Free The Witch of the Wood by Michael Aronovitz

face down in the toilet, arms limp on each side of the bowl because he’d thought he’d found a neat little tunnel to try and dive down, or worse, he’d be this smiling, skeletal cinder because he was advanced enough to walk, he moved when you blinked, and he’d evolved to the point that he could jump up on the stove, monkey-squat there because the perspective was new, then lean over the front and turn on the knobs.
    At his door, bags thrust up one forearm, Rudy struggled with the key and heard some kind of moan from inside. He stopped. Silence. And the noise was hard to identify now in retrospect because of the relative racket he’d been making, mistaking his Widener office key (as he so often did) for the one that fit the apartment lock because the two copper stamps looked so much alike.
    Something fell inside the apartment, something distant, as in the back by the bathroom, and Rudy fumbled the proper key in the hole, thrusting the door open.
    Semi-dark. Vacated, it seemed.
    “Wolfie?” he said, voice dead and close.
    Something came from around the corner of the bedroom, the shaft of sunlight from the picture window cutting across on an angle. It was the silhouette of a little girl, hair tousled and frayed, shoes clicking on the hard wood floor. She stopped, head tilted.
    “Daddy?”
    There was a sudden shriek, and she burst through the shaft of window-light.
    Rudy recoiled, dropping the bags on the floor.
    What came through the light and the dust rising in it was a child-monster, face bruised purple and blue, mouth torn open and smeared bright red.
    She crashed into him, and he crumpled to the floor with her, heart pounding, and she looked up at him there in his lap.
    Her face wasn’t bruised or smeared; she’d been playing “makeup” with someone’s Revlon and Maybelline. He breathed a sigh of relief and she squeezed shut her eyes, as if Rudy’s image was too beautiful to bear.
    “She loves you unconditionally,” Wolfie said from the archway, “and I didn’t find her by accident.” He was a boy of six or seven now, at least physically, standing there under the hall arch wearing Rudy’s old black and gray flannel shirt coming down to his knees.
    “Her name is Brianna Rivera,” Wolfie continued. “She’s five—”
    “Five and a half!” Brianna wailed. Rudy coo-cooed a bit of soothing down without looking at her, and Wolfie continued with a bit of a laugh. “See, Dad, her father left when she was a month in front of two. She refuses to eat anything but fried chicken skin, chopped-up hot dogs, and Fruity Pebbles. She’s good at hopscotch and remedial ceramics, but still has difficulty making friends in pre-school. She writes poems, likes drawing pictures in the dirt under the tire swing in the back yard, and once had a pet hamster. She also likes chewing things because they make juice, like her hair and the strings on her Flyers sweatshirt.”
    “What’s that to do with me?” Rudy said defensively.
    “You’re a match,” Wolfie said, coming close now. “People are linked psychologically and physiologically. They are cross-wired; biologically drawn to each other, and they spend most of their lives denying it. So sad.”
    “She’s five,” Rudy said, teeth gritted down.
    Wolfie sat cross-legged next to his father, and Brianna reached to touch his hair.
    “So pretty,” she said.
    “You are,” Wolfie teased back, much to her delight. He looked back to his father. “And I’m joking with you just a bit. You and the girl are only linked because it’s passed down. Present’s in the bedroom. Check it out.”
    Rudy handed over the girl, her feet pigeon-toed and dragging a bit on the floor, and he barely noticed that Wolfie already possessed the strength to bear her weight straight-armed before hugging her in. He popped a knee on the way pushing up and his walk had a bit of a disoriented sway, but he pretty much knew what was waiting for him in the bedroom.
    He turned the corner and she was