Vicious Prey

Aven

Exhaustion isn't just a feeling anymore, sitting heavy on my shoulders, smelling of stale hops and the cheap, metallic tang of the spirits currently haunting Gabriel’s Bar.

I swipe a rag across the counter, pushing a puddle of spilled stout toward the edge while my brain tries to convince my eyelids that staying open is a worthwhile life goal.

"Seriously?" I mutter, leaning over the sink so the living customers think I’m just being aggressive with the glassware. "The health department already has a file on us the size of a phone book. Move your ghostly ass out of the condiments, Harold. Or whatever your name is."

The sugar-man doesn't move. He just blinks, his image flickering every time the blender whirs at the other end of the bar. It’s the usual crowd for a Tuesday night, enough living bodies to keep me moving, but not enough to drown out the low-frequency hum of the dead.

Near the jukebox, a woman in a bloodstained evening gown is weeping silently.

Every time the bass hits, her image pulses, the red smear on her silk bodice glowing like a neon sign for a crime scene that happened forty years ago.

She hasn't moved from that spot since I clocked in at six, and her humming is starting to give me a migraine that vibrates right behind my left eye.

"Bleeding near the tip jar is tacky, darling," I whisper-snap as I pass her with a basket of oily fries. "We’re a dive bar, not a noir film. Have some professional dignity and go haunt a hospital or a very dramatic alleyway."

She doesn't even look up. None of them do, usually. To them, I’m just a smudge of light in a world that’s forgotten them, a radio that’s accidentally tuned into their frequency.

I drop the fries in front of a guy who’s been nursing the same Bud Light for an hour and head back toward the taps, feeling a gaze boring into the side of my head.

I don't even have to look to know it's Ellis.

Ellis is sitting in his usual booth, the one where the leather is cracked and smells faintly of wet dog.

Unlike the others, Ellis looks solid enough to order a drink, though he never does.

He just watches me with eyes that are way too focused for someone without a pulse, his lean frame draped over the bench like he owns the place.

He looks like a ghost who’s practiced being a person until he got the posture exactly right.

"Aven," he says. His voice is a dry rasp that bypasses my ears and vibrates straight into my jawbone.

"If you've come to offer cryptic dead-guy advice, take it outside," I say, not slowing my pace as I reload the dishwasher.

"I'm currently at capacity for emotional labor and I still have to mop the floors. Go find a medium with more patience and fewer bills to pay." Not that I think I’m a medium or a spirit whisperer. I don’t know what the hell I am.

I just know seeing the dead is annoying.

"You're getting louder," Ellis says, his head tilting in a way that’s almost bird-like. "The static. It's pulling them in. Can't you feel it?"

"The only thing I feel is the slow death of my lumbar spine," I retort, slamming the dishwasher shut. "Shut up, Ellis. Go watch the door like you usually do."

I feel Gabriel’s eyes on me before I see him.

My uncle is standing by the register, his arms crossed over his chest, looking like a gruff, silver-haired version of my own reflection.

He’s been watching me talk to the empty space by the dishwasher for the last three minutes, and the expression on his face is somewhere between pity and a very old, very deep kind of worry.

"Talking to the plumbing again, Aven?" Gabriel asks, his voice low enough to stay between us. He doesn't believe in the spirits, not really, but he believes in me, which is somehow worse. It makes the madness feel like a family heirloom he’s trying to help me polish.

"The plumbing has better stories than the customers," I say, grabbing a bottle of Jameson from the rail and pouring a finger into a clean shot glass while his back is turned. I knock it back, the liquid fire hitting my throat and carving a path of temporary silence through the noise in my head. It’s not a fix; it’s just a mute button I keep pressing.

Gabriel sighs, a heavy sound that deflates his shoulders. "You look like hell. When was the last time you slept more than three hours in a row?"

"Seminary is very committed to my kind of aesthetic, Gabe," I say, flashing a grin that feels like it might crack my face. "The dark circles are a sign of holiness. Or at least that’s what I’m telling the Dean when I pass out during Liturgy tomorrow."

"Eat something that isn’t whiskey," he grunts, sliding a plate of cold sliders toward me. "You're thinning out. Your mother used to get that look when she was spiraling—all eyes and sharp edges, like she was trying to disappear into herself."

