Page 6 of The Staircase in the Woods

A little bag of brown powder; a small digital kitchen scale; a small electric coffee grinder (cheap, not a burr grinder); a pill bottle of niacin, aka vitamin B3; a screw-top jar of empty vegan gel capsules. What she would make of these things would be for her and her alone.

She had all of these spaced out in front of her on a lava stone countertop glazed the brightest robin’s-egg blue.

Missing one thing, though, wasn’t it?

Back to the bedroom she went. Up the bending staircase, an assault of colors along the way, because everything in this world was trending toward thatgray-brown greigeawfulness and she fucking hated it. Houses bled of life by the vampires of capitalism, a trend made into a trend by people who would make you pay top price for something that cost them less to make because they didn’t have to paint it or glaze it or stain it. Lore couldn’t stand that shit. So she put as much color into her house as possible. A fuckingriotof color: kitchen the color of sun and sky, bathroom like a mermaid’s tail, bedroom painted in blood. Art everywhere, too. Book covers, game covers, weird-ass modernist abstract pop art, too. None of it her own because, JFC, she wasn’t a narcissist.

Now: the bedroom.

Again, red. Red as a Ruby Slipper apple, so red it was almost black.

She paused for a moment to look to her bed, with its black silk sheets, under which slept two of her recent lovers: the first, Cedar, lying face down, tall, thin, and lissome like a sylph, the light catching in the long trench of their spine; the second, Shar, face up, tits out, splayed out like a starfish, long black hair swallowing the pillows beneath and behind her. Cedar was timid and gentle, while Shar was eager and hungry, though both deferred to Lore’s chaotic neutral energy. All around them were the tools and devices of another night spent well: two kinds of lube, ten feet of rainbow jute shibari rope, a vibrating cock ring, a cold metal butt plug, a glittery green dildo made to look like a dragon’s cock.

A good night. Though one whose memory was already fading, like the taste of dessert lost to a sip of water.That’s how it goes. Nothing lasts,Lore thought.

Into the walk-in she went, confronted with a tall mirror she used to get ready when she had to do events, be they in-person or virtual. In that mirror she could also see the bed at the far end of the bedroom behind her. Gently, Cedar stirred. They didn’t sleep deeply, though Shar you had to wake up by practically waterboarding her with a wet washcloth. Lore took a moment to watch Cedar gently uncoiling, still not all the way awake yet. Mumbling. Murmuring.

Lore reached up to the top shelf, finding the little ornately carved wooden box—an old box, one that she’d had since she was a teenager. The carvings on it were vaguely Celtic-ish, with all its whorls knotted together. Once she kept tarot cards in here, alongside a little thin sachet of purifying herbs—supposed to magically keep the cards free and clear of negative energy, which was probably nonsense. Eventually she ditched the cards and kept weed in there. These days, no more weed—weed made her weird, made her paranoid, made herslow,and Lore needed to keep sharp, sharp as a thumbtack in your eye. As such, in the box was where she kept a baggie of dried mushrooms that looked not entirely unlike shiitake but were, in fact, a fifty-fifty split ofPsilocybe cubensisandPsilocybe cyanescens.

She held the box in her hand. The wood felt warm. The whiff of the ghost of that herb sachet tickled her nose: patchouli and cloves and lavender.

It was in that moment the sense memory brought another memory along for the ride, one she’d forgotten:

Owen had bought her this box, hadn’t he? That day down in New Hope, at the little hippie occult head shop. She didn’t have money and he had a little, so he bought it for her. Gods, she’d forgotten. So much from that time was foggy now. Hard to access. For good reason, probably.Owen,she thought. Her middle was suddenly a bundle of snakes, twisting around one another. Gods, she missed him sometimes. But she wasn’t good for him. That’s what she told herself, that’swhat she always defaulted to.He’s better off on his own, better off not needing me, not using me like a crutch,because he ended up resenting her, and then she ended up resenting him, and it was just a sucking and slurping resentment sixty-nine.

Two thoughts at the same time:

Fuck you, Owen.

I miss you, Owen.

She stepped back from the shelf, the box in her hand, and then she caught a glimpse of the mirror reflecting the bedroom behind her—she saw the bed and its occupants, Cedar, Shar, but also—

A third person.

A young man. Shirtless. Chestnut hair mussed up, and he did that thing where he tossed his head back to flip the lock of hair from his forehead. His arms were spread out, one across Cedar’s back, the other toying with Shar’s hair.

Matty,she thought, strangling a cry.

Matty winked.

She spun around in the closet and stormed out of the room and, freeing her voice from the strangle, yelled at him:

“Hey!” And she wanted to yell at him toget outbut then alsono, no, don’t go,but any other words she wanted to say lay trapped in the meat of her throat.

Cedar cried out in alarm, rolling over and sitting upright fast, nearly falling off the bed. Shar stayed asleep, breathing loudly. Cedar blinked past their own golden locks, looking left, looking right.

“What’s wrong?” they asked, mouth tacky with sleep.

“I—”

Matty was gone.

Of course he was.

Because Matty wasgone.

It was the shrooms, she knew. It was them. It was seeing the box Owen had given her. It was reading Nick’s email. All that mud that had long settled to the bottom of her had been stirred up now, andthoughts about Matty were surely swimming around those turbid waters.

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