Beladona, neat

Ole slashed the strings of their spellbound guitar, their voice reaching high above the canopy of the forest, up to the night sky and the stars beyond. Sweat collected on their brow, dark locks stuck to their chiselled cheekbones and jaw, pointy ears peeking out, thick mascara and dramatic eyeliner drawing a striking contrast with their porcelain skin. Jimson’s bass cried the lower notes, her long witchy nails digging the chords. Behind them, Laurel thundered at the wolf hide drums in tandem with the thudding of his hooves.

Pixies worked the lights, pink and blue and that firefly glamour that made white pop in the dark. Salamanders blew sparks and smoke at the base of the stage, and The Foxglove’s cursed instruments distorted the sound into a mighty battle cry. As a banshee, Ole was the perfect creature to lead the band, their voice shrill and haunting—and made for the spotlight.

And so they sang, their throat ripping open as they cried the chorus, skin, muscles and bones vibrating with the pulsing beat. Their heart was full, their bare chest glowing with sweat and pride. They were dressed to impress: lean dragon-leather pants which they wore low around their waist to showcase the V lines they had painstakingly built. On top, nothing but strapped shoulder pads with raven feathers sprouting out like knives. On their feet, platform shoes which amplified the wooden boards vibrations of the stage.

The audience roared—orcs, nymphs, satyrs and all the creatures of the unseelie court. The air smelled of wet earth and decaying wood, fresh and acrid, alive and dead.

Laurel pounded the drums to the beat of The Foxglove’s hit song of the season. A ballad that slowly morphed into something else, heavy and high, and suddenly—a mosh pit broke out before the stage, creatures slamming and pushing into each other. The brook of trees circling the clandestine venue vibrated with the force of the music, branches shaking and shedding golden leaves, the ground quaking as the creatures raved. Ole was in their element: pouring their heart out to a sea of strangers.

The lights flickered, pink and white and blue, illuminating the audience for a brief moment—and in that moment, Ole caught a face—pale and haunting—a ghost. Ole’s voice faltered, off pitch, as brisk blue eyes locked into their black ones. They shut their eyes from the apparition, gulping air, then opened them again, searching, but the face was gone. Ole must have imagined it—must have imagined her.

Through the cacophony of the show, Jimson was looking at them with worry, her spidery fingers commanding her bass guitar. Ole shook themself and exhaled, pushing out the tension that crushed their chest. Everything was fine. They were fine. They slashed their guitar, the song swelling, drowning them in wicked melody—Ole sang until they could sing no more.

A bow and a battle cry; Ole led the fans into an uproar. The creatures of the night reacted, crying back and applauding—ecstatically—an ovation. But the audience craved more.

“Encore, encore, encore!”

“Whaddaya say, Jim?” Ole cried.

Jim flashed them a wide grin, showing one too many pointed teeth.

Laurel drumsticks rammed against the sky iron cymbals.

“Into The Void?” Ole shouted against Jim’s ear.

“Nah,” she cried back into their pointy one, “Let’s give them what they want—The Grinning Cat!”

Ole recoiled, her words like a punch in their gut. Why would Jim resurrect that song? Had she seen the face haunting their gig too? They opened their mouth to protest, but Jim had already turned to the audience, had already plucked the first few chords, had already got the reaction she intended—creatures raving to the allure of that particular hit song.

Ole’s composition.

Ole’s ghost.

The lyrics poured out of their throat, grating, clawing, burning.

Smile!

Smile!

Smile!

She smiles as I plea for mercy

The grinning cat smiles as I bleed

Is her smile worth it?

Does she even know?

I die for a cat who’s gone!

Smile!

A guitar solo, fingers waging war against the strings.

I walk a graveyard of rotten teeth

She bites flesh my blood beneath

Is her smile worth it?

Does she even know?

I die for a cat who’s gone!

Gone!

Gone!

Gone!

Laurel pounded the drum’s wolf hides, Ole and Jim performing their own mosh pit on stage. Maybe if Ole moved enough, cried enough, sweated enough, they could exorcise the demon haunting their past.

