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How to Summon a Beast to Hickory Street
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In a flurry of tears and shouts, the rain fell. It battered the sidewalk until every cigarette for two miles washed down a storm drain. Most slept soundly during thunderstorms, but the rain made Elijah’s skin crawl as if every pitter-patter was made of dropped needles, every rumble a dead man’s moan. How was anyone to sleep in this?
Stop calling, is what she messaged him. As if his breath had been a burden in her ear. Had they not spent the last six months in starry-eyed wonder of each other? What caused her to doubt so suddenly? Elijah swirled his coffee and tried not to think, but the dark liquid felt like an abyss — a deep hole that tumbled down, down, down.
He needed air.
He slid open his porch door with a roar of wind and mist, but the balcony remained dry and — by some sympathy of the gods — almost pleasant. Elijah let the warm steam tickle his nose. Lyla, he thought. What did I do wrong? He checked his messages.
Nothing.
The last time they were together, things had been tense. The kind of tension that all couples go through after months together: the realization that there would be many agree-to-disagree’s and bad habits that were impossible to…
