Lily Madwhip and the Other Knife That Pierces the Veil by William Dalphin (25/26) (Guest Storytime)

Officer Jenny gets injured protecting me from Crazy Tony. The building I hide and burns down. The policeman assigned to protect me by Detective Guthrie is murdered. Crazy Tony stabs me. I die. At that point, the roller coaster is off the rails and digging like a drill toward the Earth's core. Only the timely arrival of Meredith and my brother, of all people, Guthrie catches Crazy Tony. I survive my stab wom The roller coaster is flying back toward the sky.

And then this I'm sitting on the Lake's bed looking at missus Lake's charmallow body. One of her arms and several fingers are over in the hallway to their room, along with a lot of blood. In the kitchen, mister Lake is resting his face in a pool of even more blood. Somewhere there's a nasty cake that is probably going to get thrown out. Don't look at her, Lily, Pasture tells me he's still hanging from the crawl space

where he got caught in a nail or something. Just look at me, but it can't stop looking at missus Lake. Her skin is a mix of flaky black and blistered red. She was a good person, so is mister Lake. Are their souls being swept away to some pleasant place like my parents were, or are they currently trapped in these bodies like Roger was? Did she suffer? Lily, I know what you're gonna say. You're going to say, this isn't my fault. That wasn't what I was going to say.

He's right not to say that. Of course, it is my fault. I summoned furfur That right, there is the one thing that caused all this. I summoned a demon and it killed a whole lot of people. Well, I wouldn't have done what I did if you hadn't killed my parents. Your parents' deaths were a terrible tragedy, and if I had known they were going to die, I would have done everything in my power to stop you

from using Joffiel's judgment. He gives a sigh. I wish that I could take back that moment for you, along with so many others. But you are the knife, and you cut your own path. I watch as a piece of missus Lake's skin peels off from a light breeze through the open door and flutters like a dead leaf in the air. I turn away from it so it doesn't float right into my eyes or mouth. Instead, I look at pasture hanging from the ceiling hole. You made me this way. Pastor looks back at me through his

plastic eyes. I did, and I have done it a thousand times before, and with each new knife, I have taken on the responsibility to guide them. But something went wrong the last time. When we gave you the choice to become the new knife and your soul accepted, we changed the word in the smallest way possible, but the ramifications of it were beyond what we anticipated. I don't know what that means. Ramification sounds like something to do

with rams and multiplication, you know. Sheep math. Don't tell me. Sheep don't know numbers. I've seen a video of a horse counting with its hoof, and sheep are much smarter than horses because they don't actually let anyone ride them. It means that despite only making the slightest change to the paths of two individuals, you and Roger, the outcomes

of a multitude of other lives were affected. For one thing, the soul is not so easily cleansed, so Roger retained a lot of the struggles and depression he felt as the original knife. He remained reclusive, something of an outcast from social norms, and he harbored a resentment toward you for having the gift he once had. Although he no longer remembered having it, it had left marks on his soul, as all things do, and somewhere deep down he knew what you had once belonged to him, and he resented

you for it. Okay, okay, So now the question nobody asked for why my brother was always mean to me has been answered. I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. I don't care about having Roger's feelings explain to me. Right now now with two corpses, rotting in the house, He continues. Other lives changed too, insignificantly for the most part, but for at least one, a young, young single father

studying to become a behavioral therapist. That change, combined with the interference from Samuel, led to two totdem bearers coming into contact with each other, which ended in tragedy. Felix Clay was not meant to be a totem bearer nor a mentalist. If Roger had kept the gift, Felix would never have Meredith. I whisper, I need to find her. Where did furfor hide her? I look around the room. Maybe she's in that box in the cross space I never opened. She's not in the box, Lily Pasher says

in a stern tone. I don't know where she is. It's actually rather troubling, and I suspect that Furfir has hidden her, along with some other magic that is concealing her location from us, similar to how he kept us apart. I need to find her. I jumped to my feet, almost stepping on a piece of missus Lake's severed arm. The carpeting squelches under my shoes, wet with blood. No passer shouts his voice booms in my head, and I sit back down without thinking about it. When he speaks again,

it's back in his soft tone. We need to deal with this with what's been done here, Meredith Patterson, wherever she may be, is not in danger. You, on the other hand, are sitting in front of the burnt corpse of your foster mother, with your foster father's body bleeding out at the kitchen table. He doesn't talk sharply at me unless things are serious. I know they are, but I don't know what to do. What do I do? Called Detective Andrew Guthrie. The phone is downstairs in the

living room. I have to dance around missus Lake's body to get out. I don't mean dance like I'm swinging my hips to an imagined song over the corpse of my foster mother. I just mean that I tiptoe around it so I don't get any of her on me. I'm halfway down the hall before Pastor calls me back and makes me pull him down from the splinter he's caught on and bring him with me. We are doing this together, he says, nowhere going alone? Okay, okay, I hope they let me keep him. When I'm in prison.

