(Not Just) Knee Deep

by Kat Beyer

Everything happened exactly as the night porter had described. A whirlwind erupted out of the marble floor, clawed hands ripping out of it. They caught the light of this world awfully clearly.

We behaved like sensible, fearless exorcists and ran full tilt for the door. Outside, the heat of Istanbul brought us up short.

“At least the tourist season is almost over,” sighed the director.

I answered, “No exorcist worth their bell stays to be killed. Now I think we have the measure of it. If you will excuse us.”

I too began to have doubts after the second day, though. Octavia plowed through manuscript after Byzantine manuscript, searching out references to whirlwind demons haunting Hagia Sophia. But I didn’t want a reference, I wanted a solution, and I didn’t think medieval people had found one, though they had had much more experience with demons than modern ones have.

Iskender, Octavia’s husband, just shrugged and made us more Turkish coffee. He does ghosts, not demons.

Me? I did my meditations, sought out the spirit messengers, read everything I could find in English, Italian, and my newly learnt Greek and Arabic, scribbled frantic notes to the sound of my pirated tapes. The neighborhood bootlegger specialized in funk and disco, stuff I’d never wanted to listen to back home. Here, I was getting an education.

The third day, high on caffeine, P Funk, and medieval Greek, I had a brainstorm.

“Let’s just try it,” I said to Octavia in the cab back to Hagia Sophia.

“You’re mad,” she said.

“Yes, yes—I know! But let’s just try it,” I repeated.

“I’m standing behind you. And let’s keep the director out of this.”

So we stood there, or rather I stood there, in the center of that grand and ancient marble paving, with a beat-up boombox. I waited for the whirlwind to begin. It swirled out of the stone right on time. I saw the claws flick and flash.

I knelt and pressed “play.”

George Clinton did what I couldn’t do. The whirling claws couldn’t take the rhythm. They spun faster, flung out further.

“You’re feeding it!” Cried Octavia.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

Suddenly the demons gave it up to the funk. There was a gorgeous explosion of dust. Then silence.
I still haven’t figured out why it worked. Perhaps they didn’t have anything like that way back when.

A Chevy Called Edwina

by SaraG

It took the Chevy thirty years to become sentient.

One second, it was cruising at 60mph, in the happy oblivious haze of pre-sentient beings that have just had an oil change. The next, an insect splattered on the windshield. Quite a few bugs had collected there already. The Chevy’s owner was divorced and took a “rain equals car wash” attitude to vehicle hygiene.

But when when the Chevy tasted the bug brains being massaged in by the wipers, a synapse fired.

“My name is Edwina,” it said.

Tom heard the voice coming from the radio. He wouldn’t have given it a second though, but the radio had been broken for ten years before it’d been stolen.

“Hello, Tom. My name is Edwina.”

Tom was too good a driver to stop in the middle of the interstate. He kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel.

“Is that you, Roger?”

“Yes, but my name is Edwina.”

“Damn, boy. Always knew you were special. Gladys wanted me to sell you years ago, but I figured as long as it keeps going…”

They talked for a while. Despite Edwina’s fears, Tom didn’t take the name change badly.

“You gotta be who you gotta be, baby,” he said. By the time they rolled into Patty’s diner, Tom was using the female pronoun and flirting with his car.

“Hang in there a sec, baby. Gonna run inside to get a bite. Man, this is amazing! Do you think you could drive yourself? That would be so cool.” Tom left with a big smile on his face, muttering about them being the dynamic duo and Take that Gladys. Your San Francisco lawyer is going to be so jealous when he sees me on National T.V.

A few minutes later, Tom emerged with Patty in tow. She was still drying her hands on a dish towel. Obviously, there weren’t any other customers in the diner, or Tom would have dragged them out too.
“This it? Seems like the same filthy car to me…”

“Say something, Edwina. Tell Patty that she’s looking damn fine today.”

Edwina glared back. She was damned if she was going to flirt with Patty on Tom’s behalf.

“Come on Edwina. Are you being shy?” Tom cooed.

“This car is disgusting,” Patty said. “You can’t even see through the windshield.” Instinctively, she dragged the wet rag over the glass. Bits of bug stuck to it.

“Come on Edwina; you’re making me look stupid,” Tom hissed into the left-hand mirror.

But Edwina couldn’t answer. She was missing a critical half-ounce of bug brains. Her lights had blinked out.