Fiction
4 min
An Encounter
Emily Parker
It was Wednesday when Amy met the women. First they weren't there, then they were, three of them, stepping out of the hole that suddenly appeared. They wore baggy robes covered in price tags and coupons and their hair haloed startlingly around their heads. Whatever skin that was visible through the robes was thoroughly wrinkled. Their faces were shadowed as they shuffled forwards, surrounding Amy as she sat despondently in her kitchen.
"We are the triad," one pronounced.
"We hold the answers," another chanted.
"Heralded by the Greeks," the third declared. "Here throughout history, here until the end times."
"We are the Sisters," all three said in unison.
"So you're the Fates?" Amy asked. Her brain hadn't caught up with the situation; she didn't think to be shocked.
One of the women cuffed her on the head with a freezing hand. "No, we're not the Fates," she croaked. "We're—
"—the Graeae," a second woman finished.
"The Grey Sisters," the third hummed.
"Pemphredo," the first crooned.
"Enyo," the second whispered.
"Deino," the third sang.
"We always get confused with the Fates," Enyo complained.
"Every time," Deino groaned. "Ever since Perseus."
"He stole our eye!" Pemphredo screeched.
"He stole our eye!" Pemphredo screeched.
The Graeae pulled back from Amy, muttering softly. For the first time, Amy got a look at their faces. They were the faces of old women, wrinkled like walnuts, grey as their names. Chapped lips and sagging earlobes. Pemphredo's hair billowed to her ankles. Enyo wore multiple golden rings in each ear. Deino had caked makeup onto her leathery skin—garish eyeshadow and huge wings of eyeliner.
But she had no eyes for the makeup to accentuate.
In fact, the only Sister who had eyes was Enyo, and she, only one. A bloodshot orb in the right socket, darting frantically. Where her other eye should have been was nothing but a void. Amy looked at the floor and swallowed hard. "And why do you have only one eye?" Her voice was quiet with disgust and the beginnings of nervousness.
"It's special. It gives us—" began Enyo.
"—knowledge—" Deino added.
"—and wisdom." Pemphredo nodded sagely.
"We've only got one tooth as well!" Deino cackled, opening her mouth to show it. The other two grinned, exposing pinkish-grey gums.
"But enough about us. What about you? Why are you here?" Pemphredo snapped at Amy suddenly.
"Why am I here?" Amy exclaimed. "Why are you here? This is my house. I live here! And why do you have trash on your clothes anyways?"
Deino sniffed. "No need to be rude. These are vintage collectibles from throughout history!"
Deino sniffed. "No need to be rude. These are vintage collectibles from throughout history!"
"Sure," Amy murmured, glancing at a coupon that read ‘20% off at Leonardo's Pizza.' She had gotten the same coupon in the mail last week. "Listen. You need to leave. I don't know why you're here. I don't know how you're here. I don't know what you are." Her nerves were rising into panic as the truth of three impossible women set in. She rose from her chair and flapped her arms. "I don't know what you are! Get out of my house! Get— eugh!"
Pemphredo had snatched the eye out of Enyo's socket and placed it into her own. Amy stumbled back, clapping a hand over her mouth.
"You don't understand." Pemphredo groused. "We're not here because we want to be—"
"—we're here because you called us." Deino ended.
"We don't usually come to people," Enyo explained, almost kindly. "They come to us. But you...insisted."
"I didn't call you!" Amy cried. "What are you talking about‽"
"What do you mean, you didn't call us?" Deino asked peevishly. She reached into her robes, withdrawing something. Amy recoiled, before realizing it was only a flip phone. The screen was showing a number, and, to her shock, Amy recognized it. She had called it yesterday, seven times, needing her father to pick up. He hadn't.
Then she had gotten the text from her mother. Her father had passed away the previous afternoon. A car accident on a remote road. They hadn't found him until hours after the event.
"I did call that number," Amy murmured, taking the phone from Deino's grasp. "It was...my father's." Her voice turned thick with the sob she was holding back. "How?"
Enyo retrieved the phone from Amy's hand, but gently. "You needed something. Not us, specifically. But something."
"We know need," Pemphredo hummed. "We know the needs of everyone. We can't attend to all of them, and we don't wish to."
"But we came to you." Deino stroked Amy's back with scorching palms. "Because your need is greater than most."
"You need your father," Pemphredo stated. "But he's gone. And that need will tear you apart as it cannot be fulfilled."
"It isn't an ordinary need," Enyo pressed on. "It's the need for someone who was vital to you and who now has been ripped away."
"Do you know what our names mean?" Deino asked.
"Do you know what our names mean?" Deino asked.
"Alarm," Pemphredo said.
"Horror," Enyo added.
"Dread," Deino concluded. "But we don't have to abide by our names. Just like you don't have to abide by your grief."
"How can I get past this?" Amy cried. Tears began tracing down her cheeks.
"Not easily," Deino said, pulling something else from her robes. "But eventually. Look." And she held the thing up. It was a golden disc, and as Amy watched, it swirled with an image. The image showed Amy herself, and then people she knew—her mother, her best friend, her aunt. They were all glowing with white light, but Amy was dark.
"You can't hide away now," Enyo said. "You can't cut yourself off. If you do, you may lose your light permanently." In the disc, Amy's family and friends surrounded her in an embrace, and their lights began to flow into her, filling her.
Then the disc winked out. And when Amy looked up, so had the Sisters, like there was never anyone there in the first place.
But Amy thought she understood. She picked up her own phone and dialed her mother's number.
This was an entry for a writing contest held in conjunction with Center for Fiction and The Decameron Project
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