Maybe he can sit with me when I'm in the electric chair. You're not going to be sent to the electric chair, Pasher assures me. Was I thinking out loud again? I ask? I've been having some trouble with that lately. He doesn't answer. He just recites a phone number. It's not nine one one. We're not calling for the general police. We're calling Guthrie specifically. The phone rings twice before someone picks up. It's a woman's voice, not Guthrie. Emergency veterinary clinic.

How can I help you? Emergency vet clinic? Does that dial the wrong number?

teachers get their own radio? It's a PA system, Lily. Pastor says, p E P A p O P I p U whatever. Pe uses every vowel for something. It's all so confusing. There's a noise over the phone, someone picking it up on the other end. This is Guthrie. I hear Guthrie's voice. He sounds annoyed. He always sounds annoyed to me. But he sounds annoyed even though he doesn't know it's me just yet, which means he's probably gonna get even more annoyed when he does. I can't

blame him. I annoy myself sometimes. Who's calling Detective Guthrie, I squeak into the phone. It's Lily. I need your health help. Lily, how did you know where? I wait? He sighs. Here comes the even more annoyed voice. Let me guess, angels right, what is it this time? I'm rather busy at the moment. This is why I like Guthrie. He gets it. Pastor was right to have me call him. He'll know what to do. What do you mean i'll know what to do? Guthrie asks. His voice gets even

more annoyed. We're like at deafcom five annoyance. If I get him even more annoyed. He's gonna blow up, but I have to do it. I have to really annoy him because there are dead people in this house. What happened?

bring the phone back to my ear carefully. Are you safe? Is there someone else in the house? Look, I find a place to hide. Police will be on their way. Don't panic, just hide. I don't want the police here. I want Guthrie. What about you? I ask him. He turns gruff. Do what I said, Lily, get off the phone. Hang up. He hangs up on his end. Well, now the police are coming, not Guthrie like I hoped, someone else, not Officer Jenny because she's still recovering from her bad

eye injury. Not Frank, whatever his name was, because he's dead. It could be Officer Grant. He's always nice to me. He has a big, funny mustache and orange hair, like Jamal's friend Greg. Sometimes he gives me a bag of pretzels from the vending machine. I hope it's Officer Grant. Somewhere deep in my head, I hear whispering. It doesn't sound like my thoughts, because I'm having my thoughts right now and this is interrupting them. The whispers tell me

what Guthrie did not. He's at the animal hospital meeting with a vet about an examination of the dog beasts that they killed the night they found me. That's missus Donovan. They've cut her open and looked through her insides. I know this because Guthrie didn't tell me. I know this because Raziel is inside me telling me instead. Pasher speaks Lily. Do as Guthrie said. Let's go up to your bedroom and you can lock yourself in there until the authorities arrive.

In the meantime, we've got to get Raziel out of your head. I go up to my bedroom and lock myself in. The closet is open and I can see the remains of Furfir's egg prisons smashed on the floor just outside the tarp I drawn on the floor. The egg is all black and green and smells really nasty. I shut the closet door to keep the smell inside, but it's already out drifting about my bedroom. So I open one of the windows and sit beside it and take big whiffs of fresh air. Oh, thank you Mother Nature.

All right, Pasher says, laying on the floor beside me. I want you to close your eyes. I close my eyes, okay, I hear him say gently. I want you to imagine you're back in that movie theater you went to in the vale. I'm standing in a forest. The trees are all pine trees. They're evenly spaced out, like someone planted them there. The ground is mossy and covered with yellow and blue flowers. They sway back and forth, even though there's no wind in front of me. The ground rises

steeper and steeper, like it's going up a mountain. There's a cave in the side of it. The trees around the caves stick out like giant toothpicks, like the forest used to be flat there, and the cave grew up out of it. Do you see the movie screen? I hear pasture. I look down and there's a frog on the mossy ground. It's looking up at me with dark eyes. Why do frogs have weird pupils? Excuse me, Pasture says,

