Misfits from the Beehive State

By Kristin Ann King

An airplane passenger who just wants to leave home is stuck with a magic boarding pass that won’t cooperate. A housewife intent on heaven encounters an angel looking for sex instead. And a young woman begins her descent into schizophrenia, pursued by a fairy tale character.
In this debut collection by Pushcart Prize award-winning author Kristin Ann King, the characters try to fit into paradise, but fall down the rabbit hole instead. Now they’re plagued by mental illness, mystical creatures, and character flaws, and they’re forced to muddle through as best they can.
The result is by turns hilarious, heartbreaking, and downright peculiar.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kristin Ann King
• Release date: May 24, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310337307

Kristin Ann King

I’m a writer, parent, and activist who lives in Seattle. My work has appeared in such places as Strange Horizons, Calyx, The Pushcart Prize XXII (1998), and the anthology Missing Links and Secret Histories (2013). I enjoy reading, playing with my family, coffee, hiking, blogging, and more reading.Right now, I’m in the middle of a couple of writing projects: a collection of critical essays about Doctor Who and the show’s companions; a collection of zombie math stories; and a story set in the universe of “Mystery of the Missing Mothers,” which appeared in Missing Links and Secret Histories.

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Misfits from the Beehive State

Copyright 2014 Kristin Ann King. All rights reserved

Published by Kristin Ann King at Smashwords

www.kristinking.org

This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

Cover design by Kristin King. Cover illustration copyright canstockphoto.com/GeraKTV – woman drinking coffee. Cover photograph copyright commons.wikimedia.org/DR04 – Moab

Smashwords Edition License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favorite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.

Dedication

TO

OLIVER

AND

MEGAN

Table of Contents

The Wings

Feed the Monster

Into the Box

Swallow the Clock

Confession

Keeping House

Grandmother Henrietta’s Curse

Scarlet Ribbons

The Boarding Pass

Out of the Box

About the Author

Acknowledgments

THE WINGS

When they were married in the Salt Lake Temple, she saw how it would be after she died, in the resurrection. Marriage was a dry run for immortality, a message from God telling them what it would be like. Wing-back chairs, crystal-and-gold chandeliers, oak, marble, stained-glass windows letting in the daylight, beige walls with paintings of Christ beckoning his rag-clad followers, ceilings so high she could hardly see them. She thought of God in the spaces between the walls, airy, just beyond what she could see, so big He filled the entire place, or standing just behind her, vanishing when she turned. When she and her husband were married, they were covered in white up to their necks, and all their guests were covered in white. The temple was even covered in white. He stood in the inmost place, the holiest, loveliest, right there next to God’s heart, she thought, and then he pulled her in. This is how it would be.

On Sunday morning, oh, it was always so hard to get everyone in order. The boys wouldn’t be dressed, or they would dress in nice shirts and pajama bottoms, or they wouldn’t have remembered to brush their teeth until they were almost out the door. She had to find the right dress, remember what she’d worn all those last Sundays, find some pantyhose that matched. Her husband, though, he was always there, right on time, perfect. Once they got to church they sat in the fifth row. There was always the same number of songs before the Sacrament: two. The bishop told them what was going on in the ward, like a holy news reporter. Then they took the Sacrament, then different people talked (it didn’t matter who) about the Lord. There at church everyone knew what to do. The little one was even old enough not to bang his legs against the seat.

On Sunday night, this particular Sunday night, she was satisfied. Things went as planned. The chicken dinner—chicken baked in mushroom sauce and potatoes whipped in her blue mixing bowl—went as planned. The children behaved. On nights like this, she never went up on the rooftop. She offered herself up to her husband just like she offered up her sins to God, and then she slept the whole night long. She never woke up once, not even to go to the bathroom.

On Monday morning after everyone had left, she sat on the living room couch with a cup of honey tea. Everyone was where they were supposed to be: at school, at work. The boys would come home at lunch and she would make them split pea soup and tuna fish sandwiches. For dinner it would be lasagna; she’d have to start that early.

In between the lunch and dinner, though, she wasn’t sure what would happen. That was bad, three hours where anything might happen. But it would be fine; she’d read her scriptures, the Book of Mormon, the part where Alma says to his people that Christ can never vary from what’s right, that Christ’s course is one eternal round. Yes, everything would be all right.

