<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lady who occupied the penthouse apartment on East 22nd Street had the sky \ndeck to herself except for her six lucky cats, which basically lived out there. \nWhen the Moon was full she\u2019d come out and howl at it, her fine little figure \ncasting long shadows amongst the potted bushes and trees. \u201cWooooooow!!!\u201d she\u2019d \nhowl repeatedly, not quite loud enough to drown out the sounds the fire trucks \nmade with their blasting horns and sirens some fourteen stories below, but with \nmore than adequate volume to send shivers down the spine of anyone in the \nvicinity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New York was fighting for its survival against a heat wave of unprecedented \nlength and intensity. Temperatures ran in the mid-to-high 90s, and the high \nhumidity was suffocating enough to make the frogs in the city\u2019s few remaining \nponds envy the dead fish that lay packed in ice inside the Sea Food Market. The \nworking men wiped sweat off their brows with one hand, while struggling to keep \nthe flies off their skin with the other. Men wearing special body suits were \ndragging fresh ice up from large deep freezers in the basement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Families were struggling to survive from one day to the next, an overloaded \nemergency management system barely responded any longer. Thousands of rescue \nworkers kept calling in sick, because they and their dependants were too \nexhausted, dehydrated, and demoralized to give a damn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gifted young woman who enjoyed howling triumphantly at the Moon while the \nrest of the city was suffering wasn\u2019t crazy. No, she possessed some unusual \npowers that made the struggles of ordinary New Yorkers seem oddly distant and \nunreal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the next summer\u2019s day, the hottest on record, Safrina walked slowly out on \nthe sky deck, taking one silent leap forward at a time, staring straight ahead \nas if in a deep trance. Once outside, she raised her arms and had them point \nstraight at the Sun in a 90-degree angle, her fingers spread wide apart. Her \neyes remained open as they looked right into the huge glowing bowl overhead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She opened her mouth. At that moment, a beautiful orange-and-black colored \nbutterfly appeared. It crawled out of her mouth, danced idly in front of her \nlips for a few minutes, and finally disappeared into the hot air towards \noblivion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The woman smiled, opened her mouth again, and snapped with her fingers on \nboth hands at the same time. Suddenly, a pack of butterflies were swarming all \naround her. All belonged to the same species as the one that had crawled out of \nher mouth, and soon they too vanished into the hot blue air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFull Moon comes, full Moon glows, butterflies from velvet lips must go!\u201d she \nmurmured with pride and sadness in her voice. \u201cMy butterflies are all gone now, \nI had to set them free.\u201d True. Next season, the whole routine would repeat \nitself: Incubation, care, preparation, release, and she\u2019d be all alone once \nagain!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Angus, the largest and oldest of her six felines, silently came over and \nrubbed itself against her leg in a loving gesture. Someone might expect her to \npick it up or bend down and pad it, saying: \u201cOh, I have you, so I\u2019m not all \nalone, am I?\u201d But they\u2019d be wrong. Safrina, a cat owner for 7 years, had never \nspoken to or touched any of them, because she could control their every action \nwith her mind. She and they understood one another as they lived and \nbreathed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eleven p.m. had finally come around, and Safrina could leave her spacious \napartment for the first time in days. Her dark gothic mind resented ordinary \npeople, shied away from crowds, and always sought for places of somber \nserenity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having walked briskly, yet hardly noticeably for fifteen blocks, she opened \nthe iron gate to her favorite cemetery. Across town, men were shirtless and \nwomen wore only their bras or a singlet, but she was dressed for late autumn. \nThe cap on her long coat covered her black hair, and the high heels on her long \nboots made distinct sounds against the ground. With her long eye lashes, deep \nblack eyes, purple mascara and matching lipstick, she looked ready to seduce a \nnecromancer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mister Eckleton\u2019s tombstone stood tall and proud under a giant cedar tree, \nwhich filled the air with a sweet scent designed to induce an appetite for the \nafterlife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFull Moon comes, full Moon glows, bad boys from my cliff must drop!\u201d she \nrecited, exactly like she had done once a month for the past two-and-a-half \nyears. \u201cI didn\u2019t murder you, did I? Not exactly, anyway.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back when he was still alive, Mr. Eckleton had used his charm to impose \nhimself upon this privileged but relatively inexperienced young witch. She felt \nlonely, and he had seduced her with his mysterious demeanor, which held up the \nfalse promise that there was so-much-more to the man than he immediately let \nshow. A reborn sorcerer from a distant past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He had been living with her rent-free for over a year, which he spent \ndrinking up a good portion of her inheritance, while she ingested his lies \narticulated perfectly with an Oxford scholar accent. She had discovered the \naccent was fake one night when she heard him talking in his sleep in a flat \nBrooklyn tongue. At that moment, she knew that she had been betrayed by a clown, \nthat his great \u201cspiritual performance,\u201d which allegedly he had been polishing \nmonth after month, would never happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAh well, you surely came tumbling down from the sky, didn\u2019t you, Sir \nEckleton?\u201d she now said scornfully in a voice deeper than her usual self. \u201cYou \nlived comfortably at my expense, until I made you walk in your sleep with the \nmysterious and magical forces that I possess. Naughty, naughty! Didn\u2019t your \nmistress-turned-landlady tell you never to walk out on the sky deck under a full \nMoon?\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The First Night The lady who occupied the penthouse apartment on East 22nd Street had the sky deck to herself except for her six lucky cats, which basically lived out there. When the Moon was full she\u2019d come out and howl at it, her fine little figure casting long shadows amongst the potted bushes and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-transparent-header":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quarterly-magazine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novelty-fiction.com\/gazette\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}