A wink from Jim: a cue that the show had reached its end. Ole nodded, jumped to the top of a sound tower, and cried a note so high, crystal glasses and bottles exploded, and the twin moons quivered overhead. Jim swung her bass, arcing high above her head until she brought it down, crashing it against the stage.

Ole bowed, Jim shouted her love to her fans, and Laurel tossed his drum sticks into the crowd, causing a fight between a satyr and a redcap.

A successful gig, for sure. And yet, Ole’s skin crawled as they descended the stage—a familiar omen, and not a good one.

***

“Belladonna, neat,” Ole asked the bartender, a frowning goblin named Apple.

Apple frowned as he poured Ole the steaming blood-purple beverage.

The bar stood on the opposite end of the main stage, close enough they could still hear the music but far enough so as not to be drowned by it. Carved from a giant sequoia, it held a long counter with tall stools and a variety of bottles hanging high along the massive trunk. With their gig done, the night and the party would go on for ages, aeons really, with a pretentious Elfin DJ calling the shots.

Ole took a sip from their drink, letting the sound of the rave wash over them.

“Ole!” A high-pitched cry and Jim flung herself against their back, squeezing them and almost knocking them off their seat. Ole had a mind to scold her for her choice of song, but Jim was already talking, face bright with sweat and excitement.

“Listen, Laurel and I are gonna bounce, the unseelie court is holding an afterparty, and it’s gonna be wicked!” she sang. “No excuses this time: You’re coming too!”

Ole scoffed. “I’m really not going.”

An afterparty in the unseelie court was the last thing they needed—and Jim knew as much. The very air in the court was spiked with Hex mushroom spores, spicy and acrid and intoxicating. Ole hadn’t snorted those in aeons, not since… They shook their head, vehemently, stomach clenching and hands squeezing into fists. Jim should’ve known better than to invite them there. She, of all Fae, knew what was at stake.

Jim pouted. “But Bane’s been asking about you!”

Ole groaned, head dropping onto the counter with a heavy thud.

“Oh,” Jim chuckled. “So that’s not happening anymore?”

“Honestly, Jim, I’d rather drop dead here and now than see that changeling again.”

“Come on,” Jim grabbed and shook their shoulder. “You always do that, run away from any fun! Just this time, for me?”

Ole shot her their best dirty look, but Jim just laughed and pushed their face away.

“Fine! Your loss anyway.” Jim snatched the belladonna glass and downed the contents. “See yah!”

Ole watched her disappear into the crowd, then flagged Apple for another dose. “Make it double—no, triple.”

Apple frowned as he served. Mist hovered over the short crystal glass, the smell sweet and sour, poison made into bliss. Ole knocked it back, relishing the warmth as it spread through their belly.

They didn’t need Jim—nor Hex mushrooms—to have a good time. As the lead singer of The Foxglove, they could find better company than Jim—that treacherous witch! A handsome nymph perhaps. Or a pretty undine. They had seen a couple of attractive horns from the stage, so a round around the bar and the right-angled grin should soothe the ache in his chest. An ache that Ole tried very hard to ignore, and that had nothing to do with a clingy changeling at an afterparty.

But first, weed.

Ole wound from the bar to the main stage, then to the outer edge of the brook, stopping only to kiss a selkie’s cheek and to hear praise for the show. They enjoyed that, a lot, more than they would like to admit. But fur and scales pressed against them, the dancing bodies swelling; Ole escaped into the woods.

When the ground turned spongy moss beneath their feet, and the trees grew closer together, and the music became but a faded melody clinging to the cool air like mist on a white morning, Ole stopped and leaned against an ash tree. They plucked a cigarette from their boot and lifted it to their lips but, padding their trouser pockets—damn, where was their firestone?

“Here.” A flame dancing before their face.

“Oh, cheers.” Ole cupped the flame and puffed at the joint. They exhaled, thick blue smoke billowing skywards. “I think I’ve lost—” the words dropped like rocks when the smoke cleared, revealing the Fae before them.

Not a Fae.

A human.

Their human.

Their ghost.

Blond hair dyed pink, thick mascara and eyeliner to rival Ole’s own dramatic makeup, fishnets crawling up a pair of round thighs and creeping under a torn-edged miniskirt. Her crop top depicted a bloody dead bunny, swinging from a noose made of a pocket watch chain. And her black-lipped grin… oh, her grin was wicked, and sharp, and Ole’s worst fucking nightmare.

