Libra Season

We’ve always traveled in packs. Us fair ones. Us with justice, all sides, everything stuck in our eyes. Libras. It’s not like we seek each other out, either. It just happens. Like hydrogen molecules. And closeted queer people who meet in college. We get near each other and that’s it. We’re stuck for life. 

Which is where we’re at now. Stuck. 

Anoush chews on her thumbnail, something I find annoying, but try not to mention.

“We could go to a movie,” she suggests.

Charlie groans. “We did that last week. There’s nothing new out.”

“Well, I’m fine either way.” Vivica smiles too widely, cola dangling lazily from her long fingers.  

She’s going to drop it. I fucking know it. It’s what she does. Goes along with anything, and spills drinks all over the beige carpet in my basement. 

“Why don’t we just stay in?” That’s me. Always looking for the opportunity to do nothing. Plus, I’m broke.

“But it’s our birthday month,” Anoush moans, “We’re supposed to be celebrating, not staying in and sitting around. We do that the rest of the year.”

Charlie shoots up straight from where she’s lounging on the couch. “Oh my god. I almost forgot to ask, have you been saving your menstrual blood for me? I really want to get that protection charm ready on the next full moon, and I need everybody’s blood from the same cycle.”

 Charlie’s been really into blood charms lately, to less than enthusiastic support from the rest of us. 

Vivica rolls her eyes. “Obviously, I have not.”

Anoush grimaces, looking guilty. “I couldn’t deal with the cup, it freaked me out, sorry Charlie.”

“I haven’t had my cycle yet,” I chime in.

Charlie’s pouting a little now, but leans over to Vivica. “I’ve been doing some research, and we can totally substitute another bodily fluid for menstrual blood. With a bit of sympathetic magic, it should work the same!” She waggles her eyebrows so we all know which other bodily fluid she means.

Vivica grimaces. “That’s really fucking weird Charlie.”

Undaunted as ever, Charlie bulldozes forward. “But, like, this girl on Reddit said that you might still have cycles, so if we collect at the right time…”

“For real though, what are we going to do tonight,” I butt in.

Silence falls.

Anoush goes back to chewing her fingernail.

God damn it.

“We could have a bonfire?” Even as I say it, I realize I’m not into it. It’s too cold out. The brilliant leaves are starting to fall,, and the nights have crystallized into frost. It would be free, but at what cost?

“I could do a bonfire,” Vivica practically chirps.

“If we can’t decide what to do ourselves, why don’t we just scry for it?” 

For the first time all evening there is a consensus. Anoush is smug that she’s the one who put forward the suggestion.

“So, what are we thinking,” Charlie asks. “Tea, maybe?”

“Cards?” Anoush’s suggestion.

“I prefer the moon reflected off water,” Vivica says. “But tea or cards works too.”

That fucking thumbnail goes back in Anoush’s mouth. 

I swear I’m going to rip the damn thing off.

“Why don’t we just go to the shed,” I say instead. “It’s fresh, and I don’t really want anything to freeze with the temperate dropping.”

Thankfully, for the second time, we all agree.

 It was Charlie’s insistence that made us switch away from haruspicy. She went veg a couple years ago, and figured if she wasn’t going to kill an animal for meat, she shouldn’t be killing one for the future. 

It was a bit of a transition, but we’ve worked it out. Things are clicking along pretty smoothly now, and, honestly, I think the change has been great for accuracy. We’ve really honed our interpretations in towards the specific. 

Anoush leaps up from the couch. “Let’s do this then,” she says, rubbing her hands together, and ruins her enthusiastic crow with a whine: “I’m bored.” 

We all stand, various bits creaking, stretching out our shoulders and loosening muscles and minds. You have to be in a very specific mental state to read the omens. 

Out of the basement we march, through the yard and to the shed at the back of the property. It runs up against a wood, which helps hide the smells from neighbors, and, as Anoush puts it, “really adds to the whole ambiance of the thing.”

We fixed it up together when I bought the place. Charlie brought in her immaculate decorating skills. I learned how to frame a window properly. Vivica painted. 

It’s cozy now. 

And sound proof.

Not that it needs to be right at this moment. When we open the door, no noise comes from inside.

Vivica got this one. He went to school with her, and has been dead-naming her every time she goes through his checkout line at the grocery. A small town like ours is a difficult place to build yourself a new identity, but she’s making it work, one asshole at a time.

“Would you like to do the honors.” Charlie picks up the obsidian blade, offering it dramatically with a bow.

Vivica bows back, and we circle the table where he is trussed up and gagged. His eyes flicker back and forth, trying to take us all in, I guess.

I take the head, Anoush the feet, Charlie the side opposite Vivica. 

Arms spread, hands upwards. 

We channel. 

The sound of a blade ripping through the soft flesh of an abdomen is quieter than most people would imagine. Vivica is an old hand at it, and her cut is quick, sure, and precise. 

The grocery clerk thrashes a little against the ropes, but passes out quickly from pain and loss of blood. 

Vivica sticks her knifeless hand into the opening she just made, scooping out the entrails with a practiced flip of the wrist. You want to get them out before death, that’s one thing we’ve learned over the years. The readings are always more accurate if there’s still a little life in them.

Charlie pushes the clerk onto his side, using gravity to help Vivica’s extraction.

I stare at the intestines as they slip onto the table, steaming slightly in the cool air. “Fuck.”

Vivica purses her lips, eyes narrowed, and Anoush sticks her thumbnail back between her teeth. Thankfully, Charlie swats her hand away before I have to say anything. Instead, Vivica moves her hands to her hips and lets out a dramatic gust of air.

“Well, I have no idea what that’s supposed to say.”

“Me neither.” Charlie leans over, squinting into the pile of entrails. She picks up a length of gut, looking underneath it, shrugs, and drops it again. “Yeah, I got nothing.”

Vivica sighs, setting the blade on the table. “Let’s just go to Flannigan’s.”

Anoush offers to buy my beer, so, for the third time, we all agree.

© 2025 Gillian Knox

About the Author
Gillian Knox (any/all) is a queer author living in Wisconsin, who writes weird things that other people have described as creepy. Gillian’s short fiction has appeared in Lamplight Magazine and in the PodCastle Disability Pride and Magic showcase.