from the frog's mouth, what's this about frogs? I can't help but giggle at his voice, coming out of a little green frog. You're a frog, lily, the frog says sternly. You're supposed to be thinking of a movie theater. Well, I don't know what to tell you, frog screw, but my mind is imagined the woods instead, with a frog in a cave. There's a cave. The frog blinks. He looks directly at the cave. Surely it sees it. No who I'm imagining the frog? Pasture isn't actually seeing what's

in my head. Go to the cave. I'm already at the cave, I say. I do move closer, though it's dark inside. As I get closer, though, I see that it's not that dark. It's just that someone has built a wall just past the entrance, made out of some sort of black It's actually kind of shiny. Maybe it's volcanic rock. That's what lava turns into. I've always wanted to have a piece of volcano rock. I wonder if I could break off a chunk of it. Oh wait, I'm just imagining it. I keep forgetting. I need you

to go into the cave. Frogs Ker says. He's still right beside me. He's staring off in his space at the moment, probably because he's kind of blind. I can't believe I imagine Pasture as a blind frog. If anything, I think he'd be a frog with a thousand eyes. I walk toward the cave, the black rock while looms over me. Loom means that it's really tall and makes me feel really small. There's also a thing called a loom.

I saw one once when we went to Plymouth. There was a lady using this weird device that makes giant cat cradles, and she calls it a loom. I assume because it was so big and it made her feel small for being In my imagination, everything here is pretty clean and clear looking. Usually when I imagine stuff, it's kind of vague, like a red stir is an apple, or a yellow circle is the sun, or a different kind of apple. I thumb into the black wall, I actually feel it on my nose and open my eyes.

I'm still sitting in the corner of the room. The feeling on my nose is gone. There is no wall. Well, okay, there's four walls, but they aren't the one blocking the cave in my imagination. What is it? Pasture asks, why did you stop? There's a wall in my head. For a firmost to put it there, Raziel has to be in that cave. I really hope it doesn't get out of that. There's a cave inside my head. All the

other kids in jail will make fun of me. They'll call me a lily empty head or something more clever. I can't think of a clever mean name right now, probably because there's a cave inside my head where a brain should be. Other kids, though they're really good at coming up with mean names. You think they spend all their off time coming up with insults. The police will be here very soon, Pasture tells me. I know, I've already heard them coming, yelling at the front door, kicking

it in. I didn't say anything because I was trying to focus. It wasn't until the yelling stopped that I realized it hadn't happened yet. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to scent something before it actually happened. It's really confusing sometimes once they get here, we won't be able to do this until you're alone again. That might not be for a while, and it's important we get Razio out. Can you focus? I shrug at him. You know me, I'm all about focus, at least when I'm painting.

I wish I was painting. I probably shouldn't even think about wishes, though, considering that spur furs bread and butter, and it hasn't been that long since he got flom bayed back to hell. You can never be too careful, especially considering lily Passure interrupts. Close your eyes. We returned to the cave. In my brain, the black wall still fills the entry, and I approach it feel it with my hands. I can literally feel the smooth surface on my palms, even though I'm sitting here with my hands

in my lap. I'm pretty sure my legs didn't turn into volcanic rock. I'm actually feeling an imaginary thing in my head. It's crazy. Pasture is now a deer. He looks pretty soft. There's about a dozen eyes covering his head, all looking in different directions. I have a weird imagination sometimes, all right, he says from the deer's mouth. His many eyes blink. Do you remember what you did defer for earlier, when you used your hands and cause the cuts to

open on him? They didn't open on him, they open on missus Lake. And yes, I can still see the awfulness of it behind my eyelids, which is weird because my eyes are closed and I'm already imagining something else. How am I doing this? How can I remember seeing someone's body get shredded by my hands gesturing at the air while also imagining a cave in a wall in

his weird you'd ask, deer, I remember, I sigh. You weren't supposed to learn of that ability until you matured, he tells me, while chewing on a piece of bark he peeled off of one of the trees sticking out of the mountainside. It's extremely dangerous. You tore open the veil. You made those gestures, each digit, each finger of your hands sliced the veil as fine as a strand of your hair, invisible to the naked eye. Aren't all eyes naked. Do people dress up their eyes? I guess glasses are