“Alice,” they said dumbly, the joint forgotten between their fingers.

Alice moved, slowly as if not to scare them; she took the joint for herself. “Oleander.”

Ole recoiled from their deadname. “Ole.”

“Ole.” Alice puffed at the joint, a slight tip of her chin. “It suits you.”

Ole hadn’t imagined her, then. She was really here, on the edge of the night, keen blue eyes staring into Ole’s black ones, eyelashes so long they could cut a Fae. They cut Ole in each slow blink, scorching them as her gaze lowered to their jaw, their bobbing throat and sharp clavicles, their bare chest. And her hand lifted, black nail polish peeling off the fingers; her touch light as she drew the lines of their sternum and then the twin scars running from under their chest to their ribs—Ole snatched her hand, stopping the touch and motion. They could not stop the shuddering chill rooting in the pit of their stomach.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Ole’s voice was low and haunted, foreign to their own ears.

Alice grinned like a wicked cat. “I followed a boggart down a hole.”

Ole was still holding her hand. It was small and cold. And it burnt them. They let it go.

“I really like your music,” she said. “Even the one where you bitch about me.”

Ole said nothing.

“You’ve always been so talented,” she pushed on, “I’m glad you found a way to express that part of you.”

Ole still said nothing.

Alice’s grin—ever wide, ever full—wavered. “Look, Ole, I—”

“Don’t.” Ole took a step back. “Whatever you’re about to say, whatever you want—don’t.”

“But I—”

Ole turned and walked away.

“Ole!”

They kept walking, one step after the other. The crunchy sound of dry moss and twigs under their boots; the call of the music, the chattering and laughter of the Fae—they sped towards it, running, widening the distance between themself and the cause of the hollow ache they had tried so hard to smother.

How dare she come back now, when Ole had just got their life back? When they had just found joy again, bliss in their music, when after aeons of grief, they had finally laid with other lovers, other bodies, seeking skin and scales and horns that were not hers! How dare she show up in their life again, unannounced and unbothered by the heartache she left in her wake?

Ole collapsed against the bar, sweat running down their temples, pointy ears burning with rage. “Belladonna, triple, neat!”

Apple frowned. “Have a Lily Beer, and go home, Ole.”

“Fuck, Apple! Please!”

The bartender scoffed. “Your burial, mate.”

The belladonna went down with a bite. Ole hiccupped, and belched, bitter acid flooding their mouth.

A presence settled on the seat beside them, the scent of bubblegum overpowering the pungent smells of the party.

Ole cursed the twin moons above.

“I’ll have the same, please,” Alice asked, her voice sweet like a viper’s venom.

“No, she won’t.” Ole cursed the moons some more. “Last I checked, belladonna kills humans. Tuber Beer, Apple, and make it two.”

Apple frowned and disappeared behind the counter.

Alice flipped her obnoxiously pink hair, that wicked smile back on her black lips. “A couple of years away and I forget which poison is safe and which is not.” She chuckled. “It brings back memories, doesn’t it? You helping me survive this place. Thanks for still looking after me.”

Ole scoffed. A couple of years for her, an eternity for them. “I’d rather not deal with a corpse tonight, that’s all.”

Alice didn’t take their bait.

From their boot, Ole took out another cigarette. Their weed was gone, their last joint lost somewhere in the woods, but good old poison ivy would do to settle their nerves. Using one of the decorative candles to light it up, they inhaled deeply.

“You look well.”

Ole puffed at the cigarette.

“Different, but… Better, more yourself.”

Another puff.

Apple reemerged with two brown bottles, which he placed in front of Ole with a pointed frown before moving away to attend to his other customers. “No smoking in here, Ole,” he cried from the other side of the bar.

“Bite me,” Ole muttered, but crushed the butt of their cigarette in the empty glass anyways.

“Ole, listen—”

“Nope.” Ole would not listen. They stood up too fast and swayed—the belladonna had reached their legs, making their knees buckle.

