HOD-002
Barista: Katherine Wade
Date: Feb-2-2020
Receipt: HOD-002
Subject: Business as Usual
I looked up.
I don’t know why. Maybe because everything else felt so heavy it made my neck crave motion. Maybe because something called me to. Up in the tree’s branches, way up, past the twist of roots and spiraled bark, I saw them. Little people. Hanging upside down like fruit. Or bats. Or maybe both.
Their skin sagged like wet paper left too long in the rain, translucent in places, stretched too thin over their sharp bones. I could make out rows of ribs. Skeletal faces. Eyelids that didn’t blink so much as shiver. Their eyes were a sharp, unnatural yellow. Not warm like candlelight. Not wild like a beast’s eyes. Cold. Glistening. Like little pale moons clinging to bone.
Their arms unfurled and wrapped around themselves in a spiral, their long, jointless wings made of skin and bone, as if their arms had forgotten they were ever meant to reach and only remembered how to fold in on themselves. And the sound they made... it was like wind whistling through teeth. Breathless, sharp. A scraping whisper in a language even the Otherworld stopped speaking.
They muttered. Clicked. Hissed. The noise wasn’t loud, but it filled the space if you were listening for it, like a chorus of cicadas on a summer night. And the smell… it was emanating from them. Damp soil, turned earth, something sweet rotting. Like flowers left too long in a grave vase. That’s what made my stomach turn. That scent, rising with the mist.
Then they noticed me.
One unfolded from its perch. Then another. Until they were all facing me—upside-down, unmoving, watching like predators behind glass. They blinked. Slowly. In perfect, unsynced rhythm. Then they unraveled into the mist.
Gone. Every last one.
Where they’d been, little motes of light remained. Fireflies, I think. Or maybe not. Watching still. Maybe parts of them left behind.
I was staring up into the branches until someone called my name. I didn’t answer. Just blinked back and nodded like nothing happened.
I don’t know what I saw. But I know it saw me.