Lost Girls (3 page)

Sandra screams, “Where is she? What have you done to her?”

There are tears on Aydee’s face. She moves closer and opens her mouth, but she seems unable to speak.

Baring her teeth in fury, Sandra pushes her away. Then Aydee erupts with laughter, crying even harder. “Sandra, it’s me! It’s both of us. We’re one person again. Finally.”

Aydee lifts her shirt, and there are fading scars where she’d been stabbed. Sandra looks at her face, and it’s true: the new Aydee’s face is a composite of both their faces, not as worn as the one, not as smooth as the other.

Aydee says it’s good to have a dog in the bookshop again. It amuses her when Russet intimidates customers by following them around.

These strange books about secret histories, lost worlds, and weird gods; the otherwordly clientele; the tenuous connection with any one reality—Sandra’s fascinated by it all, and amazed that she’s really working at Lost Pages.

As Sandra leafs through the book whose cover painting bears a curious resemblance to her tattoos—admiring the ornate hand-drawn illuminations but still unable to decipher the writing—she hears Russet snore from the foot of the bed. She yawns, puts the heavy tome aside, and gently presses her hands against the not-so-subtle bulge of her belly.

Sandra blows out the candle. She lies down and spoons Aydee.

The Daily Star,
November 15

News Briefs, page A7

The body of the heavily tattooed young Caucasian woman discovered wrapped in a quilt on Green Avenue in the aftermath of the freak snow storm that hit the city in late October has still not been identified. The coroner’s office has found no evidence of foul play and has concluded that hypothermia was the cause of death. The young woman was pregnant.

Claude Lalumière (
lostmyths.net/claude
) is the author of the story collection
Objects of Worship
(ChiZine Publications 2009) and the chapbook
The World’s Forgotten Boy and the Scorpions from Hell
(Kelp Queen Press 2008). He has edited eight anthologies, including the Aurora Award nominee
Tesseracts Twelve: New Novellas of Canadian Fantastic Fiction
(Edge 2008), and he writes the Fantastic Fiction column for
The Montreal Gazette
. With Rupert Bottenberg, Claude is the co-creator of Lost Myths, which is both a live show and an online archive updated weekly at
lostmyths.net
.