MY DAIMON by Thea Anderson

I left school in March with a plan to earn money waitressing but by April I was already talking to the god of piety, slipping my split skin fingertips through the frayed ends of my little afro. All that talking got me committed by distant relatives, who’d located me through the Find My Device feature on my dad’s data plan. But I was too clever for treatment. On a Tuesday in July, I fucked a warden in a broom closet during a 6AM evacuation; by 6:45, I was out. The warden grabbed me, told me he’d never met anyone like me. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, if they catch me I’m out a job.” I kissed him on my way out. He smelled like the institution: clean, and like death. 

Outside, I coughed and pulled my shirt collar up over my mouth. It was a good day for an escape. Southern California was burning. Staff was lean and underpaid. I crossed the visitor parking lot, avoiding the employee spots, and waved to the guard in the camera. I’d given her contraband: mango-flavored vapes. She played games on her small-screened device that involved landing an avatar on colored bricks, then watching them stack and dissolve into clouds of stars and bells. 

If it wasn’t the end of the world, then it was definitely the prelude to it. Flocks of birds swirled dizzyingly in the parking lot, screaming. Then they returned to the ground and stood as still as taxidermy. I doubted they were real. I wasn’t sure whether I was in a dream, or whether I was seeing something the daimons wanted me to see. There was usually some misinterpretation on my part. My daimons were all very suggestive, especially that first one. It was my daimon who’d put it in my mind that the warden was weak and could be persuaded by unspecial sex. 

I got to a Walgreens. I had no money, of course, but I had some ideas. Concerned dads grabbed at flashlights and water and canned tuna without checking the prices. 

I took to the counter some things that could keep a woman going for a few days. Products with bright pastel packaging. I threw in a pack of gummy Life Savers and a filtered-by-evaporation bottled water. In the lull between check-out beeps, I heard tense, close breathing.

I turned to face the dad behind me. “I’m sorry, did I cut you?” I asked.

“No, please go ahead.” He extended his hand. He truly didn’t look bothered, which was just as well; according to my daimon, he was the one. 

The cashier announced the total. 

“Oh my god.” I said. I touched my back pockets. “I totally left my money at home.” I invoked the tone that I used with my dad when I ditched curfew growing up: regret and gentle innocence.

The cashier looked at me for the first time. A line of panicked dads snaked behind me. 

“Excuse me,” the dad behind me said. He cleared his throat. He pulled out his card. Katy Perry was playing on the speakers. “I think I could,” he said, “if you just let me, I can handle this.” 

“Oh, I could never let you do that.” I said. I touched his hairy wrist. The cashier glared at me. “I’ll just put this all back.” The cashier’s arch-browed stare turned murderous. The dad started again. There was a polite laugh in his tone, a jokey-joke sort of Don’t you just hate when you leave your wallet at home and go to Walgreens precisely for things that require money and then forget that money. 

He placed the card in the chip reader reaching his torso forward while his feet remained planted in his place in line. “It’s a crazy day, and—I’m able to, so please just pay it forward, okay?” 

“Well, okay!” I said. I grabbed the bags and walked out. 

As I crossed the lot, the dad who’d paid for me called out. I turned around. 

He smirked and said, “I know you were scamming me, but it’s fine.” 

“I didn’t ask you to pay for me. You offered.” I crossed my arms around my body, clutching the shopping bag. A plume of foul smoke stretched overhead.

“Yeah, but still. You know what you did.” 

“What do you want?” I asked hesitantly. 

“Want? No, no. I don’t want anything. I just. You just,” the dad said. 

I wasn’t sure whether to run or stay. My daimon was silent, unreachable. “Oh, so like: ‘Thank you very much for the $48.49, but if you think I blow guys in the parking lot of Walgreens I’ll just return—'" 

The dad cut me off.“ Jesus, what? No, listen. I wanted to ask if you need any kind of help? Are you from around here?” 

“No, thank god,” I scoffed. “I’m from a place with culture.” 

“I could see that,” the dad admitted. “So what are you doing with no money, no ride, in a state of emergency?” 

