Bad Cree

Mackenzie tries to distract herself from the eerie, unexplainable text messages by doing laundry. She thinks back over her time in Vancouver, remembering that she’d already been in the city for two years when Sabrina died. The grief from losing her grandmother was fresh, and so she had declined to travel back home for her sister’s funeral. Mackenzie remains in the laundry room while her clothes are in the washer and then the dryer; she does not want to return to her apartment. When she finally does have to go upstairs, she calls her aunt, Verna, and tells her everything. Verna suggests Mackenzie come home: She is worried by the dreams, the crow’s head, and the text messages and thinks that Mackenzie is being sent a message of some kind. After hanging up, Mackenzie smudges her apartment with sage, reflecting on how few times she performed the ritual before. Unlike her Indigenous friends and family members, she has had little use for the bundles of sage she was gifted over the years. She even learned how to smudge from a white yoga instructor’s video on YouTube.

The next day, Mackenzie returns to work.