HONORABLE MENTION, Winter 2023
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY MONA SUSAN POWER
I heard this from Auntie Rose—a shapely woman whose style is stuck in the 1950’s, wearing cigarette slacks so tight my Mom says they look painted on. Mom’s just jealous because Rose gets attention as she struts through our Reservation town, even though she’s got to be pushing sixty. I’m addicted to Auntie Rose and her personal atmosphere of Tareyton smoke cut with an air of boredom. She looks past people, except for me, her favorite nephew. She confided once that she isn’t really bored—it’s an act. If she pretends someone is beneath notice, they’re inclined to put on a show so they won’t be ignored. Most of us want to be seen.
This happened around Easter of 1981, my Mom still shook by the murder of John Lennon in December, followed by the assassination attempt on Reagan. Mom wanted to swap the results—more than happy to give up Reagan if she could rescue John. I was thirteen, anxious to join the pack of older Lakȟóta teenagers who looked thick with secrets. But they kicked me off whenever I tried to poke into their business. Even Terry, who knew how bad I crushed on her, waved me away. One time a corner of her mouth relented, almost smiled, though ultimately she tantalized me with the taunt: “You can’t handle our skeletons.”
I saw them change that April, from swaggering figures in jeans and dark tops, slender as a cluster of tall black candles, to nervous kids with shadows under their eyes. I was dying of curiosity to figure out how they switched overnight from superior to haunted. Rose could smell my misery, how hungry I was for for information. So she told me.
She said they weren’t bad kids, but they weren’t exactly good kids either. Instead of looking out for grandparents and other “elderlies,” they skulked through the weedy yards of their Housing Authority homes and found hidden places to drink, fool around, plot trouble they seldom found the energy to manifest. Poor intentions; lame results. Until they broke into an abandoned gynasium—what used to be part of our tribal high school before it burned down. Rose said it was Ronny who brought the mischief to another level. Handsome, acne-ridden Ronny, so inhumanly gorgeous only the pimples made it possible for folks to look at him. Ronny’s favorite movie was Race with the Devil, a 1975 thriller about two couples who become targets of a Satanic cult. Ronny told his friends the most subversive thing they could do to stick it to the wašíču god—who as far as he could see had never brought anything good to our rez—was to open up talks with the Other Guy.
This is how Ronny, long-legged Terry, and a half-dozen members of their squad, began hanging out with Satan in the gym. Or trying to. Satan proved elusive, unimpressed. The group chanted pretend-Latin, tried to look all serious and committed, even held hands and swayed as if caught up in fervent exaltation. Satan yawned, so they offered him cheap wine—sometimes rolled their own passed-out relatives for the booze. They poured it on a ragged pentacle they’d painted on the rotting gym floor. The wine dripped through the cracked wood without Satan tasting a single lick. Every week the kids upped the temptation: they killed stray dogs and cats, then offered animal blood to the pentacle; they mixed the blood with wine; they took safety pins and razor blades to their own skin, pinched out drops of precious Lakȟóta blood their ancestors had fought to preserve. None of it lured Satan to their corner of South Dakota.
Ronny nearly convinced Terry to have ritual sex with him on the gore-splattered pentacle—Rose emphasized the word, “nearly,” because she knew the very idea would pain my heart. Terry had stripped down to her underwear and the sight of her warm skin, golden-brown as rings on the Badlands hills, apparently woke the old demon’s interest. Terry jumped back as the pentacle began to pulse and burp, the wrecked wood splintering to become a foul-smelling mouth. A thick, dexterous tongue, large enough to lap Terry’s entire form in one swipe, snaked its way in her direction. That’s when she screamed, grabbed her clothes and took off—the others close behind. Even Ronny seemed dazed by his success and sped away, though not before Satan licked him on the ass. The devil’s spit incinerated the boy’s underwear and left a burn-stripe on his skin like skid marks on a highway.
This wasn’t the end of the group’s trouble. Satan hadn’t paid much attention to South Dakota in a while, but now he was curious, and in spare moments poked his nose into local affairs. Everyone could smell his presence, like a barbecue of putrid roadkill. He made folks snappish and paranoid. That’s when Rose, dedicated observer as opposed to meddler, decided to intervene. She dragged the group to Clayton’s house one evening, with the threat that if they didn’t come with her, she’d tell their folks about the escapades Ronny had confessed in a drunken bout of weeping. He’d even pulled down the back of his pants to show her his scorched butt.
Clayton didn’t seem at all surprised to see Rose and the pack of young regretfuls. He’s our respected Yuwipi man, who connects with spirits for healing and guidance. He listened to their story about messing with Satan, and chuckled: “That old stinker.” Rose wouldn’t tell me all the ins and outs of the ceremony Clayton performed on behalf of the kids, to set them free of “Beezy-bub”—Clayton’s spirit-work is too dangerously sacred. But she said they began to shake as soon as the elder stopped grinning and warned: “This is the real thing.” All she’ll say is that the Other Guy is no match for a determined Lakȟóta. Satan barged into the ceremony in all his cockeyed arrogance, only to be tossed around like a ragdoll by Clayton’s protective spirits. Satan ultimately lost part of his tail and decided to slink off to Nebraska.
As I’ve gotten older, the age difference between me and Terry dwindled. We’re dating now, and I work my heart out to make her happy. But I’ve got some of Auntie Rose in me. And the rare times Terry snipes, all I have to do is open my mouth a crack and wriggle my tongue. That ends the fuss.
Mona Susan Power is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, currently residing in Minnesota. She’s the author of four books of fiction: The Grass Dancer, Roofwalker, Sacred Wilderness, and the forthcoming novel, A Council of Dolls (to be published by Mariner in August 2023). The Grass Dancer was awarded the PEN/Hemingway prize in 1995. Her short stories and essays have been widely published in journals, magazines, and anthologies including: The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, and Granta. “Beat The Devil” is Mona’s third story to win or draw an honorable mention in The Ghost Story’s flash fiction contest. Her story, “Straw Dogs,” was the winner of the 2021 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition, and her flash piece “War Bundle” was an honorable mention in the Winter 2022 Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition.