Free Sacrifices by Jamie Schultz

“Always.”
    â€œI don’t even know how to use them. I just kinda got fixated on making the fucking things.”
    â€œWell, let’s get rid of them,” Karyn said, leaning over to grab the pile.
    Anna’s hand flashed out and seized her wrist. “Don’t!” she said. Her teeth were bared, her other hand squeezed into a fist.
    Karyn’s fingers opened wide.
    So did Anna’s. She rubbed her forehead with the palm of her other hand. “Jesus Christ,” she said. “Get rid of it. All of it. Next thing you know, I’ll be huddled around that shit calling it ‘my precious.’”
    Karyn tried to grin, but it didn’t feel convincing. “It’s going to be fine,” she said, and immediately regretted it, thinking of all the times she’d been told the same thing, and how much she hated it. Anna didn’t say anything either way.
    After that, Karyn couldn’t sleep. She lay back downand contemplated the night sky, which, for the moment, she could see right through the ceiling. She wondered when it was from. Sometime after the building had been knocked down or collapsed, obviously, but how far in the future? Or maybe it wasn’t even a real future, just a possibility that would fade as the moment got closer.
    It wasn’t a bad view, though only a handful of stars were visible over L.A.’s vast light pollution. Still, it made her feel exposed, as though the entire world were looking in at her, and she wished she could view a time where the ceiling still existed.
    A haze, a sketch of an outline, overlay the sky. The exposed rafters of the ceiling. She could still see the sky through it, but there was at least something. Something like this had happened a couple of times since the night she allowed the demon to come on board—the same night as Belial’s unpleasant ritual. Yesterday it had been something as trivial as wondering when Anna would come home—moments later, a ghostly Anna had slipped into the room, taken two steps, and faded out. It was hours later when Anna actually arrived, but her movements and the particular shade and angle of the lighting were identical to those in Karyn’s vision.
    Karyn’s affliction was changing, she thought. Maybe she’d been changed by contact with otherworldly forces. Not the demon, she thought, but the ethereal strangeness she’d touched during Belial’s ritual.
    God, just imagine if she could get a handle on this. Control it.
    She concentrated harder on the ghost of structure above her and watched it fill in ever so slightly. A piece of ductwork, oddly bright in a vision from some future daytime, obscured a star. Then it was gone, so completely that Karyn wasn’t sure if it had ever been there at all, or if she was just playing mind games with herself. A sudden wave of dizziness and fatigue washed over her.
    Hours passed, but the view didn’t change. Maybe it was stuck this time, finally fixed on one frozen moment,the only time she’d ever see again. She wondered if that could happen. If it did, would there be any significance to the moment, or would it be a random, useless snapshot of no particular time?
    The demon image in her mind showed her the light changing, though, and when she sat up, it showed her Anna’s prone form in the watery light of dawn. Anna, at least, was getting some rest.
    Karyn got up. She made some coffee and sat at the table—a folding card table, not too different from the one she’d left in her old apartment before abandoning the place. It had a sort of comforting familiarity to it even though it was a different table. These cheap card tables were all the same.
    She picked up a book she’d scavenged from a roadside sale of random crap. There was a half-naked guy on the cover who looked as if his torso had been carved out of granite, one arm wrapped around a swooning raven-haired beauty. Anna gave her a lot of shit for