like eyeball dress up? Now, my mom used to put makeup on her eyes. Not the actual eye itself, that would hurt, but the lids. Do eyelids count as part of the eye? What are you saying? I ask that I can cut through reality. Now is not the time to get into the logistics. But yes, basically you are the knife that cuts the veil after all. But why the pas deer leans down, rips up some of the moss and starts to chew it instead of the tree

bark hungry little guy? I guess Later he says, right, now, do the same thing, but don't don't actually do it in real life because you could end up slicing off your own legs or falling through the floor or something. Just imagine you're doing it. I hold up my hands. They are imaginary hands. Gosh, it's weird saying that I hold up my imaginary hands in my imaginary forest and spread my fingers apart. Each finger can slice through reality. Huh, it's crazy. Why would they give me this? What could

this possibly do for me? Is it meant to be used as a weapon or something else, Lily pas deer says, do it. I slice my imaginary fingers at the imaginary rock while blocking the imaginary cave entrance. Nothing happened, I tell the deer. The deer blinks half its eyes. Try pushing on the wall. I reach out with my hands. I wonder if I'll have to register them as lethal weapons, like this guy in a movie my dad let me watch with him. Once. It was called Game of Death.

They probably would have called it lethal weapons, but I think there is already a movie with that name. The wall doesn't move at first. I can feel it against my hands in real life, But then there's a grinding sound, like someone dragging a boulder down the sidewalk, and I feel the rock move. A large chunk of it slides inward and pops out the other side with a noisy clatter. As it does, the rest of the wall rumbles, and several other broken pieces shift, some falling down on my

outstretched arms, others just catching in a nook. And then my head explodes in a rainbow of light. Not really physically, I'm not dead, obviously, I'm writing this in my journal, after all. But there's a whole rainbow of colors that come pouring out of the hole in the wall, and since my head is right there looking in, it's all I can see. There are some shades of colors I can't even describe. You want to know if they're like green or blue or red, but I'm telling you they

are indescribable. I open my eyes just as the first police officer comes into my room. I see him for just a second standing in the doorway, one hand on the knob, the other on his gun. He's looking directly at me. I'm looking at him, and then the other colors pour out of my eyes like the beam of a giant flashlight. I can't see anything but all these

colors red. I see lots of red, not like bloody red, but like someone plugged a red light bulb into the light fixture and the entire room is bathed in redness. The policeman is also red, and I can see an outline through his clothes of items on him, like handcuffs and some small metal box and a badge on his chest. Underneath all that, I can see his skeleton. I see every bone in his body. It's overlapping his clothes and his handcuffs in his face, which looks absolutely stunned by

all this. I wonder if he sees my skeleton too. And then the light is gone, and the policeman is standing there in the doorway, bewildered, I staring forward, one hand on the knob, the other on his gun. But the gun drops from his hand and clatters to the floor. What the f he says, and then he stumbles forward. He drops to his knees. Behind him in the hallway is another police person. They are looking down toward the

Lake's bedroom. I suspect they can see missus Lake's charred remain, since I forgot to shut the door on my way out. They turn when their partner stumbles Kelvin. They say it's a lady cop, but I couldn't tell at first because her voice is really deep, almost as deep as Guthrie's. It must be nice to have a deep, authority sounding voice.

My voice sounds all squeaky, like a mouse, and nobody takes me seriously, probably in part because of it, and part because I'm having to tell people about the future, which nobody thinks I can see. Cal Are you okay? She steps into the room, pointing her gun at me. For a moment before lowering it. I thought she might shoot me, but my love holds out. I can't see, says Officer Calvin. He puts his hand on the floor

and feels around. Everything is red. I can't see. He starts to panic, scrabbling around, clutching the lady officer's pant leg. She looks at me with accusing eyes. She thinks I did this. I guess technically she's right. What happened? She shouts her gun points at me again. What did you do? I put my hands up in the air, hoping she doesn't think I have a weapon on me, realizing my hands are actually weapons. So I guess I do have weapons on me. So please, lady cop, don't kill me

for holding them up. I didn't do anything. I lie because I know that if I try to explain the whole angel in my brain cave punching a rainbow hole out of my eyeballs to her, the next visit to my brain cave might beat a pria bullet out of my meatball. She grabs her little walkie talkie and presses the button in it. Ten forty four. We need assistance, officer down. Officer Calvin finds the door frame and pulls himself back up to his feet. He stands there holding

the wall, staring at nothing in particular. His eyes look bloodshot, like he didn't get that much sleep last night. I didn't catch a good look at them before Raziel shot out of my eyes, so it could very well be that they were like that to begin with, but I kind of doubt it. Suddenly he turns and looks directly at me. He doesn't blink his eyes themselves, the colored part of his eyes, they're tinged red too. She's lying, he says. He doesn't sound scared or rattled at all.

