Grapefruit-scented suds swirled down her thick hair. Janell arched her foot under the spray of hot water. Her calves screamed from her day on stilettos. Today was there had to be a word for it, comicbook horrible, unspeakably vile, incomprehensibly deporable. She rested her forehead on the wet shower tiles.

Today was a dark sedan with two men in dark suits and sunglasses. They met her outside of her office.

“Dr. Woods, Dr. Janell Woods.”

“Yes, may I help you?”

“Dr. Janell Woods of 173 Holly Road, Glenside, CA, 34, African American, born female in Fork River, AZ, divorced.”

Janell spluttered in surprise.

“Ma’am, we are going to need you to come with us.”

Letting the hot water pummel her shoulders, Janell turned in the shower. She knew Jacob was pouring boiling water over jasmine flowers in a glass bulb teapot. She knew he was playing her favorite relaxation Spotify station and candles were lit. But she couldn’t relax. The government was using her psychological research, using it to target maybe kill people.

It started with a fire at Dirty Dave’s Dive Bar, Paradise, AZ. The firefighters found the flames were focused in one area of the building; the same place of the single fatality playboy fiancier Dave Franks, who was burnt to a crisp. Then there was another fire fatality at a brothel in Blunt Knife, two more in Fork River, and another handful in Paradise. When the Albert Clark, president of Clark Chickens, exploded during a Zoom shareholders meeting in Tucson, the alarm was raised. Janell had been doing a long term project on trauma therapy and Native American women and indigenous spiritual belief systems. She had done extensive interviews with abuse survivors.

One morning while reviewing her research notes Janell saw a connection between the women’s stories of pain and degradation and the spate of bizarre deaths. She texted her mentor her concern. Forty-eight hours later, a bulldozer of government agencies sideswiped her life.

“I know you don’t know anything. If you knew anything you would be Gitmo. Spontaneous combustion, underage trafficking, Tansy Pimcho, that’s why you’re here, Dr. Woods. Not for your qualifications, you are here because the CIA flagged those four words. Now tell me everything you think and maybe you can go home,” Dr. Alan Jennings said.

Janell interlaced her fingers behind her neck and stretched under the cooling water spray. Her fingertips were pruney. There was a soft knock on the bathroom door. Janell shut off the water.

Over and over, Janell had explained her theory. Protecting her subjects’ privacy was moot. All of her raw data was downloaded and printed. She explained her subjects’ nightmares and vivid dreamwork for healing. Some of the names of the dead Janell remembered from her interviews. Janell had wondered in her text what if some subjects had developed pyrokinesis. Wrapping herself in her bright blue fuzzy bathroom, Janell felt heavy, underwater. Another knock sounded.

Janell worried what if she was right. What if someone had this power and was using it for revenge. What if the person didn’t even know what they could do or how to stop it? What if nightmares awoke and walked? What would they do to these women who had already gone through so much? Jacob opened the bathroom door and waved at the steam.

“You still in there. Washed all the men in black stuff away?” Jacob said, offering the hot mug of chamomile.

He always joked when he was nervous. When she arrived home, Jacob was positively terrified.

“Hehewuti, do you want to kill zombies or binge Bridgeton?”

Janell folded into her boyfriend’s arms. She loved it when he called her by her mother name, what her grandmother had named her. Bear Woman, the Protector.

“No, my love, I just want to sleep. Make these terrible people go away. Keep those girls safe. Someone has to…”

Janell cried as Jacob led her to their bed.