An Apple for the Creature

undisclosed sum—to the University of Supernatural Studies Extension Program. Though it was nice to be back in the tri-borough area (it was almost Manhattan!), the gray on gray on brown—ash-colored linoleum-tiled floors, brown fake wood-grain Formica desks two sizes too small for any adult bottom to command, dirty-gray dry-erase boards lining the washed-out, smoky walls—was pretty damn depressing.

And if the decor was not conducive to teaching adults how to call up wormholes, then Callie could only imagine the adverse effect it would have on fidgety second graders attempting to learn fractions. No wonder kids hated to go to school—if Callie had been shunted into a classroom like this one (no matter how nice and kid-friendly the teacher had tried to make the temporary digs), she’d probably have come out of the system totally illiterate.

“Miss Reaper-Jones?” Mrs. Gunwhale bellowed, her aggressive baritone filling Callie’s head like the thundering boom of cannon fire.

As much as she wanted to tell Mrs. Gunwhale where she could shove her Remedial Wormhole Calling class, she knew she needed to master wormhole calling if she wanted to run Death, Inc., and not be laughed at by her employees—including the six numb nuts she was trapped in the modular trailer with for the next four nights’ worth of classes.

Steeling herself for the worst, she took a deep breath and said:

“I would like to stay in your class.”

“And . . . ?”

Mrs. Gunwhale’s dark eyes blatantly telegraphed that she would need to see a little begging from her recalcitrant pupil before she relented and let Callie stay in the class.

Callie sighed, her hands tied. It was imperative that the head of Death, Inc., be self-sufficient and capable of traveling around the Afterlife on her own, without her Executive Assistant calling up wormholes for her like she was some kind of nincompoop. If she didn’t suck it up now and somehow master the art of wormhole calling, she was giving her enemies the advantage, allowing them the opportunity to petition the Death board to recall her from her new job.

“Please, I would like to stay in your class?” Callie choked out, the obsequiousness of the word making her feel nauseous.

A look of triumph spread across Mrs. Gunwhale’s face. Exultant, she lifted her sausage arms into the sky like airborne blimps—and then the ungainly woman shocked everyone by doing a graceless twirl on the linoleum floor, causing both the gill/jowl flaps around her jaw and the muumuu she had on to flutter with happiness.

“That’s the first step, Miss Reaper-Jones,” Mrs. Gunwhale trilled. “Admit I’m the boss and that you are mine to mold and we’re getting somewhere.”

Callie gave a mirthless chuckle, trying to appear game, but like an aggressive baby kraken, the obnoxious, juvenile part of her personality had already awoken and was now itching to start planning Mrs. Gunwhale’s disemboweling.

“Why don’t you come up to the front of the class, Miss Reaper-Jones, and try opening a temporary hole in reality—”

It took Callie a moment to comprehend that, against her will, she was once again being foisted into the spotlight. Actually, she realized, looking around at the smirking faces of her fellow classmates, she’d never left said spotlight since she’d begun the class two days earlier. She didn’t want to be paranoid, but she was getting the rather distinct impression the other students didn’t like her very much . . . or rather, they didn’t like that she was in charge of Death, Inc., and, for all intents and purposes, was their boss.

And it wasn’t like she’d wanted to take the class in the first place.

Two weeks prior, Callie had discovered that her Executive Assistant, Jarvis, had enrolled her, without her permission, into the course. He’d assumed she’d attend without too much fuss because it met in New York City, one of her most favorite places in all of the world. Of course, what he’d neglected to inform her was that it took place not in Manhattan, but in Queens—which was like telling someone she’d won a trip to Hawaii, then dropping her off in Lompoc, California.

To make herself feel better, and to shake her growing paranoia, Callie imagined the tongue-lashing she would give Jarvis when she got back to Sea Verge, the familial mansion she shared with her sister, Clio, and their hellhound puppy, Runt—and, boy, was it gonna be a doozy.

“We’re waiting. . . .”

Callie looked up to find the long shadow of Mrs. Gunwhale looming over her.

“Okay,” Callie said as she eased herself out from behind the kid-sized desk and stood up, her left leg numb from being squeezed too tightly against the metal bar that connected the chair to the desktop.

Limping over to the front of the classroom, she stopped in front of the stained dry-erase board and waited for Mrs. Gunwhale to give her further instructions.

“Now, if you’d done the reading I’d assigned you,” Mrs. Gunwhale said, gathering up the fabric of her muumuu and resting her generous backside against the corner of her rectangular desk, “you’d know that there are small, subatomic particles called neutrinos that appear to travel faster than the speed of light, but in reality, they are using wormholes in order to burrow in and out of the fabric of time/space—”

Callie’s attention began to waver, her inner monologue taking over with a vengeance as Mrs. Gunwhale droned on and on about neutrinos.

How am I supposed to pay attention when the woman is doing Science Speak? Callie grumbled to herself—and then, her mind distracted: And what the hell is with that damn mole??

The mole in question belonged to Mrs. Gunwhale, and the more the teacher talked, the more the blackened growth on the tip of her nose began to take on an otherworldly presence. Large and irregularly shaped, it seemed to bend and stretch of its own accord, as if it were doing mole calisthenics in order to beef itself up, escape Mrs. Gunwhale’s elongated proboscis, and go in search of a more attractive host . . . like Calliope Reaper-Jones!

Eeeek!

Shuddering, Callie ripped her mind away from scary-mole-contemplation-land just as Mrs. Gunwhale stopped speaking.

“Neutrinos,” Callie said before Mrs. Gunwhale could quiz her. “I get it.”

Even though she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.

“Good,” Mrs. Gunwhale replied, rubbing her hands together expectantly. “Now show us.”

Attempting to remember all the things Jarvis had imparted to her about wormhole calling over the past year—and the things she’d learned during the first two sessions of Mrs. Gunwhale’s boring class—she closed her eyes and tried to imagine a place, any place.

I just want to go someplace like here, but not here, she thought. Someplace happy!

In her imagination, she saw the modular classroom bend around her, space and time becoming as pliant as the bellows of a giant accordion while unseen hands expertly folded the gray and brown drabness of the room like a blank piece of origami paper. The hostile faces of her classmates abruptly disappeared inside the reformation, the space continuing to morph until finally even Mrs. Gunwhale’s laserlike gaze was stripped away . . . and then, for the first time ever, she felt her mind open like a lotus flower, all the free-floating strands of thought and magic and imagination coming together in a pinpoint of golden-hued light.

I’m doing it, she thought, her heart beginning to hammer excitedly. I’m calling up a goddamned wormhole!

It was as if a bantam sun had exploded around her, blinding her just as she opened her eyes to behold her creation. Only there was nothing to see once her irises had readjusted, the evanescent glare having left her eyeballs feeling dry and burnt.

All around her was cold, empty night.

—

The stars appeared above her, blinking into existence one at a time until the universe was once again filled with their twinkling light. Callie felt the cold wetness of snow engulfing her, her breath racing in and out of her lungs in feverish bursts as she tried to collect herself.

“Are you okay there? You hit the ground really, really hard.”