Sylvester is an Asshole and Must Die by Calie Voorhis

Utopia Science Fiction Magazine | August 2025

Grief’s name is Sylvester and he follows me around the room howling. He showed up the week after you died and he won’t leave me alone. Sometimes he pees on things I like (my old leather grimoire, my collection of topaz crystals, the blanket that smelled like you, your stack of letters, tied with a blue ribbon), things you liked (the ratty wizard’s hat you loved so much, your tattered robes, the potted witchwort, your degree from Majicorum University, covered in coffee stains). He just gives me a sideways look out of his giant eyes and pisses great streams that puddle and crystallize.

He howls all night long and the neighbors complain.

He follows me around town, a black shadow behind my back and my neighbors avoid me.

I hate Sylvester, but the wizard says until we become friends, I’m stuck. That’s how grief works.

I’m going to kill Sylvester.

***

I backed him into a corner one night, after he’d eaten half of your potted witchwort.

I couldn’t keep the knife steady. Sylvester snarled, whined, head held low, and his saucer eyes glared at me with a look I knew only too well.

Sylvester ate my courage and slinked into his corner clutching your sweater. After a final hiss, he settled.

I knew I wasn’t getting the sweater back.

***

I tried the incantations from a second-hand shop that’d smelled of onions and garlic. I went to the sacred woods, crafted the circle of sanctified salt, set the directional wards, said all the mystical words.

The ritual completed, I waited for Sylvester to fade.

Instead, he grew until the circle couldn’t confine him, and with a bang, the shield exploded. The woods started to sob. The maples cried syrup streaks, the pines resin, and oak leaves of sorrow pattered on my hair. I’d made a swamp of desolation and I fled. Sylvester followed, chasing me, a black shadow always at my back, screaming.

***

My old college roommate Sally said I had to feed Sylvester, let the thing eat the memories, digest them.

So I gave Sylvester my most cherished.

It wasn’t the perfect day, when you said you loved me and I floated all the way home. Sally had to pull me down outside the dorm room where I’d been drifting in the ivy, high as a cloud.

It wasn’t our wedding day, which had been full of rain. “The clouds are crying,” you told me, “because I’ve got you and they don’t,” which I thought was overwrought. We’d both burst out laughing.

It wasn’t even the first time we met, in the back of the theater, two stagehands busily spelling the furniture for set changes, whose hands had happened to touch, mid-incantation. We’d caused a blackout and the furniture never did recover, but giggled so hard it stopped the production cold.

“Shit,” you’d said, pulling me toward you. “We should go.” And we went to the coffee shop and discussed magic and mysteries until the sky turned pink.

I gave him your death. It had choked me. Surely it would strangle the snarly demon.

The spell had gone wrong, which was my fault. I’d blinked when I shouldn’t, waved right when I should have gestured left.

“Oops,” was the last thing you’d said, before you faded, me trying to clutch a cloud, to hold you tight, to prevent the crack in the world you slipped through.

Sylvester’s eyes grew even larger until they were all I could see. His body enlarged, his three legs lengthened, his fangs dripped saliva. I shrank away, clutching your wand, the last thing I had left of you unpeed upon.

He grew and grew and kept on growing until he filled our bedroom with sulfur, and then…

He peed on your wand, splashing me, drenching me, drowning me.

“Damn you, Sylvester,” I yelled. I threw the dying witchwort at him, the pot shattering. I smacked him with your wand as hard as I could, causing him to shriek. He cowered away.

I hit him again and again, each time he howled.

He screamed pain.

I stopped.

I couldn’t kill Sylvester.

I collapsed to the floor, drenched. Nothing could kill Sylvester. Nothing would bring you back.

I pulled your robe, damp and pee-ridden, to me and buried my face in the fabric, trying to catch one last smell of your honey-smoked aftershave. My tears mingled with Sylvester’s pee.

Sylvester sat down beside me. We wailed together, until the snot and tears and piss soaked us both and Sylvester crawled into my lap.

***

Months later, he still hasn’t faded; he’s as vibrant as ever and follows me around. People still stare, but I’m used to it. Maybe one day Sylvester will fade back into the night that spawned him, but I don’t think so. I think we’re going to be together a very long time.

I gave him a proper litterbox. He still pees on things, but not as much, and not on the new witchwort plant.

I made him his own bed, next to mine, so I’m not alone at night anymore.

THE END

Originally published in the August 2025 issue of Utopia Science Fiction Magazine.

Calie Voorhis is a short story author, poet, and playwright with over fifty pieces published or performed, including in Anywhere but Earth, Tales of Lost Atlantis, If This Goes On, Utopia, and Strange Horizons, among others. She’s a lifelong fan of the fantastical, an Odyssey Workshop Alumna, and holds an MFA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. You can visit her at the world’s fourth worst writer’s website: http://www.calievoorhis.com.