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The first short story in a series of female antagonists is called

For Lilian

“What?” Marisol yelled from the kitchen.

David headed upstairs to use the second bathroom without responding but could hear Lilian.

“I let a woman inside who was dripping wet on the back steps. She looked like was going to catch pneumonia. She is showering to dry and then we can figure out what to do.”

David continued upstairs, trudged loudly in fact and slammed the door shut. It wasn’t out of anger but confusion. They had all just ingested tons of drugs and Lilian was the only sober reliable person here. He flipped up the lid and avoided looking at himself in the mirror. How can he trust himself around this stranger? It was an issue of ego, pride. This weekend was slowly being ruined and he felt to blame.

“I shouldn’t have invited her,” he watched the wall in front of him.

He slammed the lid shut and didn’t want to wash his hands. He didn’t want to look at the mirror in front of him. He didn’t want to watch the distortion and he felt nauseous. Should I throw up? He walked out of the bathroom before answering himself. At the top of the steps, he heard the kettle, an amicable exchange between his three friends and the shower stop. Four steps down he heard the chatter of his friends stop. Seven steps down he heard footsteps walk into the living room. As he rounded the corner, the tenth step down, he heard dishes clank again. He heard nothing more from the bathroom. On the last step, Jack smiled.

“You want to continue the game?” as if nothing unusual had begun.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” he sort of smirked, “a stranger may be a welcome addition since we have heard all of our stories.”

Lilian was placing a bottle of honey on the wooden dinner tray and had her back to everyone. Marisol was getting sugar from the cabinet. Is everyone crazy? Lilian finished setting everything on the tray and brought it to the living room, not saying a word to David, who appeared skeptical, brow furrowed, tight lipped and unwavering in her way. She set everything on the table and Jack continued to drink a beer. It was if this woman was invited to their party. David peeked around the corner to the hallway to see no one had cleaned the footprints yet when the door swung open.

She walked out with hesitation, slowly, pausing just a step outside and locked eyes with David. He turned all the way to face her and she was disarming. No change in facial expression or posture, she stunned him with her stature which was unassuming, possibly frightened, a look of dilemma, fear, confusion on her face. She is in a house full of strangers in the middle of the woods, David. Lilian’s clothes. She was wearing Lilian’s clothes. The gray hood was up so he couldn’t see her face that well, just her eyebrows which had a bit of aristocratic lift to them and her eyes, wide, and a bit of hair, brown, past her shoulders. From this distance, he couldn’t make out any color on her face but she seemed refreshed, a little rosy from the shower. That made her less threatening. She didn’t appear to need immediate medical attention although Lilian was going to make a big deal about this. Don’t scare her. With that thought, he lowered his head and turned back towards the living room giving her a sidelong glance to invite her to enter.

The woman didn’t move right away. She waited, possibly until the tall man blocking her passage moved ever so slightly so she could enter the living room without feeling like she was passing through a guard at a gate. He took a couple steps to the left and she took nine feet to get to the living room. Marisol was just sitting  down next to Jack when they all saw her; Lilian settling back on the green armchair and David standing near the floor lamp and window, trying not to stare but suddenly entranced by the situation. He no longer felt uneasy but admired Lilian for handling the situation. What could have been a crisis, averted. She was warm, showered, standing inside of a shelter as the rain raged on.

“Hi,” she held her hand up.
“Hi,” the choir began.

Heavy hiking boots aside, the woman sort of tiptoes past Lilian as if she wanted to be quiet in her interruption. She was hooded, soaking wet, dripping on the floor and leaving mud where she stepped.
“Please,” Lilian gestured to the bathroom near the backdoor, “let’s get you out of those clothes. I will bring you some.”

Lilian led her into the bathroom and closed the door behind her, grabbed a pair of sweatshirts, clean plain light blue underwea–granny pantiess, gray wool socks, and a hooded sweatshirt and lightly knocked back on the bathroom door without telling anyone a stranger had arrived to their house. She heard them in the kitchen, laughing, talking, not making out any words just jovial sounds. Her instinct was to help, nurture, ground on Earth. She was a Cancer. She was a mother. The woman stood on the bathroom rug dripping and Lilian saw  the rug was ruined; the pale blue now caked in brown. The hardwood leading to the bathroom linoleum was dotted with muddy footprints. They could clean this place before leaving Sunday.

“You can catch pneumonia.”
The stranger took her hood off and stared at Lilian. Shivering, her eyes were wide, a little terror in her stare but glittering. The woman was pallid yet stunning. Even dripping wet, she was the mutt picked first, Lilian thought.
Setting the clothes on the top of the toilet seat, she stated, “Please take a bath or shower. Whatever you prefer.” Lilian opened a small closet next to the towel rack to pull out two big fluffy white towels. “For your hair too.” She set those on top of the toilet seat. “I’m gonna make a pot of lemon tea.”
The woman stayed silent. Is she in some kind of shock?
“I will come check on you if you want. Otherwise, we will be in the living room.”
The woman nodded. Lilian left the bathroom and David was coming towards her.
“What’s up?” he said, half smiling.
“I’m going to make some tea. Would you like some?”
“I have to piss,” he headed towards the door.
“No, go upstairs. There’s a woman in there.”

“What?”
“I let a woman inside from the rain. She was soaking wet and pale. She can catch pneumonia. She must have got caught hiking. She was wearing hiking boots and clothes.”

They heard the shower turn on. David looked at her with surprise.
“You let a strange woman in here without telling us?”
They could hear Marisol and Jack from the other room, still giggling, the tab of a beer opening.
“I am telling you now. She was going to catch pneumonia.”

“Lilian, we are in the middle of the woods,” his eyes moved over the hallway footprints, seeing, believing her.
She shrugged, “Yeah. We are.”
She moved past him without saying another word and he heard her say excuse me and he heard some dishes clanking and he heard the stove click, preparing to light the burner. He looked at the footprints. He listened to the shower run. He let his body undulate with warmth as the acid kicked in.
“You can’t be sure about anything, his friend has said to him the first time he took it. Only a half a tab then too. “When you take psychedelics just find a way to remind yourself  you’re on drugs. Don’t believe everything you hear or see.”
He could see the footprints. Lilian wasn’t lying. He could hear the shower running and feel his stomach churn a little; that first wave of nausea that hits when you ingest a foreign chemical. His guts rumbled. Too much beer. Fuck.
“Guys, he yelled.
He heard more dishes clank and imagined Lilian, preparing the intruder a snack. Fucking dumb bitch. “There’s a stranger showering in our bathroom.”

I wrote you into this book and now you have to beg your way out.

“I will do anything to avoid getting carried away

sleep nightly with coins over my eyes

set fire to an entire zodiac.”

-kaveh akbar

“We live in a universe driven by chance,” his father had said once, “but the bullshit artists all want causality.”

“now,” and because I’ve done this before I felt
like I had the authority to be the one to
say it to him, “when they ask what you
are, tell them
humbled.”