Fairy Dust

FAIRY DUST

by

Martin Stanfill

Owen was the kind of guy who arrived at the first meeting holding a dirigible-sized flaming suitcase of mental illness, which is to say, his madness was not only painfully evident, but it planned to stay for a while.

He sounded like the Lucky Charms guy and always talked like he was reading some stupid poem. He did seem to know a lot about a lot of different things, or so I thought, but I'm not book smart–or any kind of smart, really–or so I’ve been

told.

Todd had always been the smart one, but that's because he had been raised in a sterile plastic sack inside a spotless home that emphasized good grades and Jesus. I was raised in a trailer that smelled like dog piss and a bar. Upon meeting Owen, Todd labeled him a humanist, and when he said the word, his nose wrinkled as if he had just opened a bottle of dog farts. I just thought Owen was an idiot. But, in the end, that was me.

Poor Todd and I just happened to be in front of Owen’s house, smoking our last two Marloboros and loitering on a rock divider wall, wishing we were old enough to buy liquor, despite being flat-broke.

The middle of August brought with it a repressive, wet heat that prickled my scalp and pissed me off, as did the fact that we both smelled like a dishrag-wrapped armpit. We were about to head to Todd’s centrally cooled dwelling when a lanky figure with a mop of disheveled red hair dressed in a denim button-up, an orange Speedo, and Birkenstock flip-flops appeared from his little house and, like a genie, just started granting wishes. First, he asked if we’d like a beer. Todd whispered in my ear that he thought Owen might be a kiddie-diddler–his mother was always warning him about the kiddie-diddlers–that they would drug him and fondle his butthole, or make him touch their balls. I reminded Todd that, at 17, we were most likely no longer attractive to most pedophiles. I assured him that we were still appealing to a large variety of other sexual predators.

“Please, come in, come in,” Owen said. “The sirens have led you to my door, and for that we shall celebrate. Come! Come and help me give thanks to Dionysus.”

We discovered Owen’s grandmother resided in the two-story rock house across the street, and he had just moved to town to be her caretaker. We’d been trespassing on her border wall. No one that we knew had ever seen his grandmother, and the locals always said that the old woman who lived there was a witch. However, it must be pointed out that in the town of Wandering, if you weren’t a bona fide member of the Baptist congregation, you were going to be labeled a witch, a drug addict, or a whore. Sometimes, all three, because sometimes they were.

His house was a little one-bedroom with wood flooring peeking out behind curling linoleum. Every room was barren except for a single leather armchair covered with cracks and duct tape, an old black and white television, and a monstrous JVC boombox. I remember a single overhead bulb made the light coming from the kitchen seem like a thick yellow fog, but that might have just been the cigarette smoke. He filled the barren rooms with the music of the Violent Femmes while he poured us each a glass of wine from a bottle simply marked “Vino” written on a piece of blue masking tape.

“Tonight is the lunar eclipse,” he said. “The fae make their appearance, and we’ll greet them with a wonderful surprise!” He held up his drink and we toasted to–I dunno–the eclipse or the fae, maybe? I didn’t know then who or what the fae was. I wish that had never changed.

Owen recited a poem he’d written about some dude named Lugh, and then talked about folklore, namely Native stories about a coyote, and then some German story about a guy named Till. All the characters he talked of seemed to pass their time screwing with people’s lives. I could dig it.

After an hour, once Todd and I were abundantly drunk, he manifested another bottle of wine, this time a gallon jug. Owen signaled for us to follow him.

Owen’s backyard was perhaps half an acre of manicured lawn before it segued into overgrown prairie, then became a thicket of cedar trees. In the center of the yard, there were exactly three lawn chairs. He brought out the boombox. This time, he put on a mix tape of old punk.

“It begins, gentlemen,” he said, spreading his arms to the sky. “Hold your women close by the hearth, for the son of Fenrir comes to eat the moon and devour the dead.”

I looked up and saw that a tiny crescent shape had been sliced into the edge of the moon. I kicked back in a lawn chair to watch as I drank the wine. Todd was hovering around the yard's edge, looking like he might vomit.

Then, ten minutes in, I began to see white lights glowing in the overgrown grass. At first, I thought they were fireflies, but I realized that they were way too large. I couldn’t be sure if I was witnessing something miraculous or had been dosed by something in the anonymous wine. I would have panicked that I may have been drugged, and Todd had been right about the butt stuff, but I was too drunk to care.

Carefully, on wobbly legs, I rose from the lawn chair and cautiously approached the lights. I had to be sure that I wasn’t simply drugged. When I saw it up close, I was almost relieved that maybe I had just lost my mind instead.

It was humanoid, no bigger than a sparrow, with a squarish head and bulbous black eyes with a simple demarcation for a mouth. On its back, its fluttering wings were shaped like a dragonfly’s but were textured like beef jerky. Suddenly, I could see others camouflaged throughout the thick grasses, hundreds even. As I marveled at their very existence, they continued to pulsate light, and suddenly the one directly before me became aware of my scrutiny. Looking up at me, its little mouth suddenly opened like an aperture into a black hole the size of its head, exposing an arena of needle-like teeth. The little beast unleashed a high-pitched scream that sent me running back toward Owen.

“Oh, you little bastards!” Owen yelled, then dashed away into the house. A moment later, he emerged with a rolled-up white sheet that hid the Fae’s “surprise.“

“People think fairies are good and grant wishes and shit glitter, but in fact,” he explained, as he began loading the pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. “The fae are tricksters that turn maidens into whores, men into monsters, and would-be gods into stone and quivering buckets of shite.”

I’d never actually heard about the transformation of unwary people into buckets of feces, but this was my first fairy encounter.

“Todd?” Owen yelled. “Are you with us?”

Todd, having just puked, flipped his long black hair out of his face and wiped his mouth.

“Hell yeah,” he said.

Owen continued: “Todd? Are you a warrior? Do you laugh at death? Do you fear nothing?”

Again, this time more adamant: “Hell, yeah!”

“Todd,” I yelled. “ You know damn well you’re a complete chickenshit, and you are not a warrior. I’m thinking maybe we should go.” Todd seemed not to hear.

“Then on my command, charge into that field of battle,” Owen cried. “Dive into that arena of glory!”

Todd, drunker than I’d ever seen him, loosed a drunken battle cry and went barreling into the field beyond the yard, stage-diving into the tall grass. In Todd, Owen had his very own bird dog. Instantly, hundreds of fairies broke free and darted into the sky, leaving a radiant trail of sparkles in their wake.

Owen laughed as he pumped a round into the shotgun and began blasting into the fray. I was suddenly overwhelmed with a fierce sense of dread and felt way too sober.

With each shot, five or six would explode into a luminous blast of glittering light and then sprinkle to the earth. A violent wind rose from nowhere and twisted the treetops in the distance, knocking Todd off his feet. Suddenly, a group of fairies turned in our direction. Sensing an attack, Owen yelled:

“Oh, shit! Quick, put your shirt on inside out. It repels them.”

I complied, because why the hell not? It wasn’t any crazier than blasting fairies out of the sky like clay pigeons. Todd began to scream, and I realized he hadn’t heard Owen’s bizarre instruction. Fairies swarmed him like a frenzied hive of killer bees. I couldn’t tell if they were biting him or carrying some kind of tiny weapon. I ran toward him and instructed him to flip his shirt inside out. He looked at me like he didn’t understand, which was fair. When he finally pulled his shirt off, a small gang of the fae grabbed the t-shirt and ascended into the darkness. Sensing there was little else he could do, he went running toward the woods, thrashing and punching at the air around him, a luminous trail of irate fairy folk filling his wake.

Looking back, I saw Owen toss the shotgun into the high weeds, then start running in our direction. That's when Todd screamed as an entire squadron of fairies descended on him like a school of piranha. They swirled around him like a tornado of light, and he shrieked just like a snared animal.

After a minute, the fairies dissipated into the night sky. Anywhere there had been bare flesh, it was now just torn sinew and bone. His bloody skeleton remained upright for a moment, then collapsed to the leaf-covered ground.

“Oh, shite,” said Owen, as he caught up. He shrugged. “Some of them do eat people.”

I glared at Owen, then looked back at what was left of Todd. Gradually, I began to view Todd’s corpse through a black hole, and then I guess I passed out.

The next day, I awoke around noon with the sort of soul-splitting hangover that only nameless homemade wine can induce. I was certain the sun would have immolated me had the day not been overcast. Owen was not there. Then, I remembered Todd. He was where he fell, now attracting the interest of beetles and a couple of carrion birds. Fear and sadness overcame me for a time, and I cried like a baby for a bit, then I used a relatively flat piece of limestone and dug him a shallow grave, and covered him with dirt, leaves, and a couple of big fallen branches.

#

No one answered when I knocked on Owen’s door. The few items inside were cleared out. His “grandmother” looked at me like I had a third nipple growing from my forehead, then, in her way, politely called me stupid. She only had granddaughters, she said, and no one had rented the house across the street in over a year, but it was available if I was in the market.

I pretty much lived in fear. Every time the phone rang or someone knocked at the door, I assumed it was the cops, or worse, Todd’s mother. But it never was. Finally, one day—wracked by guilt and fortified by whiskey—I walked to Todd’s to confess to his mom what had happened to her son and where she could find him. Of course, there was no way in hell she would believe my story, and I would be locked away. Most likely, forever. She would freak. I would be slapped or punched, maybe even shot and killed, which struck me as the better option.

When she answered the door, she smiled like always and greeted me cheerfully, which was strange enough. It was not the demeanor of a mother with a missing child. What she said next floored me.

“Todd’s in his room watching a movie.”

She then let me in and walked away.

After a long period of hesitation, I knocked on Todd’s bedroom door. A voice that was Todd’s told me to enter. When I did, he was seated on the edge of his bed, staring at the TV. It was Todd, no doubt. At least, it looked like him. He never once looked at me.

“You feeling okay, man?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Do you remember drinking wine with Owen?” I asked, cautiously.

“No.”

Okay, fuck this.

“K. I’ll check in on you later,” I said, trying to sound upbeat.

“Okay.”

I ran to the forest and found Todd's body. Nothing had changed except for the smell. My Todd was still dead, and something had eaten a bunch of him.

About a year has passed since that night. I can’t help but miss my only friend, so I still hang out with Todd several times a week (well, the Todd-thing that lives in Todd’s house, anyway). I smile at his mom when she lets me in, then the Todd-creature and I have a few drinks, get high, and just chill. Neither of us says much. Pretty sure he doesn’t have a clue who I am, which is fair, ‘cause, ya’ know…ditto.