Alice grabbed them before they could fall, but they jerked away from the electrifying touch, too numb, hurt and confused. They had to get away, now, before they did something—said something they would regret for the rest of their life.

They ran. They ran away from the bar, from the brook of trees which held the party, shouldering past the dancing creatures, tripping over loose rocks and dry twigs. The night wind whooshed in their ears as they breached the edge of the brook, cooling their feverish skin. Ole ran until their legs burnt and only stopped when they reached a glade of soft grass and purple blooms. Belladonna dotted the dark green under the glow of the twin moons.

There, Ole collapsed.

On their knees, they wept.

And as their tears soaked the already wet earth, Ole’s blurry vision narrowed on the single yellow flower stubbornly growing among the field of poison. Lonesome and idiosyncratic, that single wild daisy pried memories from the recesses of their mind—memories Ole had fought so hard to forget.

A scream unfurled from their throat and pushed past their teeth, expanding, waves of grief and rage piercing the night.

***

A glade of yellow daisies under the twilight sky, little flowers trampled and crushed by a set of hurrying feet running from an invisible foe. A young woman—a human!—with blond hair, deep blue eyes, and a foreign scent of bubblegum and smoke, the scent of the Other World.

That was how Alice had come into Ole’s life, a strange thing with knees scratched and bleeding, hungry and afraid.

“I followed a hurrying hare,” Alice said then. “And fell down a hole.”

“Not a hare,” Ole said, “A boggart, a shitty little shape-shifter.”

Her lips parted into a tiny round O. A hundred questions followed, too fast and nonsensical for Ole to comprehend, but they had questions for her too.

“What is the Other World like?” Ole interrupted her tirade.

“Dark and grim.” That was all she would say about the matter.

“Do you need help to go back?”

Blonde hair bounced about her head as she swore never to set foot there again. Her sire had died, she had no one, and that more than anything else, Ole understood.

A black veil and long skirt left billowing, discarded on a track in the woods. Ole’s dame might have found it later that day, or the next moon, or perhaps never really even bothered to look. A banshee who refuses to conform, to follow her sacred duty to foretell fates with blood curdling, distant screams, had no place in their matriarchal nest. For all her prophetic talent, had Ole’s dame known they would eventually leave, flee the constraints of duty and identity, the femininity that was only a part of the multitude Ole held inside their heart? Ole would never know for they would never go back. They shed their skin—their façade—and left, and as if fate had been watching their glee and decided to award their courage, it had put this spellbinding human in their path, in a glade under the setting sun.

As Ole poked her, trying to understand that otherworldly being, Alice insisted she was not a cub like they had first thought; she had lived twenty-five years in the Other World, thank you very much. Ole scoffed for they were ageless, eternal, but the freshness in her essence had a tantalising allure.

During the next few seasons, Alice followed Ole around like a silly duckling, wide-eyed and greedy-mouthed. She would consume whatever Ole offered, poison or medicine, drug or food. They attended bars and dens, raves and conclaves, night circles and cursed soireés. They smoked nightshade with salamanders, got high on hex mushrooms with shady Fae in hats, spent moon cycles on end without ever seeing the sun. They attended court and Alice blended right in, claiming she was raised around royals, and proving so when she bewitched the Fairy Queen. Creatures loved her, but not as much as Ole did.

Ole had fallen for the mortal girl who devoured secrets, dwelled in mysteries and eerie riddles, and to Ole, Alice was immense.

And then, on one winter solstice, they laid together under the gaze of a thousand stars, blades of grass as their mattress, wind as their witness. She was soft and small, and fit perfectly in their arms. She touched parts of Ole no one had ever touched before, that no one ever would again. She inhabited them, dwelled under their skin; Alice was the drug Ole craved, the sweet poison dripping onto their tongue. Ole drowned in her being, they were consumed by her existence, and in her hunger for life Ole found themself.

And then… Then, she left, at dawn, and she never said goodbye. Ole woke to a white morning, alone in a patch of crushed grass. Cold creeped into their skin despite the rays of sunshine and denial, they shivered and shuddered and waited. They waited as the sun crawled up the sky, as the clouds ran towards greener lands, as night came and brought along the twin moons.

