Electric Blue by Jamieson Wolf Page B

sweat began to pour off her brow. "What's happening to me?" she said out loud. That sounded clichéd, even to her. "What's going on?" No , she thought, that was no better. She would not fare well as a horror movie heroine, she thought wryly. The hum sounded like the buzzing of bees, or like electricity thumping through her at full volume. Her body seemed to pulsate with that hum, those vibrations. The crow still stared at her with its red eyes. It cawed again, as if to say it knew exactly what was going on.
    "Then tell me, damn you," Poppy said. The crow blinked back at her and remained silent. "ANSWER ME!" She screeched, her voice raising several octaves, the smokiness of her voice becoming shrill and crass until it wasn't a voice at all. She was cawing. With a clarity that bordered on awe, Poppy realized that she was different, that she was changing. She was becoming. The hum that ran through her body began to scream; pain shot up her arm and slashed into her head with a sound not unlike a police siren. Poppy fell to the ground, clutching her head in her hands, blood now running from her eyes like tears. She felt that her entire body would explode from the inside out.
    Make it stop , she thought. It became a mantra, all running together. Makeitstopmakeitstopmakeitstop. And, with a brilliant flash of light, her wish was answered. Poppy opened her eyes to discover everything that had been in colour was now in shades of black and grey and white. It was as if someone had popped out her eyes and placed a black and white television in her sockets instead. The world was devoid of colour. The crow cawed at her from the windowsill. It smashed its beak into the glass, making the hole in the pane larger. Her blood decorated the serrated edges of the glass and the crow stuck out its little black tongue and licked, no, savoured her blood. When the crow’s tongue made contact with Poppy's blood, a sound, a clack, resounded inside Poppy's head. The world seemed a little bit clearer. A little bit more bearable. Something was different. The wind whistled past the hole in the window. Except now it sounded like music, notes hung in the air falling to the ground and shattering around her. She looked down at herself and cawed in surprise. She had grown feathers. And clawed feet. And she heard voices.
    No, that wasn't quite right. It was a voice, repeated a million times. It was as if the owner of the voice didn't know which voice he was comfortable with, or as if the voice itself was surrounded by water. There was a rush of air before the voice spoke. . . .Waking from her dream, Poppy was covered in sweat. In a daze, she opened her bedroom window, Alicia moving beside her. She watched her lover sigh in her dreams, something troubling her. Poppy brushed a hair out of Alicia's face. She smelled the cool air and her panic disappeared. Calmed, she settled back to sleep, only to forget the dream in the morning.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Daphne McGowan drove slowly down Bronson Avenue . She had never driven past her previous employee's house and she didn't want to miss it. She hated this neighbourhood. So different from her polished house in the Glebe, the houses here looked downtrodden, neglected. She sniffed her nose in disgust. Then she saw it, that house, and felt her world shift out of focus. She was living in the Coven House! She nearly crossed herself before it occurred to her that she wasn't Christian. If Poppy was living in the Coven House, not even Poppy's soul could save her. Her grandmother had told her stories of the Coven House, how John Harrow had led a cult of Witches to their deaths. They said that the spirits of the dead flowed between the walls still, that it was on the crossroads of reality and magic. The rumours that surrounded the house were more plentiful than urban legend.
    That Poppy would live here, Daphne laughed. It was too much to be a coincidence. She chuckled to herself. Her boss would love this. She would have to update the