"Nina Kiriki Hoffman - What used To Be Audrey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hoffman Nina Kiriki)

What Used to be Audrey
Nina Kiriki Hoffinan
Nina Kiriki Hoffinan's first short story appeared in the
earlier volume of Tales by Moonlight. Since then she's become a
regular in Charles Grant's Shadows series, won the Writers of
the Future Contest promoted by Scientology's late guru (but we
can't hold that against her), and contributed to pulp magazines
such as Asimov's and Amazing. She's spiced the content of many
a small magazine also, including Bill Munster's Footsteps,
Michael Ambrose's Argonaut, my own Fantasy & Terror, and an
upcoming issue of Alain Everts's Etchings & Odysseys. "What
Used to Be Audrey" was uncovered in Arcane, which seems to have
had but one issue, and then sunk without trace, which is one of
the less exciting aspects of the little magazines. Nina lives
presently in Eugene, Oregon, noted for its high-density
backward hippies (ask any punk bored out of town), science
fiction authors, and unemployed lumberjacks.

"Go away!" Mom yelled at what used to be Audrey. She had a
knife in one hand, and she waved it under what used to be
Audrey's nose. I would have run the other way, but what used to
be Audrey didn't even blink.
"Squatter's rights," said W.U.T.B.A. It wanted us to call it
Ana -- Ana -- well, something like Anabaptist. Mom called it an
abomination. I called it an abbreviation: Wutba.
"Give me back my daughter," said Mom. Her careful gold curls
had gone frizzy, and the starch had melted out of her blouse.
She had been yelling at Wutba almost since it arrived -- since
she had noticed it was there, anyway. I knew about
Wutba three days before Mom did, when Audrey and I got up one
day and she didn't kick me on the way to grab the bathroom
first. When Wutba offered to help me with my eighth grade
homework and told me all about devil worship among the French
aristocrats before the Revolution, I was sure it wasn't Audrey.
Audrey never helped me. It wore her face differently, too.
Audrey never smiled at me when she could scowl.
Wutba stared at the knife Mom held. The knife turned a dull,
pulsing red and Mom dropped it with a shriek. She ran to the
kitchen sink and turned on the cold water, and then stuck her
hand in the stream. The knife hissed on the floor, burning the
linoleum and raising a stink. "Take warning, woman," said Wutba
in three voices at once. "Threaten me at your peril." Its eyes
had turned from Audrey-green to gold. Audrey's long, oil-black
hair began to lift in the air around Wutba's head.
Mom rushed at me and grabbed my upper arm, and then tried to
drag me out of my chair. I stood up. She pulled me into the
living room of our doublewide house trailer, leaving Wutba
sitting at the table in the dining nook. "Did you see what it
did to me, Sherry?" she asked, stroking my hair, which is long
and straight and pumpkin-colored. "How can we live with this?"