The mention of my mother hurts, a name that carries the weight of a funeral I wasn't allowed to understand. I push the sliders back toward him. "Whiskey is technically grain, Gabriel. It's basically liquid bread. It's spiritually appropriate for a man of the cloth."

"You aren't a man of the cloth yet, and at this rate, you'll be a ghost yourself before you get ordained," Gabriel says, but he doesn't push the food again. He just watches the bar, his hand resting on the counter near mine. "People are looking at you weird tonight, kid. Even for this place."

I look out at the floor, and I see what he means.

It’s not one person; it’s a subtle, gravitational shift in the room.

A guy at the pool table has stopped mid-stroke, staring at me while I wipe a table three feet away.

A businessman at the bar is watching my mouth while I recite the tap list, his eyes glazed and hungry in a way that has nothing to do with thirst.

Every living thing in the room is tilting toward me like they always do as the night draws to a close. It makes my skin crawl.

"Maybe sleep deprivation has finally given me sex appeal," I mutter, grabbing a tray of empty pints to give my hands something to do. "Or maybe I just have beer on my shirt. Either way, they aren't tipping better, so who cares?"

Gabriel doesn't laugh. He steps out from behind the bar, moving with a deceptive grace that reminds me he used to be much better at violence than he is at inventory. He walks toward a guy who’s been lingering too close to the service well, a guy whose hand is hovering inches from my arm as I pass.

Gabriel doesn't say a word, just places himself in the man’s line of sight until the guy blinks, shakes his head, and moves back to his stool.

I head toward the back of the bar, trying to ignore the way the lady in the bloodstained dress has stopped humming to watch me pass. Ellis is still in his booth, his eyes following me with that same predatory focus. As I pass him, he leans forward, his image flickering like a dying bulb.

"They can smell the light, Aven," Ellis rasps. "You're getting louder. You're ringing like a bell, and everything in the dark is starting to listen."

"Then tell the dark to leave a tip or get out," I snap, leaning over the booth so it looks like I’m asking if he needs a refill. "I don't have time for the 'chosen one' monologue tonight, Ellis. I have a language exam at eight A. M. and I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten how to read vowels."

"You won't be at that exam," Ellis says, and for a second, he looks almost sad. "The hunter is close. He’s already in the city. He’s the silence you’ve been praying for."

I ignore him, mostly because the word 'silence' sounds like a lie told by a man who’s forgotten what quiet actually feels like.

I spend the next two hours in a blur of mechanical motion—pour, wipe, carry, deflect.

I take another shot of Jameson at midnight, and another at one, watching the clock move with the agonizing slowness of a glacier.

By two A. M., the living have cleared out, leaving only the ghosts and the smell of stale cigarettes.

Gabriel is locking the front door, his keys jingling in a rhythm that usually signals the end of my misery.

The sugar-man has finally vanished, leaving behind only a faint scent of ozone and old dust. The woman by the jukebox is still there, but her image is translucent now, fading into the shadows of the wood paneling.

"Go home, Aven," Gabriel says, leaning against the door. "And I mean home. Don't go back to that library and sleep on the floor again. Go to your apartment. Lock the door. Try to remember what a pillow feels like."

"I have class, Gabe," I say, untying my apron and tossing it into the hamper. "If I don't show up, Ezra will come looking for me, and I’m not in the mood for a lecture on 'spiritual discipline' before I’ve had coffee."

Gabriel looks like he wants to say more, something about the cross I keep hidden, something about the way my mother used to scream in her sleep, but he just sighs. "Text me when you get home. I mean it. If I don't hear from you, I'm calling the cops and telling them you’ve been kidnapped."

"I'm a twenty-six-year-old man, Gabriel. I think I can navigate three blocks without being abducted," I say, heading for the back exit. "I'll text you. Promise."

He doesn’t believe me but frankly I don’t care.

Though, I will actually go home tonight.

Pushing out into the night air, a sharp chill cuts through me, reminding me that I’m still tethered to a body that hurts.

I walk toward my apartment, every shadow feeling like it’s reaching out, every alleyway humming with a residual energy that makes my teeth ache.