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Stevie McQueen closed her eyes and lit her candles one by one. Pausing as the dim lights started to glow, she took a deep breath. Although there was only tropical greenery and coastline for miles, the Los Santos air felt thick with the scent of fresh pine. It smelled like a thousand Christmas mornings, like a sister helping put up ornaments, like a summer camp in the woods, like a world far away.
Some people clearcut their way out of grief, recklessly hacking and slashing at everything in their path until they find a way home. Stevie was never like that. She surrounded herself with a forest so dense that by the time she got lost in it, almost no one could see her through the trees.
A few close ties had an inkling of what she did in this shabby construction site. The quietly thoughtful gifts of quality candles meant more than she could express. Finding unexplained donations of unused candles, lovingly wrapped with a loose ribbon, reminded her of why she came to this city - to help people. Sometimes when she looked in the eyes of her son, Finn, she saw ghosts of unasked questions. Even the hardened leader of her gang seemed to have a distinct notion that something was wrong with Stevie McQueen.
She smoothed her blonde hair and twinged in discomfort, hunching over to adjust some dried lavender just so. It had long lost its floral aroma, but she was never good at letting things go. Habit guided Stevie to gently knead her sore sides, then dust off her leopard-print skirt. She had slept in it from the day before - another recent habit. Regularly crashing on this hard metal surface left her with more aches and pains than anyone should have in their mid-twenties. It reminded her of a quote her friend Rocky said once: “the body knows the score”. Maybe his brand of therapy was more traditionally healing than her spiritual endeavours. Still, this haphazard witchcraft provided just as much solace to Stevie.
The surrounding industrial grind of building new structures felt like a conducive atmosphere for Stevie’s solitary ceremonies. Every private ritual was its own feat of construction, in a way. She wasn’t guided by a particular doctrine or occult manual. In this lonely space of prayer and practice, Stevie made the rules for herself. On a hopeful day, she felt like this urban witchcraft was a method of slowly forging a new identity, creation as communion. If she did her rituals precisely, maybe there was a possible version of Stevie McQueen that thrived in the here and now without needing to disconnect from the dead and gone.
After all, it’s hard to mourn someone who didn’t actually die. This was obvious when it came to Wolfe, who was considered a dead man to most of Stevie’s closest allies. Hiding her continued ties to him just added to the unmentionable shadows that haunted her on the daily. She thought about him and lit her last candle. The wax gradually melted, dripping lazily down. The candles’ weak flames quivered in the breeze, making their wicks seem to dance.
It was harder to explain why she held onto the others she had lost. Although they may not be physically present anymore, the mind doesn’t always accept that life ends when you’re six feet under. Translating a biological end to a psychological one was rarely neat and tidy. The death of her love, Olivia, never let Stevie forget about the blurred emotional lines between forgetting and moving on. For this widowed witch, every street of the city pulsed with her late wife’s memory.
Yellowed letters to Stevie’s late sister, Lilly, were scattered all around the makeshift altar. Some had blown away with the wind, while others stubbornly stayed despite all logic. In these eerie twilight hours, another letter would be added to the growing library of pleas.
“hi lils
you’re everywhere lately. i see you watching over finn. i know you’re there. i see liv too sometimes.
i feel scared to let you go. if i stop writing to you, am i going to lose why i even moved here in the first place? who i was before all this?
idk what to do... i need help from people i can hold.
maybe taking a break could help?
S”
The words she scribbled felt like incantations. Her thoughts appeared to be divinely channeled when she wrote to Lilly, straight from the ether to the paper. She never knew how the letters would turn out, but that was part of the magic. Sorrow, begging, respite - anything was possible. Stevie believed that no one fully understood the universe, not really. Why not lean into that? As a consummate chaplain, she took special care to never let any of her flock feel ignored, on this side of the veil or the other.
Taking a match to the newly written letter, driven by forces unknown, Stevie lit the corner edge ablaze. Holding the paper a distance away, it slowly curled into itself as it charred. Inhaling the thin smoke, she felt a transcendence wash over her. She basked in an aura that was both familiar and mysterious. A sense of an end, a sense of a beginning.
The various candles, she noticed, had all been extinguished by something. The wind? As the letter blackened and the match’s spark died out, she crumpled the paper hastily. Stuffing the damaged remains in her pocket, Stevie exhaled with her whole lungs.
Crossing her tattooed legs and casting her eyes to the glimmering stars above, she sighed in something approaching closure. Taking out her cellphone, Stevie opened her text messages with Rocky Topps. Carefully, she composed a new message: “do you know anything about grief?”
Instantly, her phone buzzed with a reply, illuminating the screen. “Absolutely” he responded, and Stevie felt a rare sense of promise.
Then, her phone buzzed again with a follow-up text. Cupping it in her hands, she read the words she had never heard back from all her witchy letter writing. “I am so proud of you, by the way.”