The realisation crashed against Ole’s awareness like a tidal wave against brittle rock. Alice… was not coming back.

***

“Ole.”

“Go. Away.”

“Ole, please, I just want to talk.”

Ole’s fingers crushed that shitty yellow daisy, erasing it from existence. “There’s nothing to say, Alice. You left, and you should’ve never come back.”

“I left, yes, but… That’s why I came back, to explain why I had to!”

A chuckle that could have been a sob. Ole hoisted themself to their feet. The twin moons shed an ethereal silver light over the glade, a cluster of nosy stars watching them. Ole slowly turned to face her.

Alice stood at the edge of the glade. The belladonna blooms a poisonous barrier, a safeguard.

“I had to!” she repeated, a rush to her words.

Ole’s voice was low and strained. “Why did you have to break my heart?”

“Because,” Alice took a step forward, stopping on the rim of the purple shield. “We were dying, Ole, together, and we didn’t even care.”

A beat.

“We were happy,” Ole breathed.

Alice shook her head, pink hair billowing in the howling wind. “We were hiding, drowning in drugs and raves, distracting ourselves from our own demons. If I hadn’t left, we would’ve killed each other—I would’ve killed you.”

“I…” Ole swallowed, the truth pushing through their teeth. “I would’ve died for you.”

“And I left—” Another step forward, a purple flower inches from a patch of exposed skin— “so you wouldn’t.”

Ole scoffed a laugh. “If that’s what you tell yourself, fine.” They wiped a glassy tear from their cheeks. “But the truth is that you left—you left without saying anything! A note, an explanation—nothing! And I waited for you, Alice, I waited for you!”

“I’m sorry,” she said, gaze shimmering in the low light. “I should’ve talked to you but every time I tried, my resolve ended, and I convinced myself instead that staying wasn’t such a bad thing. But it was, and I had to leave Ole, I had to! For too long I had been running from myself, from everyone else’s expectations, that was how I survived, but this time—this time I had to run towards my own sanity, my own life!”

“Then run!” Ole barked, a stubborn anger pushing the words out. “Run and leave again! I don’t want you back—I don’t need you back!”

“No!” Alice cried.

A beat as her refusal died against the wind.

Ole’s laugh was brisk like winter. “No?”

“Not yet.” Three steps into the belladonna field, blue eyes cast in darkness. “Not until you understand that you too were running and hiding, and that me leaving—”

“I wasn’t running!” Ole said, “I wasn’t…” but they couldn’t finish because that was not true.

“Ole.” She marched towards them, crushing flowers beneath her feet. “Please, remember!”

The soft edges of her voice flooded Ole’s awareness, pulling dreadful memories to the surface: memories they didn’t want, for those were not the glossy, blissful ones they had held on to, but the real ones, which they had buried underneath their skin. Alice’s sunken cheeks and blood-shot eyes. Ole’s own bony limbs, skin pulled taut against their skeleton, and the taste of bitter bile as they retched. The scent of ash and smoke, the lost days and blank awareness, and the havoc they had brought, Ole and Alice, whenever there was too much or too little of hex mushroom or nightshade. Had they crashed a tea party and destroyed someone’s birthday? Neither of them could say.

Ole dragged those images and scents back down to the pits of hell. They refused to speak.

Alice sighed. “My dad had just died, but you had lost someone too, right? You never spoke about it, but I know you had left something behind, something that mattered.”

Ole shook their head, throat tight, eyes burning.

“What were you running from?” Alice insisted.

They wrapped their arms around themself, a protective gesture, an attempt to stop the shivering taking over their body.

“Ole—”

“My dame,” Ole heard themself saying. “My nest. It was the best and the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

Alice nodded. “My dad was a… He was like a High Lord, like the Fae we met in court? He had lands and wealth, and expectations I could not fulfil. So I left, I ran away, and we never spoke again. When he died, I… Everything he owned was now mine, but I didn’t want it, I never wanted it! But I still missed him, and the guilt, the grief, it was too much, so I kept running, partying as much out there as we did in here. Finding you and the glory of Fae… It just made it easier to pretend I was okay.”

