#SpookyShowcase: Talabaster by Zebib K. A.

Welcome to the 9th annual #SpookyShowcase, a Halloween artist and author showcase. A full schedule of submissions can be found here so you don’t miss a single entry for THESE DEADLY CURSES. Now, on to today’s submission!

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TALABASTER BY ZEBIB K. A.

She was 7 years old when she first lashed out because of the curse, pushing Diane Cleaver down from the top of the red, green and blue jungle gym in the neighborhood park. 

Tallie, short for Talabaster (a name devised by her mother, probably under the prickly, mind-altering influence of that same curse), watched Diane Cleaver standing at the top of the metal and plastic contraption, the afternoon sun smothering them like warm, bright, wool blanket. Tallie had been struggling to climb upwards, her arms never quite as strong as she would like. Other kids could scrabble up the jungle gym, the long, thick, ominous rope in the middle of the school gymnasium, wriggling up with ease to the ceiling. And even here, the other kids ran circles around her, swinging long and elastic between the monkey bars, fearless and unafraid they would slip and fall, smashing their faces into metal or crash into the ground.

Tallie watched Diane at the top, sparkly pink shoes rocking back and forth on the top bars. She remembered that, still. First, Tallie felt the physical symptoms; her body taken over. A blinding throb in her head that wouldn’t stop, a pressure building in her chest that she couldn’t push back down. And then, the anger.

“Cleaver rhythms with Beaver!”

Diane twisted her head back, squinting in the bright sunshine. “What?”

“Why are you hogging the top?”

“I didn’t see you. Relax.”

It wasn’t her fault. It was a feeling she couldn’t stop. She was gritting her teeth and holding her breath so her chest wouldn’t explode, orange and yellow sparks that drifting across the edge of her vision, and then Tallie was pushing her. Getting her out of the way, shoving her little hands into Diane Cleaver’s back and watching her sail through the air.

People never understood that the curse made her do bad things. Diane Cleaver clutching her ankle on the plastic bed of mulch and everyone was upset with Tallie. When one of the parents dragged Tallie to her house, pounding on the door, Tallie’s mother opened the door, eyes drooping and mouth pinched. Being woken from her midday nap made her mother angry. Maybe it would even awaken the curse. Naps, long hours on the couch with no noise in the house, helped keep the curse away.

“Your daughter is a demon!”

Her mother waited in the doorway, lips drawn together. She ran her hand over her face and motioned for Tallie to come in.

“Aren’t you going to…this behavior isn’t safe! She broke that girl’s ankle.”

“It was an accident. It was an accident, right Talabaster?” Her mother grabbed Tallie’s chin and stared her in the face.

“Yes.”

Her mother half-smiled and pushed her inside.

First, the stomach ache. Throbbing, starting just below her ribs, a pulse pulse pulse with her heartbeat, then it spread out in painful waves through her whole tummy. A thousand fuzzy dots pouring into her head. When the curse took her over, she couldn’t remember why she said what she said, why she did what she did. The tummy ache and the fuzz and then the shooting heat like she had nestled herself against the radiator in her kitchen for too long. 

Over the years, the curse popped up out of nowhere, out of her control, making her do things she regretted later. It bit at her insides, expanding like a red-hot balloon, making her nauseous. Little yellow stars like the last bits of firecrackers falling before her eyes, her fists tightening and then her body moving before her brain could catch up. Whoever or whatever was in front of her, she wanted them gone. The lunch lady who wouldn’t give her a meal until Tallie picked up her tray and tried to throw it at her. The girls whispering about her in the school bathroom, until she broke down the door and stuffed one of their heads into the toilets. 

She began to remember the events less and less afterwards. Had she done that thing they were accusing her of? The curse hurt her, it filled her head with a burning fog. After it retreated, she wanted to get away from it. No, she couldn’t remember when it had taken over, but there was nothing she could do about it.

When she was very young, she remembered how her mom told her about the curse. It ran in the family, her mother said. When the curse came over you, the rage was deadly. Uncle Danny was in prison for something he did under the curse. Mom understood what Tallie was going through. She explained it all to her. How the curse settled in their family’s blood a century ago, maybe before, and skipped generations until it chose its next victims. Because they were victims, Mom said. Mom liked to be alone, liked to keep her peace. It was hard, always being quiet in their house, making sure she didn’t awaken the curse in her mother. 

