Page 17 of Heart, Haunt, Havoc
Colin tumbled backward out of Bishop with the last bit stamped behind his eyes: Bishop staring at their bloody hands and feeling across Lincoln's torso, trying to wake him. Bishop gasped and ripped away, smacking the back of their head against the passenger’s window. Colin hissed and flattened the heels of his palms against his eyes.
“Ow—fuck. Okay, bad news, I might puke in your car,” Bishop whined.
“Yeah, I forgot to mention that part,” Colin mumbled and pointed lazily at the door handle. “Sometimes it’s not—”
Bishop threw open the car door and emptied their stomach into the gutter.
“Okay, sometimes itisthat bad,” he corrected, sighing through his nose. “You okay?”
They sniffled, breathing slowly. “Go to hell.”
“That’s fair.”
They dry-heaved again, then tossed their empty beer bottle into the gutter. Glass shattered and they stumbled onto the snowy sidewalk, dragging the blanket around their shoulders like a cloak. While they took heavy steps toward the porch, Colin finished his beer and dropped the bottle into the blue recycling bin against the curb.
Well, that went as poorly as possible, he thought. Granted, Bishop could’ve pukedinhis car, or kept them both trapped in an uncomfortable memory, or resisted completely, but instead, they’d opened like an abalone. Hard to crack at first, then too interesting to look away from. Colin scrubbed his upper arms and stepped onto the porch, staring at a snowflake caught in Bishop’s eyelashes.
“He was your husband,” Colin said, as gently as possible. The memory burned like a lantern—Bishop, lying bare beneath Lincoln’s phantom form. “I don’t judge you or your choices. I probably would’ve done the same thing.”
“You were never supposed toseemy choices,” they barked. A furious blush darkened their face.
“Sometimes shame is a lesson. Most of the time, it’s just a way for us to hate ourselves for the things we want.”
They shifted their eyes to the door. “What do you know about shame?”
“I’m Catholic,” Colin said, matter-of-factly, and braved a touch to Bishop’s knuckles.
They lingered for a moment. Allowed Colin to link his thumb around their fingers and stroke their palm. They dislodged quickly, though. Pushed through the door and disappeared up the stairs, bypassing a shadowy figure darting along the wall, and rounded the corner. A moment later, their bedroom door shut. Colin exhaled through an irritated sigh.
If Lincoln had summoned Marchosias—integratedwith Marchosias—then what purpose did the crone and the other ghouls serve? Why fill an already occupied place with weaker spirits? To distract, maybe. To keep Bishop restless and spent.
Colin glanced from the stairwell to the ceiling, from the ceiling to the living room. In his frustration, he snatched at the air, catching a shadow by the ankle. One squeeze, two words—be gone—and the lost little thing fractured into pieces, disintegrating like ash in the air. The house tightened, lung-like and defensive, as another one of its tenants was forcefully expelled.
He stood in the foyer. Watched the hall closet float open. Rolled his eyes and hung his head, attempting to mentally scrub Bishop and Lincoln off the back of his eyelids.
Don’t pry, he chided.Don’t fixate.
Colin walked to the couch and sank to his knees, propping his elbows on a blank cushion. Extraction wasn’t exorcism, but much like exorcism, extraction stayed with the excavator. Watermarked the searching presence with imprints from another person’s heart.
Colin swallowed hard. “Hail Mary full of grace, the lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women…” He uttered the prayer swiftly, but couldn’t chase the heat from his body, couldn’t detach from the foreign memories, couldn’t clear Bishop Martínez from his mind.
Bishop, reaching for Lincoln. Bishop, pressing their lips to Colin’s sternum. Bishop covered in blood.
By evening, the electricity had given out, snow piled in the driveway and frosted the windows, and flames munched logs in the fireplace, illuminating the coffee table and the edge of the couch.
Colin sat cross-legged on the floor, stirring thick-cut bacon into his bowl of sharp cheddar macaroni. Bishop mirrored him, seated on a pillow with a blanket draped around their shoulders, dumping chili flakes into their noodles. The two of them hadn’t spoken since the extraction attempt in Colin’s car, and mid-day had come and gone with Bishop still locked in their bedroom.
At one point, Colin almost knocked on their door, but opted to trap himself in the shower instead, palms flat on the tile, ignoring the desire pooling in his groin, and said an Act of Contrition while hot water stung the handprint on his throat. Afternoon had slipped by while Colin studied demonology, and Bishop hadn’t emerged until well after nightfall, banging around in the kitchen minutes before the black out.
When he’d first arrived at the house on Staghorn Way, wanting Bishop had been easy and flippant. But having them had turned Colin into a ruthless, aching schoolboy, insatiable and unable to focus. His skin felt claustrophobic, constricting his bones and holding tight to his skeleton, amplifying all the places that were too open, too untouched, too blasphemous. For the first time in years, he yearned for someone.
Don’t get attached, you fool.
“You’re quite the cook,” Colin said.
Bishop tipped their face upward. “It’s noodles, cheddar, and bacon,” they said, suspiciously. “Nothing special.”
“I watched you season cream with fresh garlicandfold in three different kinds of cheese. Accept the compliment.”
