Damn Him to Hell

from her smart phone when I entered. “Thank goodness! I gotta pee!”

She dashed out, leaving me to wonder what I was supposed to do. I could only stare sadly at a woman who had led a harsh life, one who’d not had many opportunities before Acme took her out. I hoped Julius would massage Sarah and keep her IV filled as he did for his wife, because we couldn’t risk the med students in here. And I knew nothing about caretaking.

I sank onto Cora’s seat, feeling useless, tired, and hungry. I wondered if Themis had answered my chewing-gum message. I hadn’t been back to my place to find out.

Strangely, I wasn’t as concerned about the question I’d asked as I was worried about Themis. As far as I knew, she could be part of my whacked-out imagination, but I had a hankering for a grandmotherly role model, I guess. I didn’t want her lying comatose in Acme’s secret labs.

My only other family was my mother, but she was in Peru. Which meant that, with Sarah out, I didn’t have a lot of mentoring happening on this Saturn’s daughter business.

“I’m fine,” a throaty voice with a hint of humor said out of the blue. Or was that out of the pink?

I almost fell off the stool I was perched on. I’d thought I was alone. I glanced around the antiseptic steel office. I was alone. Except for Sarah.

I stared, but I could have sworn she hadn’t moved. A hospital white blanket still neatly covered her chimp appendages. Besides, Sarah had one of those baby-sweet, whispery voices. What I’d heard had sounded like a cigarette smoker’s husky alto.

“Hello?” I said tentatively, wondering if IV stands could speak. “Who’s there?”

“Your madarbozorg, aziz.”

The voice seemed to come from Sarah, but not an inch of her frizzy beehive stirred, although her lips might have.

Madarbozorg? The foreign mouthful almost seemed familiar, but I couldn’t translate it.

“Visualizing is an unusual gift, aziz,” the voice spoke again, a little more distantly, as if too many words were difficult to project. “Use it for harm, and justice will be served. Use it for profit, and you will pay.”

I’d asked Themis if I’d be punished for visualizing. I hadn’t been specific. “Themis?” I asked tentatively. I still didn’t know if she was crazier than me, but Max had assured me that these weird messages really came from my grandmother. Of course, he’d been in hell at the time.

Sarah’s eyelids flickered. For a moment, I thought I saw black irises instead of Sarah’s blue. I held my breath in anticipation, and then Sarah morphed entirely to monkey form right before my eyes.

I fell backward, knocking the stool over in my haste to escape.

Sarah was faster. Emitting a chimpanzee cry, she leaped for my neck.

Did I mention the chimp had strangled two strong men?

She wrapped her long arms around my head and her legs around my waist. I was strangling simply from the stench of unwashed chimp when Cora returned, waving her fancy phone at me.

“I believe this one’s for you,” Cora cried, before screeching to a halt inside the door, her eyes widening. “Rather you than me,” was her helpful comment.

Apparently regaining some of what passes for her sense, Sarah loosened her grip but continued to cling.

Eyeing her warily, Cora held up the phone so I could see it past Sarah’s hairy head. “If the Zone has spread all the way up here, Andre’s gonna shit bombs.”

Since Andre was probably sitting at the police station, that was an attractive image. I studied the text on her screen. Sarah’s mind is intact, what there is of it. Sad girl. Themis

Shit. I reached around Sarah’s furry body to grab the phone. I hastily texted a reply asking where Themis was but all I got was a Wikipedia page showing aziz— Persian for dear.

“I’m moving to Seattle,” I told Cora, attempting to pry Sarah’s legs loose from my waist, but she clung like a terrified Muppet.

“Yeah, that’s what we all say,” Cora said with a shrug. “But we never do. Reality sucks, y’know?”

Since Cora just assumed the Zone was messing with us, I didn’t even begin to try to explain that Themis might exist. No way could I explain that she might be my grandmother and might have used Sarah as a vehicle to communicate—even I hadn’t worked out all the ramifications. Didn’t want to, to be frank, especially with the result clinging to my neck.

If I’d translated Themis’s visualization message correctly, it meant that all I was going to get out of this Saturn gig was grief. If I conjured up a pot of gold, I’d end up paying for it one way or another. Shit. Still, she hadn’t said I’d go to hell if I visualized bad guys pushing strollers. There was no harm or profit in that.

I left the tunnel carrying Sarah around my neck. I supposed I should take comfort that one of the zombies had wakened, and that it had been dangerous Sarah. That was one less burden to haul around, in a manner of speaking, since I now had to carry her physically. Except now I had to wonder if Themis could wake all the zombies or only daughters of Saturn. I suspected the latter.

With a sense of relief, I carried poor Sarah back to my apartment while debating justice and my place in the scheme of things.

That Nancy Rose and the others were growing healthier by the minute didn’t exactly justify gassing a rich old lady in hopes she’d improve, too. I didn’t know for certain that Gloria was some kind of demon. I didn’t even believe in demons. But she’d certainly been dangerous. Did that justify Paddy’s offing her? Or letting Andre gas her?

“Really, Saturn?” I muttered as I climbed the stairs. “Do I have to get involved now that Gloria’s dead and the world is a better place? Can’t I just say, ‘Amen, and so it goes’?”

Sarah bobbed her head in agreement, which made me uneasy. I didn’t really want to agree with a serial murderer on this one.

The message I’d left on my door was gone. I didn’t think Schwartz had been here to take it, but maybe Paddy had. Or maybe Themis had made it disappear in a puff of smoke. I set Sarah on the floor and let her toddle off to explore. Her chimp shape embarrassed her, but it was just us girls here. She knew where to find the bananas, the only food of mine she’d ever consented to eat.

I mulled over what I’d learned and what I should do as I stir-fried veggies. I didn’t see Gloria’s face in the gas flames of my stove, thank goodness. I didn’t hear from Max, either. I’d tried calling Schwartz to find out what was going down, but he didn’t have time to talk to me.

Sarah reappeared as Sarah while I was opening the tortilla package. She’d helped herself to one of my sundresses and a cardigan I never wore. Her missile-shaped breasts strained at the cotton that would have covered my more modest assets.

“Welcome back,” I said cautiously.

She looked at my vegetables with disinterest and opened the refrigerator. “I had the strangest dream,” she said as she rummaged. “I was down at Chesty’s, sitting at the bar with Bill and a lot of ugly old men and a woman who said she was a florist. I was wondering where the regulars were. Then this strange Gypsy woman showed up talking gibberish. And then I woke up in your arms.”

“Don’t make too much of it,” I said warily, pondering a dream including our unconscious patients. Could Sarah have known Bill and Nancy Rose were gassed before she clocked out? “You got gassed and were out for a few days.” How much should I tell her?

“Gassed?” She emerged from behind the refrigerator door holding peanut butter and apples.

I didn’t precisely trust a woman who would kill her mama in return for prettier legs, but she was the only Saturn’s daughter I knew. I kept hoping she might impart a few secrets. So I dumped my veggies into a tortilla, added some feta, and gave her a brief, expurgated version of events.

“Paddy and Julius clammed up after I told them how Gloria died,” I finished up. “I didn’t tell them she turned into a demon before she departed.” I waited for any insight Sarah might offer.

She ate her apple, core and all, and licked peanut butter off her fingers. “Mama said the devil’s demons walk the earth,” she offered, shrugging. “And that we’d join them one day. But she didn’t do anything cool like turn