Tallie’s mom never felt bad when the curse made her bash out someone’s headlights with her snow pick after an argument in traffic, or when the curse made her chase Tallie out of the house in the middle of the night, leaving Tallie to wait in the bushes until the curse retreated. She saw the sparks, red and orange and even gold, hovering over her mother’s head that time, she was sure of it. 

Over the years, Mom stayed at home more. She didn’t work anymore, maybe because the curse made it too hard. Uncursed family members didn’t understand what they were going through. Mom went through a lot. She complained. She screamed down the phone at family and bad boyfriends and sometimes cried when she thought Tallie wasn’t looking. Tallie knew that it was all that curse. 

Her mother told her how certain things couldn’t be helped. That, sometimes, family turned against family, friends against friends. If you had bad luck, like they did, it was best to avoid people all together. No one would ever understand what they went through. That made sense. A curse couldn’t be helped. The unfairness of life ran through their blood, and it wanted to hurt, it wanted to kill.

They made her see a therapist after awhile. Too many fights in school. And friendships were hard. Tallie was bright and fun when the curse left her alone. She told funny jokes at lunch and she made her friends the best gifts, little books and necklaces she toiled over for hours. Then something would happen, some missed call or missed meeting after middle school classes ended, or a note passed by her in a fit of giggles, and then the curse decided to rear its spiky head. Tallie tried to separate herself from it, wriggle out of her skin and watch herself from outside her body, the curse roaring and flailing as it used her body like a long-necked, flat-chested puppet. This latest therapist was the last in a long line of failed therapists. They usually gave up when she didn’t give them what they wanted, which was crying, probably, or chance to deliver a bunch of lectures that would never ever help her.

“What do you think of these episodes Tallie?”

It was there second meeting. The therapist stared at her from across the beige room. Tallie’s focus swayed between the abstract painting on one wall, rectangles of darkening red progressing to a sharp crimson, then to the other wall, a series of blue circles flying across the canvas, each growing larger before finally fracturing into many pieces. 

“Tallie?”

“You don’t know anything about it.”

“What do I not know?”

Why every day was a lurching step forward. She was always jumping, always worried that the ground beneath her was going to give. The curse took on many forms. It was getting worse, too. Every morning, she spotted the red and orange sparks out of the corner of her eye. The sunlight in the morning burned. The itchiness of light and the crackle and sigh of the day as it she broke into it, somehow not quite belonging. Her and mom didn’t talk about the curse anymore. They didn’t talk about much at all. Her mom loved the quiet. A few relatives still filtered through on holidays, complaining of the low lights and the how much they missed seeing Tallie, how she’d grown up too fast. They didn’t mean it, she could see that.

“Did you know that the Barrel Eye fish is a deep-sea fish with a transparent head?” She was smart enough not to tell the therapist about a curse. Curses and demons and hallucinations would make her sound unreliable. This therapist wouldn’t understand what they had been through, what ran in their blood and that nothing could be done to stop these episodes. This was all a waste of time. What she needed was an exorcism. Or maybe it was too stuck deep down inside her to do anything about it. 

Her mom said she just needed to mind her own business. Stay out of everyone’s way. Try not to end up in jail. 

“Its eyes are inside its head and surrounded by all this soft gooey stuff. And the eyes are telescoping. I think that means they are born with specialized lens. They look up, not around them, not in front, but up. So they only see all the sea above them. Maybe they can even see the surface thousands of feet away.”

“That’s… very interesting Tallie.”

“Cool as shit. If I took you to the deep sea your head would explode. Or maybe you’d freeze first.”

“Good thing you don’t have a submarine then.”

People started to avoid her at school, even when she was nice, even when the curse hadn’t filled her up with its unstoppable rage. People couldn’t be relied on. At least she liked some of her classes, especially biology. She’d talked back at Mr. Bell a few times, but that wasn’t the curse, just her being honest about his incorrect facts, like when he explained bioluminescence all wrong. She still liked him. Tallie liked the facts of those strange, non-human bodies, more capable, more fantastic and often more predictable. No person was clear to her, especially not herself. 

Mom stayed in her bedroom more and more.  As Tallie woke up these mornings, the sparks were becoming more distinct, floating and dancing across her vision, taunting her. They had never been this clear before.

“Are you ready to talk about what happens to you when you get upset?”

“People get angry. Maybe I have an anger issue.”

“Do you think that?”

“Do you think that?”

The therapist smiled and folded her hands over her lap. That only irritated Tallie more. There, the sparks in the corner of her eye, the fireworks beginning. Her stomach twisting like she’d eaten a sour piece of cheese, her body getting tight. 