I wasn't expecting to be accused of lying it. Excuse me. He licks his lips and then cocks his head like he's listening to a radio. There is no radio. There's not even sound coming from over his walkie talkie. An angel, he says to nobody in particular. That's what she was freeing, an angel. I know. Do you hear that? He turns into the direction of his partner. Does he see her? Now? What's that voice? I can hear you, Patty, I'm right here, cal Officer Patty says. She reaches out and offers him

her hand. No, he says, I hear your thoughts about stealing. You borrowed your sister's car back in high school. Officer Patty lowers her gun. Think goodness, what are you talking about? She looks at her partner. How do you even know about that? He continues his red eyes, looking through her. You scratched it trying to park, covered it up with paint that didn't match. She noticed, but never knew what happened. Why are you thinking about this? I'm not This was unfortunate,

Passion remarks. Understatement of the year right here, folks. Runner up is there's at the hospital telling me you won't feel a thing. Talk about liars, lady, I felt everything. Where's Raziel? I asked him, without saying the words aloud, At least I hope I don't say them aloud. I've been having some trouble with that lately. Last thing I need is both officers looking at me even more mental? Is he inside that Officer Calvin's meetball. Raziel is on his way here back to us. Pasher says. The gift

of knowing is temporary, the blindness, sadly is not. Raziel was in corporeal. He had to be in order to be in your mind like that. But you're not meant to see us in that way. It's why we take on physical manifestations when we traverse the veil or your plane. I take one of my hands that I'm still holding up reaching for the skies they do in Cowboy movies, and wave it over my head. Whoosh. Officer Patty frowns

at me. I put my hand back up. The next ten minutes are spent with Officer Calvin telling one secret after another. He sits there spouting them out like a garden hose someone forgot to turn off. Some of them belong to me, like how I almost died in unicorn pajamas. Others belong to Officer Patty. Both police people don't know what to make of it, and lots of shouting and arguing happens as they cope with him suddenly knowing things

she didn't want anyone to know. Me. On the other hand, I don't really care because half the stuff he tells she doesn't even believe anyway, and the other half would only be embarrassing if someone my age ever found out. Eventually, Officer Patty guides her partner to my bed and has him sit down while she goes to check the master bedroom, where she finds missus Lake and then goes to the bathroom in barfs. Officer Calsman tells me she's barfing. I

guess she didn't want us to know that. Fifteen minutes later, emergency ambulance people arrive to treat Officer Calvin. More police show up. They start searching the rest of the house. They spend a lot of time in the master bedroom. Someone comes upstairs with the ladder and goes into the crawl space. They come back out with a special box that does not have Meredith in it, according to Pasture. I see them look inside and then look at each

other with concern. Officer Calvin starts telling me and the ambulance people what's in the box, but Pasture makes me cover my ears so I don't hear it. It's not fair. I'm eleven years old. I know how babies are made. My parents used to have a picture book called How Babies Are Made with construction paper, doggies and bees and people. But if Pastor says I shouldn't hear what's in the box, I'm not going to argue with him about it. I've come to accept that he has my best interest in mind.

guys so much for being supporters. That goes for everybody who is down in the description, as well as Acid System, Ball Arms, The Rat, Bake Rattler, Brandon Mendoza, Renda Crow, Brimstone, Pannemonium, Calpuna, Shame, Smoker Dealer, Chicago hit Man, Corey Kenshin, Crown Up, five Away, Crisader, joke about curse pox, Primark to go to Best thank of Polson, I'm taking Kaid, Dianna Kraus, Ellie Hotmeyer and chatted Buns est to Bean Jellahalsey, Hayy's nephew, Jimo, Jerry

Hour Minute, Second Time, Jay Keams, Jennis Pat Jordan, Humble, Kink Crab, Mister Marcus Splitz, Old Penguin, Peaceable Buddhah, Cycle, mol Red Shadow Cat, Remember the Sun, Rinku Star, Salty Surprise, Samara line, Seclude Simba's Buddy, Mojo, Sky Harper, Smileing the Psychotic Sally Man, Tlly Sue, the shop is Brothers. Thank you guys so much for being here, thank you for listening, thank you for watching, and sweet dreams