Bad Moon:Book One in the "I Am Chaos" series.

Chapter 2: The Ordinary World

Chapter 2: The Ordinary World

"Do you want to hear the story about the goddess's serpent lover? Or the one about the two-headed demon?"

Mama slides onto my bed. She's still in her work clothes and smells nice. Her hand is cool when she presses it to my cheek.

Do I want a story tonight? Yes and also no. Her stories scare me. But I know the answer she wants to hear. "You pick."

"The demon." My mother smiles, satisfied. "We don't say his name." She reaches over to tap my nose. "Not even the sorcerers dare summon the two-headed demon. A demon with one head is trouble enough." She looks at me. "But do you know, little Monster, you might be able to. You could say his name, I think. Do you want to try?"

I shake my head. This displeases her. "Because you're afraid?"

"I'm not afraid," I lie. "It's just a story."

Mama smirks, but I don't think she's smiling at me. "It's a real story, Terrible One, so listen well. And remember – demons aren't the only creatures with two faces..."



I'd never had my fortune told or gone on a ghost tour. I didn't watch horror movies or visit haunted houses. These things reminded me too much of my mother, who disappeared when I was seven.

I didn't have many memories from childhood – if the memory was a painful one, I buried it. 

During Psych 101 in college, I learned that our prefrontal cortexes often team up with our amygdalae to help us suppress unpleasant memories. But I remember enough. Whenever anyone asked me about my mother, I said she was a storyteller, because that's what I remember her being. She would make up characters – arrogant, inept witches, mighty and dangerous sorcerers, demons of chaos, and slippery magicians who, in the stories, always poked their noses in where they were least wanted. Her stories were full of magic, malice, and beings of unchecked power: Rusalkas, Undines, Sylphs, Nixes, Gnomes, Vilas, Huldras, and other creatures too various to remember by name.

There were no heroes or happy endings; people died terrible deaths. You'd have thought these stories might frighten a child, but my mother used to rock me and say, "Don't worry, Terrible One, you're the worst monster of us all." As she'd tell her tales, she used to rake her long nails lightly down my arm. Whenever someone drew a man off his path or devoured a person whole, my mother would sink her nails lightly into my skin.

After my mother left, I grew up with my grandmother. Granny called my mother's stories 'wicked' and 'without morals.' After the first few weeks of living together, we weren't allowed to talk about my mother. Granny replaced my mother's stories with fairy tales from Grimm or one of the colorful books of fairies. These tales swum with western morality that clearly defined good and evil. Granny lived by their tenets.

We're not born good or bad, Eva. We get a choice.

But what about Dad?

He's different. He was born bad.

And what about Mom?

We don't talk about her.

I wasn't so sure Granny was right about choice. I'd only met my father a handful of times, but for a mother to despise her own son, he must have been bad. Really bad. I'd always wondered how much of my father I had in me. There were times throughout my childhood where being good felt stifling and being bad felt so, so right. But when I got an A on a spelling test she knew I hadn't studied for, when I went a few rounds with Jessica Salting in the fourth grade and bloodied her nose, Granny would make me account for my decisions. What kind of person did I want to be? A good one, or a bad one?