The therapist waited there a long time, so long that Tallie turned away to stare at the wall, realizing the blue dots had been replaced with photograph of a glowing squid. Tallie’s body cooled; the curse, perhaps, distracted. She didn’t follow when the therapist started talking again, instead interrupting with a question she couldn’t repress.

“Is that a firefly squid?”

“The reason-” the therapist stopped talking, twisting her head to stare at the photograph, before turning back. “Do you like it?”

Tallie stared at the squid some more. A thousand tiny dots, like fireflies they said, but she thought they looked like stars. The squid looked like a galaxy, one of many floating through the deep blue sky. The firefly squids died after mating, waiting to be scooped up by fisherman near shore to be eaten as a delicacy. A cycle of life that, when she thought about it too long, made her feel small and helpless.

“Yes.” She didn’t have the energy to fight her anymore. “They’re my favorite squid.”

Soon, her and the therapist (Angela, she decided to admit she had a name) began to talk more. Actually talk. Tallie began to see she had afraid of something happening during one of her sessions. Of the therapist, of Angela, asking too many questions. Figuring out the curse, her squirming hot secret. Afraid of having to talk about it. About how she acted like a freak, about how sometimes she blamed the whole world and wished an asteroid would crush her school, the whole town, the whole state, leaving the land burning while she went out on a boat and lived on the sea. 

But really, they just talked about whatever Tallie wanted. Angela had to listen, and at first that made Tallie feel an angry triumph, like she’d won a game no one else had figured out. Then, she began to enjoy herself. Maybe curses had cures. Like those terrible diseases that seemed incurable in the olden days but doctors found a cure to eventually. Like magic. She hadn’t had any problems in school for awhile. Maybe life didn’t want to screw her over.

As she started to feel different, she and her mother talked less and less. Her mother seemed to disappear into herself. She didn’t even get up from her bed when Tallie brought her dinner, leftovers or ready-made meals or even food Tallie made herself.

One day, Tallie stood in the doorway, risking an aggravation her mother’s delicate disposition. She cleared her throat. “Therapy is going well.”

“Hmm. Good.”

“I think it…maybe there is a cure…maybe that thing that happens with us can get better.”

“Hmm?”

“You know, our affliction?”

Her mother sat up in bed, grabbing her plate and starting to scoff her food down. Tallie was great at making mac and cheese.

“Talabaster, c’mon.” She chomped, cheese visible between her teeth. “I thought that’s why I sent you to these therapists. You haven’t mentioned that curse thing in years.”

“What?”

“Cut it out”. Her mother’s face hardened. “You’re too old to believe in some story I told you when you were a child. Grow up.”

“But you said-”

“Are you calling me a liar?!” Her mom threw her fork at Tallie, who jumped back just in time, shutting the door and running to her room. She leaned back against her bedroom wall and sank to the floor, sparks floating around her vision, clamoring over each other, until it was so bright that for a brief moment it was like a camera had flashed in her face. She closed her eyes, chest tightening, and screamed.

Tallie was in session again two weeks later. She’d skipped the last week, her head aching, her hands shaky, for several days in a row. She was quieter than she had ever been in school, even in biology when Mr. Bell mixed up the names for phytoplankton and zooplankton.

“Tallie, you know there’s this saying where I come from. ‘The deep sea can be fathomed, but who knows the heart of men?’ ”

“Well, lots of the deep sea can’t be fathomed, because we still discover creatures all the time and some are so rare we hardly catch of glimpse of them.”

Angela smiled. “Right. True, thank you. But sometimes we understand our own hearts less than all the mysteries out there in the world. And others’ hearts.”

Tallie opened her mouth to point out how completely pointless others’ hearts were to ber, before folding her arms and closing her mouth, suddenly trying to regain control of her body. Her hands trembled. 

“We can feel things that overwhelm us, and find no reason for it. We feel lost in patterns that we think are our truth. But they aren’t.”

Tallie nodded, turning to stare at the firefly eel, its bright points of blue light blurring. “Can I tell you about a curse?”

About the Author

Zebib K. A. (she/her) is a writer and psychiatrist. She is completing a Master’s in Creative Writing at University of Edinburgh. She has been published in The Rumpus, FANTASY Magazine, Apparition Lit, and more. She writes reviews for Spectrum Culture and is in SFWA. She explores psychological themes within speculative fiction. She can be found on Twitter @pegasusunder1, Instagram @pegasusunder, and medium.com/@pegasusunder.