Darkseller’s Daughter

Her father was a Darkseller.

A childhood spent mostly on the road between atlas pages that crisscrossed the country. Motel rooms and cramped backseat bedrooms. Horse was her one true friend, and he could never magic himself into the steed that would steal her away from this nomadic life.

She was forbidden to touch his business affairs which all lived in a mustard yellow Samsonite. It held her mother’s Tupperware with its corrugated starbursts that reminded her of summer picnics on the lake. Ants would travel the ridges, their tiny black bodies dotting the bright orange like moving seeds. They would be drunk on pools of watermelon juice left sticky on the lids, signaling their tribe Here is where the good stuff lives. Now the plastic held powders and smelly grass that turned her stomach queasy. Vials of amber bottles rattled in the rushed fabric of the dividing board which separated that plastic from the cash and wood-handled revolver living in the paunch of pocket on the side along with a jingle of just-in-case bullets.

Mamma was unceremoniously in the ground in Missouri. A gnarled tree and simple white cross were the only markers of her passing. Not even her name was left. She wanted to leave Horse with her, but Urchin’s father wasn’t going to buy another goddamned toy.

He called her that so often that she was sure this was her real name. “Annie, baby,” must have been a secret between her and Mamma.