{"id":412,"date":"2011-08-17T11:59:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T16:59:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/?page_id=412"},"modified":"2011-08-17T12:51:54","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T17:51:54","slug":"moonlight-and-sunscreen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/?page_id=412","title":{"rendered":"Moonlight and Sunscreen"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story takes place several months before the events of BLACK WINGS<\/strong> and BLACK NIGHT<\/strong>.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Christina Henry<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI want to come with you on your pickup tonight,\u201d Beezle, my gargoyle, announced during dinner.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d I said, pausing with a forkful of spaghetti halfway to my mouth. \u201cWhy? You don\u2019t usually like leaving the house unless it involves buying doughnuts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw on your list that the death is supposed to be at Foster Beach a little before midnight,\u201d Beezle said, stuffing a heavily buttered slice of Italian bread into his beak.<\/p>\n

His stomach was splattered with spaghetti sauce. Having a gargoyle is kind of like having a toddler, except Beezle talks back more and doesn\u2019t let me put him in time out when he misbehaves.<\/p>\n

My name is Madeline Black, and I\u2019m an Agent of Death. This sounds glamorous, but mostly it means that I have to witness a lot of horrible deaths and then escort souls to the Door.<\/p>\n

After I do that I have to file paperwork. Since the Agency hasn\u2019t quite caught up with the last half-century\u2019s technological advances this paperwork is actually paper \u2013 triplicate forms, to be precise. And I have to use a pen. I\u2019ve heard rumors that some of the upper management actually has offices with typewriters in them, but this is probably just crazy talk.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what if the soul is going to be at Foster Beach? The ice cream man does not come through at that hour, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re thinking,\u201d I said. \u201cYour job is to stay home and be a home guardian like all the other gargoyles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s supposed to be a full moon tonight,\u201d Beezle said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd?\u201d I spun my hand, indicating he should continue.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to lay out on the beach,\u201d he said, taking enough spaghetti from the bowl to feed three football players.<\/p>\n

I stared at him long enough that he actually stopped eating.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat?\u201d he snapped. \u201cI can\u2019t have some leisure time?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour whole life is leisure time,\u201d I retorted.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho stands watch over the door and makes sure nothing creepy comes knocking?\u201d Beezle asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe creepiest thing to come up my steps in the last six months was a political canvasser, and you slept through the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut something might show up,\u201d Beezle insisted. \u201cAnd I\u2019m on 24-hour watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo when you\u2019re in here eating all my emergency chocolate that qualifies as part of your 24-hour watch?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen did this turn into a discussion of my eating habits? I want to go with you, I\u2019m going, that\u2019s the end of it,\u201d Beezle said, and crammed such a giant mass of spaghetti in his mouth that he couldn\u2019t have responded to anything I said even if he wanted to.<\/p>\n

So a few hours later Beezle and I were flying the short distance from our house on the north side of Chicago to the lakefront. It was a pretty typical August night in the city. It was hot, sticky and everything smelled like car exhaust. My curly hair was a frizzy halo. It was not a good look for me.<\/p>\n

Beezle was perched on my shoulder, which was his favorite way to travel. He generally doesn\u2019t exert any energy unless absolutely necessary.<\/p>\n

I am invisible when my wings are out, which is good because Beezle is pretty conspicuous. That time of year it\u2019s difficult to hide him \u2013 he usually goes in the pocket of my overcoat when he feels inclined to leave the house. I was wearing a tank top and shorts, and Beezle is way too fat to fit in my shorts pocket.<\/p>\n

I landed in the sand near Foster Beach house, a small building that housed bathrooms and a snack shop. The beach was empty this time of night, although a few dedicated runners exercised under the streetlights that illuminated the lakefront path.<\/p>\n

I wandered a little ways toward the lake. It rolled in gentle waves up to the sand. Lake Michigan looks a lot like the ocean from the shore. The size of it is hard to comprehend, especially when you say \u201clake\u201d and most people think of a fishing pond. When I glanced out over the water all I could see was that endless expanse and the dark night above it, the lights from airplanes landing at O\u2019Hare flashing in the black.<\/p>\n

Beezle hopped off my shoulder and fluttered to a spot far enough away from the water that his claws wouldn\u2019t get wet. He busily unfolded the kitchen towel that he\u2019d used as a makeshift bag and smoothed it out on the sand. Inside the bag were a tiny pair of doll sunglasses and travel-sized bottle of sunscreen.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou are aware of the fact that there is no sun out now, correct?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

Beezle ignored me and began rubbing sunscreen into his gray, elephant-like skin. \u201cYou are aware that the moon\u2019s light is from the reflection of the sun\u2019s rays, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the one who had to sit through earth science class, not you,\u201d I muttered.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I am the one who had to help you with your homework,\u201d Beezle reminded me.<\/p>\n

He pulled on his shades and lay back on the towel, arms behind his head.<\/p>\n

I shook my head and turned away, looking down the beach. A couple was approaching, and they were having a pretty vehement argument. I knew with the certainty that comes from being an Agent of death that I was here for one of them. As I watched, the man hit the woman across the face and she fell to the sand.<\/p>\n

Beezle raised his head and peeked over his glasses. \u201cThe boyfriend is going to kill the girlfriend because she cheated on him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not what you think,\u201d I said, and waited for it to play out.<\/p>\n

This is the horrible part about my job. I just collect the souls. I can\u2019t intervene. I can\u2019t do anything that might affect the ultimate outcome. Once that paperwork crosses my desk with the soul\u2019s name on it that person is fated to die, and nothing can change that.<\/p>\n

The woman stood, shouted at the man, shoved him in the chest. The man slapped her again. She unzipped her handbag, screaming, her hands shaking. The man seemed unaware of the danger he was in.<\/p>\n

She pulled a gun from her bag, a tiny pistol, but I knew it would be deadly at that range. The man tried to back away, to apologize, but she shouted again and the shot rang out.<\/p>\n

Beezle settled back on his towel and closed his eyes. \u201cWake me when you get back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTry not to drift into the lake and get eaten by a giant sturgeon,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

I trudged down the beach, where the woman was now frantically trying to figure out what to do with both the gun and the man\u2019s body. It was no concern of mine. I was there for his soul, which had drifted up, ghostly and pale, from the still form in the sand.<\/p>\n

I glanced back over my shoulder at Beezle. The moonlight fell on his tiny form, shiny with sunscreen, snoozing away on a summer night.<\/p>\n

And I went forward to where the dead lie, like I always do.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2011 Christina Henry. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story takes place several months before the events of BLACK WINGS and BLACK NIGHT. By Christina Henry \u201cI want to come with you on your pickup tonight,\u201d Beezle, my gargoyle, announced during dinner. \u201cWhat?\u201d I said, pausing with a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":403,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-412","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=412"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":464,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/412\/revisions\/464"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christinahenry.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}