Ole let out a shuddering breath. They had known Alice was someone important in the Other World, a High Lady perhaps, someone she was trying to leave behind. But this was the first time they heard the whole story, and it was so similar to their own.

Ole had also been running, in a pattern of destruction that started long before they met a strange human on a glade, a pattern they had never been able to break. They had buried their fears in cheap hallucinations, drowned their aches in wretched drunkenness. They had thought they had found in Alice an escape, a shelter, but she was nothing but a hideout—Ole had never stopped running.

“We were two broken records, playing the same stupid songs to ourselves,” Ole said.

A soft, hardly-there smile returned to Alice’s lips. “I found help in the Other World and started to heal. But I still thought about you—I never stopped thinking about you. So when I felt strong enough, I came back. I needed to see how you were doing, if you had found your way—and you have!” She was standing before Ole, a tentative hand lifted as if to touch their cheek. “Look at you, you’re brilliant! And beautiful, and healthy! This is more than I could’ve ever asked for, more than I could’ve hoped for!”

Ole focused on her then, truly seeing the woman behind the façade of blurry mascara and torn skirts. Alice looked healthy. Her cheeks had filled, her hips rounded, and there was colour under the white powder of her makeup.

Ole’s own body had changed too, filled with muscles, lost the bits that didn’t fit. They were content, if not happy, proud of themself as they were. And maybe, just maybe, that was only because she had left, at the solstice, at dawn.

It was after she left, after their mock refuge shattered, that Ole had picked the pieces of themself and rearranged them in a form that fit—that suited what laid beneath their skin. In their music, they found solace, and in other lovers, respite. Maybe… Maybe she was right. Maybe leaving was the best thing she could have done for both of them.

And when Alice did touch their cheek, Ole leaned into her touch with a sigh.

“I’m really glad I got to see you again, Ole.”

Ole took her hand in theirs, gaze lowering to her legs, to the fishnet that ended inside heavy leather boots, and the red rash wounds blooming like flowers from her ankles to her knees.

“Fuck, Alice!” Ole cursed.

Startled, she took a step back and winced: the belladonna flowers burnt her flesh. The poisonous glade hurt her, not only now as she scrambled backwards, but ever since the moment she entered the glade seeking Ole’s forgiveness.

With another string of curses, Ole scooped her up. She yelped but then laughed as they brought her to the edge of the glade, away from the toxic plants.

A quick sweep along the tree roots, and Ole brought back a bouquet of herbs which they made her chew and swallow. The reddening lessened, and when she laughed again, the scent of mint and rosemary lingered.

“I really did like your music,” she said after a while.

A surprised chuckle. “The Foxglove is doing well. We’re booked until the next solstice.”

“Maybe I can watch you again sometime? If… if that’s okay with you?”

“You’re staying?” A fluttering in their stomach.

“I…” she wrung her hands on her skirt. “Well, to be honest I have no idea what’s next. I saw what I came here to see, and my affairs are in order in the Other World—I wouldn’t need to go back any time soon. So, I don’t know, maybe I could give this place a shot? A fresh start as they say.”

A fresh start. That sounded like something Ole would like too. The clouds gathered overhead, shading the grounds from the twin moons’ light for a moment, before parting again. The breeze blew, the field of belladonna danced, and the silence pressed against Ole’s heart.

They should say something now: tell her she was welcome to watch their next gig, and that they had way better songs than the Grinning Cat. That they were actually glad she had come back, that seeing her again was exactly what Ole needed to move on, that the ache which had been weighing on their chest had suddenly lifted. But before Ole could manage any of those words out, Alice’s gaze dropped to the mossy ground and she backed away.

“So… I’ll go now,” she told the moss, “and maybe I will see you around?”

She didn’t wait for a response and turned on her heavy boots—

“Alice.”

She turned back as wide-eyed as the first time they met.

From the ground, Ole picked up a tiny yellow flower, growing and thriving as stubbornly as the woman before them. “Do you wanna have a Tuber Beer with me?”

Her black lips parted into a tiny round O before splitting into a lovely, wicked grin. “I’d like that very much, Ole.”

The daisy ended up in her hair, behind her ear, and her fingers with the black nail polish peeling off, around Ole’s, somehow.

END