I told him about my daring escape from the treatment center. He let me ramble for a minute. Then he stopped me. He approached me. I looked into his small brown eyes. I noted his wooly eyebrows, his chapped lips. He was the type of guy who could probably grow a beard in a day. “I knew you were desperate the moment you cut me in line,” he said; “My daimon told me.” 

▲

Michael owned a ranch-style home situated behind a symmetrical lawn; there was a kidney-bean pool out back. The space was modest, empty. But in the open-concept living room opposite the all-white kitchen,  there was a floor-to-ceiling painting of a woman gasping. 

In the kitchen, on the fridge, I saw a photobooth roll of Michael flanked by two smiling little girls with curly hair. “Are these your kids?”

“No, they’re my sister’s.” 

“So you’re not a dad?” 

“Uh, no.” He handed me a cup of tea, and we sat on the stools at his kitchen’s bar. “We should probably turn on the news,” he said. 

“Dear god, no.” 

“Okay, then I’ll want to watch on my phone, if you don’t mind.” 

“Do what you want,” I said. “It doesn’t matter. We’ll know when we need to leave.” 

He looked up at me and smiled. “Right. And I think we’re safest here. I mean, the pool, they say, acts like a barrier to an encroaching fire.” 

“Is that what they say?” 

“We could just jump in there to avoid death-by-burning.” He turned to look at the pool behind him through the glass windows. 

“I would.” 

“Good.” We fell quiet until the shadow of death had passed. 

“Are you in tech?” I guessed. 

“I’m an engineer,” he confessed.

“But you’re an artist.” I pointed to the gasping woman.

“I like to think so. It’s hard. It’s made my life lonely,” he admitted, looking at the photo of the smiling children.

“We have our daimons.” I offered.

“Mine demands things of me.” As Michael spoke, I opened his fridge, found an opened bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, and raised it to him, a question. He nodded and went on. “He compelled me to help you. I think companionship requires free will.”

I poured myself a full glass, gulped the dry wine, and shook my head. “You’ve still got the better deal. I speak to my daimon and I end up on the streets, in treatment. You speak to your daimon and you’re a millionaire with a side hobby. The difference is that your daimon is your genius.” 

“It’s because this world is fucked. What do I know?” 

“Exactly,” I said. He looked hurt. 

“What kind of an artist are you?” he asked. 

“Poet. But not the kind to post on Instagram. The kind who writes in notebooks for no one to see. But look how you show off your work.” I waved at Gasping Woman. 

Michael shook his head. “I didn’t sign that one. And if someone were to ask, I’d tell them I bought it from some poor art student as a gesture.” 

This annoyed me. “I’m hungry,” I announced. “I really thought you were a dad.” 

“Do you see dads everywhere you go?” 

“I think so.” 

“Freud would have something to say about that.” 

“I’m more interested in Jung. Dad is everywhere. Dad is in you.” 

For the next hour we didn’t speak much. I read his magazines and he made and unmade plans to evacuate. He checked the county’s Twitter for Amber alerts and confirmed to me that which I suspected: no one was looking for me. 

It was so hard to get a clear sense of what to do. News about the fires was tough to parse: conflicting, urgent, falsely reassuring. In the end, we waited too long. Tall oak branches whipped, trash bins rolled down the street. Glowing embers dotted the black-smoke horizon.

I grabbed Michael’s arm and led him through the kitchen, out to the back patio. The pool rippled crystal in the afternoon. Car alarms went off in a cascade. Tires screeched and overhead the wildfire roared all down the mountain range. Those flames restored my daimon. I felt whole, like when my dad would pick me up after a long day of school; the time apart so easily forgiven. 

We didn’t talk. We took off our clothes and slipped into the pool. We watched Gasping Woman catch, curl, wither. We watched our reflections bob about, waiting it out. 

Thea Anderson is a writer and astrologer. She works as Director of Production at CHANI and is the assistant editor at Triangle House Review. She is a 2019 Kimbilio fellow and summer 2020 Tin House workshop attendee. She is working on her first novel.