Finis.

By Angélique Jamail

Elsa’s family grows more unkind by the week. Her boss, a seven-foot-tall rage demon, has control of everything but his anger. And her cat wants to eat her. Things could be better.

In a world where one’s Animal Affinity is a sign of maturity and worth, Elsa’s inability to demonstrate hers is becoming more than a disappointing nuisance; it’s becoming a danger. She has no confidence she’ll ever conquer her Plainness by “blossoming.” She also fears both the wolf packs that prowl her neighborhood and being stuck in a life plummeting rapidly from lackluster to perilous. Fortunately, she has a cousin and a co-worker who know her better than she knows herself and can see through to what society won’t.

FINIS. is the magic realism of our time, a story of finding one’s way to the end of things, of persevering through the dregs of life to discover something more.

*** This new 3rd edition of the book, released in 2018 from Odeon Press, includes new bonus content, including a preview of the next story in the series set in Elsa's world! ***

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FINIS.:

"It's not often I get that viscerally emotional on behalf of a fictional character. In a setting of overt fantasy, Angélique Jamail has created some of the most real people I've encountered via text in a long time." -- Ari Marmell (author of Hot Lead, Cold Iron)

“A silver vein of irony runs through Angélique Jamail’s fantastic Finis. It is a witty tale of conformity, prejudice, and transformation, in a world that is disturbing as much for its familiarity as for its strangeness. In a place where everyone is different, Elsa is the wrong kind of different, and that means facing pity, discrimination, danger, and sharp teeth. Dive into this story, readers, and confront them for yourself; it may just change the way you feel about things...” -- Marie Marshall (author of The Everywhen Angels)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angélique Jamail
• Release date: Aug 5, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310541155

Angélique Jamail

Angélique Jamail’s poetry and essays have appeared in over two dozen anthologies and journals, including New Reader Magazine, Waxwing, Time-Slice, Improbable Worlds, Pluck Magazine, The Milk of Female Kindness––An Anthology of Honest Motherhood, Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston, Femmeliterate, Bayou City Magazine, and The Enchantment of the Ordinary. Her work was selected as a Finalist for the New Letters Prize in Poetry in 2011. Her magic realism novelette Finis. (Odeon Press) has been praised by fiction writer Ari Marmell as having “some of the most real people I’ve encountered via text in a long time,” and by poet Marie Marshall as “a witty tale of conformity, prejudice, and transformation, in a world that is disturbing as much for its familiarity as for its strangeness.” She teaches Creative Writing and English in Houston. Find her online at her blog Sappho’s Torque (www.SapphosTorque.com).

Book preview

Finis.

Angélique Jamail

PRAISE FOR Finis.

It’s not often I get that viscerally emotional on behalf of a fictional character. In a setting of overt fantasy, Angélique Jamail has created some of the most real people I’ve encountered via text in a long time. – Ari Marmell, author of Hot Lead, Cold Iron and The Widdershins Series

"A silver vein of irony runs through Angélique Jamail’s fantastic Finis. It is a witty tale of conformity, prejudice, and transformation, in a world that is disturbing as much for its familiarity as for its strangeness. In a place where everyone is different, Elsa is the wrong kind of different, and that means facing pity, discrimination, danger, and sharp teeth. Dive into this story, readers, and confront them for yourself; it may just change the way you feel about things…" – Marie Marshall, author of The Everywhen Angels and I am not a fish

also by Angélique Jamail

The Sharp Edges of Water

Finis.

Angélique Jamail

Odeon Press

This story is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is coincidental and/or fictitious.

Finis. Copyright 2014 by Angélique Jamail. 3rd edition 2018. All rights reserved. Produced in the United States of America.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in fair use cases of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or essays and reviews. For more information about Angélique Jamail and her work, or to contact the author, please visit www.SapphosTorque.com.

Published by Odeon Press.

www.odeonpress.com

ISBN 978-1-7328629-1-3

Edited by Jayne Pillemer.

Cover design by Lauren Volness.

Book formatting by Jesse Gordon.

for Andy, Emma, Justin, Meredith, Rachel, and Vali

because cousins are so important

Table of Contents

Praise for Finis.

Also by Angélique Jamail

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Acknowledgements

Book Group Discussion Guide

TELL ME

More from the World of Animal Affinities

Ways to Support Authors

About the Author

About the Illustrator

1

ELSA’S PARENTS and sister have become meaner than usual, and her cat, Jonas, resents her. She has a nagging concern he wants to eat her.

He bit me again this morning—I woke up to find half the toes on my left foot in his mouth! I kicked him away but he just came back, all fangs and hissing, till I locked him in the coat closet.

But that’s only the beginning, Elsa tries to explain to her cousin Gerard. She has to speak in short bursts: he’s conducting his water exercises, his head bobbing in and out of the water in orderly arcs. She knew she’d be interrupting his routine, but this morning’s episode has brought things to a head. On her way to work, anxiety commandeered her every thought and movement. Before she could catch her breath, she found herself tearing through Gerard’s garden gate and rushing to his salt-water pool.

Oh, Elsa, he says, his feet spiraling around a large stalk of kelp just below the water’s surface. He runs a watery hand across his spiky brown hair, and brine curls down his back. What are you going to do?

What’s even worse, my landlord left another threat-of-eviction notice today. She sets her briefcase down near a baby potted corpse flower and ventures closer to the pool. "I’ve done nothing wrong. My rent is always on time. I’m a quiet, orderly tenant. I thought getting a cat would mollify the building association, but unless I become a cat, I don’t think it’ll help."

Gerard dunks, flips neatly into a ball, and spins back up; he swims to where she stands at the edge of the pool and rises. Have you had any hints of your self? He looks at her carefully, scrutinizing, and she wants to shrink into the empty void of mediocrity. Still, his voice is tender. Anything at all?

No, she murmurs, mesmerized by the ripples his body makes, the way the water slaps against the side of the pool and then laps backward over itself, folding the brine under to dissolve in a never-ending cycle of thrash and renewal.

"I’m not sure I approve of where you’re living, anyway. Those nasty gangs—I read about them in the newspaper. Packs attacking Plain Ones right and left, even