a few skanky friends, but on the whole, they were pot smokers and slackers, not outright evildoers. I didn’t remember any of them being short and dark like me. I have my mother’s coloring, except she looks like Cleopatra and I don’t.
    I was definitely going to find someone who could replace that medicine cabinet. Right now, I had classes and work and couldn’t afford a day in bed.
    • • •
    I was so stressed, I didn’t even care that a photographer caught me driving out of the parking lot in my rattle-heapMiata when I left. If they wanted a real story, they’d have to see my bathroom mirror. Maybe I should take a hammer to it. Vandalism wasn’t my usual modus operandi, but I figured I was justified.
    I was now undecided about going to the viewing at the funeral home tonight. The Max I’d known deserved my last respects, only I was too unnerved to pay them in front of a roomful of staring strangers and a passel of reporters and a family who didn’t know me. But I couldn’t skip class to attend the church services scheduled for tomorrow morning. Besides, I wasn’t even certain I’d be allowed inside a church without a bolt of lightning striking me—that’s how far my nightmares had taken me.
    I argued with myself all day as I went through the routine of school and counting cash without incident. The viewing was that evening. I probably should have watched the news so I could get some idea of how the reports were being spun, but I couldn’t stomach reliving that crash over and over again.
    Walking from the bus stop to the tenement, I ran into the gray-haired stranger, who was looking more disheveled and wild-eyed than before.
    “Hide,” he muttered without stopping. “Don’t let them find you.”
    No way was I confronting a crazy man. I hurried home to debate the funeral.
    In the end, my respect for Max won out. I might not have known him well, but we’d had a good few months. We’d fought and argued like any couple, but we’d never gone to bed mad. He might have been alittle too full of himself, but he’d been a decent, fun-loving guy. Unless some