At night she turned on the electric heater and waited for her soft husband to come to bed. She hoped he wouldn’t want anything, and when he kissed her she turned away. When he lay back down she put her arm around his body and kissed his shoulder. Good night, she said.

Sometimes, like tonight, when she couldn’t sleep, she would open the window and go out to the roof. Part of her roof, just for decoration, slanted just past her window; she would climb up that part like a cat, with her bare feet and her hands. She would go up partway to the top, where the roof narrowed to a point, staying on by using the friction between her body and the red roof tile. Or she might climb toward the back of the house, where the roof flattened out. There, it was made of sticky black tar. Afterward, when she came back, her hands and feet would be gritty with bits of red roof tile and sometimes sticky with black tar, and she’d get bits of tar or red tile on her white sheets, but before that happened she could feel the cool air and look at the darkness; she could feel what nighttime felt like without her husband.

In the morning she had things to do. After breakfast there were spots of blackberry jam on the table that she had to wipe off, hope they wouldn’t stain. A drawer that could be organized. In a few days she would have to make cookies for the ward party, because it was her turn. She could go to the grocery store today, especially since her husband was out of shaving cream and they were a little low on catsup.

At night he asked her, Why don’t you want to do it, and she said, I won’t mind, really. It was just not important for her. Not interesting. She would rather feel the wisps of his chest hair with her fingers, have his arm protecting her back. She was willing enough, though, and when they finished she reached for the roll of toilet paper to clean it all up, and then she went into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, letting it drip away from her. This had to be better than douches, because douches just pushed it up farther. Not that she didn’t want any more babies, oh no, because she did. Really she did.

When she came back to bed she watched him sleep, because he was beautiful. She smelled the sweet smell of Drakkar on his neck. She wondered what she would smell like wearing Rose Petal, and would it clash with his cologne? She put her head down on the pillow and tried to relax, breathing in and out with her chest, then her abdomen, then her sides. She stared at the wall. Then she saw a puff of white out the window.

Who are you? she called, and when nothing answered she got up and opened the window, and the puff flew away to a tree in the neighbor’s yard. She climbed out onto the roof for a better look, and the puff of white flew behind her house, so she had to climb all the way to the top of the roof, standing up and holding on to the pointed edge with her hands. She saw long red hair, softly clawed feet, wings that folded perfectly into the body. Come back, she said, and she almost lost her balance trying to see the angel’s face. But the angel didn’t pay any attention, just lifted its clawed foot and nibbled on it with its mouth. Then it unfurled its wings, each of them six feet long, and flew off toward the south.

In the morning she didn’t want a bubble bath, but she wanted her honey tea. She wanted to call Sister Mortensen but she didn’t. She thought she might want to make the cookies that day instead of the day after, so she got out the butter and nutmeg and milk and eggs and sugar and flour and put it all in a mixing bowl, but then she looked closely and noticed there were bugs crawling around in the flour, and she had to take everything outside and dump it in the garbage. She hosed the bowl down before she brought it back in the house, but even so she was a little worried that the bugs might have crawled someplace, so she got out the bleach and disinfected the floors and then the cabinet. By the time that was done the boys were home, so she didn’t have any time to go to the store and get more flour. Butter too; she’d used up most of the butter.

At dinner she made up for not baking cookies like she should have by getting a pound cake out of the freezer and serving it after the spaghetti casserole. Really, they didn’t go together, but no one seemed to mind. In bed her husband seemed happier than ever, so she lay there and thought about the scriptures. Her body was a temple, not to be defiled by passionate thoughts or actions or anything else—dirty words, coffee, wine. In real life you had to have a slip of paper, signed by your bishop, in order to go into the temple. Everyone protected the temple. But your body had nobody to protect it but you.

After he was asleep she had an idea, and she went downstairs to get a bit of leftover pound cake. She went back to the bedroom window, opened it, held the pound cake out, at arm’s reach. The angel had been hovering in the next yard, and it circled close, closer, and looked at the pound cake with its small black eyes but would not take it. She put the pound cake on the roof and shut the window and watched. The angel flew closer and closer until she could see its body, saw that it had tattoos on its