by J. R. Rain
I dive into the car and cringe away from the sunlight slanting across the seat. By the time Danny gets in, the redness has faded, though I’m still sore. Complaining about that will get me stuck back in the hospital, so I keep my trap shut.
The ride home is a constant, irritating battle trying to keep myself out of the shifting patches of sun, which burn like hell. Danny notices me fidgeting, but doesn’t say a word. Twenty something minutes after leaving the hospital, we roll up into our driveway next to my momvan.
I eye the run from the car to the front door and dislike my attached garage even more.
“Once you’re situated, I’m going to pick the kids up.” Danny glances sideways at me when I don’t move. “Is something wrong?”
I fidget. “I want to stay out of the sun. I think I’m having some kind of reaction from the meds.”
“Well, you have been kind of light-averse since you woke up. You’re even squinting now.”
“You know how when the eye doctor puts those dilation drops in, it’s too painful to look at the world without sunglasses?”
“Right?”
“Yeah, well that’s me right now.”
“Hmm.” Danny puts it in park. “I could get an umbrella?”
“It’s okay. I can manage it.” I take a deep breath, brace myself, and fling the door open. It feels like I’m roasting alive as I sprint from the car to the front door and practically dive into the comfort of the dim house. As soon as I’m out of the sun, my body relaxes.
Danny jogs up to the door, leaning in and staring at me. “Sam? Are you sure you’re okay?”
I turn away so he can’t see the red marks on my hands and arms. “Yeah. I’m fine. Please hurry up and bring the kids home. I’m dying to see them!”
“Sure thing, babe.” He pats the doorjamb twice. “Are you sure you don’t need me to help you up to bed?”
“Yeah, I’m good.” I don’t move except to peer over my shoulder at him. Hopefully, my face isn’t as red as it feels.
Danny gives me the strangest look as he backs out, like he’s trying to figure out what kind of new, bizarre circumstance we’re trapped in. I dunno. Maybe I’m pregnant or something and this sun allergy will go away.
After a wave, I head inside and upstairs. Nothing makes me feel funky like spending almost a week in the same hospital gown and bed without hot water and soap being part of my routine. I want to shower, but the doctor told me not to get the wound wet. I run a bath and climb in, careful to keep water from going above my breasts. Despite being desperate for a shampoo, I begrudgingly content myself with a soak and some delicate washcloth maneuvering around my face. Not long after I’m dried and downstairs on the couch, Danny pulls back in.
A screaming Tammy runs in the front door and leaps onto me. Anthony, in the much less steady gait of a two-year-old, arrives soon after, and shimmies up to sit beside me. Tammy’s beyond distraught, wailing and clinging like she’d thought I’d died. I gather them both in my arms, rocking them side to side while muttering apologies for being away so long.
Maybe ten minutes later, my daughter collects herself to stare up at me.
“I’m sorry, Tam Tam. I’ll never scare you like that again.”
“The man said you weren’t coming back,” says Tammy.
Danny drops his keys.
“What?” I ask. “What man?”
“The tall man. He woke me up when you got hurt and said he was sorry for making a mistake, and you were gonna go away f’ever.” She sniffles into sobbing again.
“I’m never going away, sweetie.” I heft Anthony up a little higher on my left, and hug them both. “I’d move Heaven and Earth for you both, and I won’t let anything hurt you. Even if the Devil himself tried to take you, I’d punch him in his pointy nose.”
The kids giggle.
“I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff,” says Danny, edging up behind the couch.
Feels like I should be crying from joy at the moment, but no tears flow. “I don’t. It’s just a figure of speech.”
“You look tired, hon,” says Danny.
“Yeah, I am. I guess miraculous healing takes a lot out of a girl.”
His expression goes strained.
Whatever happened, I’m sure it’s nothing we won’t be able to cope with.
***
I rattle around the house all night, wide awake.
It feels like someone’s standing right behind me… a woman, whispering in my ear. Whenever I turn though, I find myself alone. Unable to sleep, I get out of bed to avoid disturbing Danny. Standing in the front window, I listen to the neighbors across the street screwing. We don’t know them well, and they’ve never gone at it this loud before… but I suppose I don’t usually stand in our front window after one in the morning very often. The refrigerator kicks on, ratting and whirring. It’s got a grinding sound in the mechanism that hadn’t been there before. Ugh. Money’s tight already. Having to replace a major appliance is going to hurt. I think I’m going to let it limp along until it drops dead.
Fine flecks on the glass stand out in sharp contrast to the night lawn. I’m a little behind on cleaning apparently. The grass catches my eye in a captivating display of wavering. Each individual blade glows in the moonlight, rendered in exquisite detail, even the ridges. Oh, that’s too weird. How am I seeing that from here?
Hunger swirls in my gut. I skipped dinner, nauseated at the smell of Danny’s pot roast. Not that he screwed it up, but I’m sick or something. The drugs are still in my system. Maybe tomorrow I’ll experiment with chicken soup.
TV kills some time. I don’t feel tired at all until close to 5:30 a.m., when I drag myself through the house and crawl into bed.
***
Unpleasant warmth nudges me awake.
The bedroom is painfully bright, even with my eyes closed. Anthony prattles along with Barney. Confused at why he’d be watching it in our bedroom, I force my eyelids open and sit up. But our bedroom TV is off; the sound’s coming from the hallway, as clear as if I stood in the room with it.
I don’t hear Tammy, but was today her first day at preschool? Oh, no! I curl up and struggle not to cry. I missed her first day of school! Did she run in there all smiles or did she flip out and refuse to go? From the stories I heard, Mary Lou had been the latter, clinging to Mom on her first day of kindergarten and shrieking, begging not to be abandoned. Our parents hadn’t bothered with preschool. In fact, Mary Lou had such a fit, they tried homeschooling the boys for a while, but being the slackers they were, eventually, they were ordered to send my brothers to a real school. By the time I came around, they’d given up on the homeschool thing. Mary Lou told me I didn’t seem happy about going, but I didn’t throw a fit either. Like the nurse who has to change the bedpan of an elderly patient, I scrunched up my face and dealt with it.
Shit. Sorrow turns to anger at myself for sleeping through that, and a bit at Danny for letting me sleep through that. I sit up, ready to bite his head off, but my fury sputters out when Tammy giggles. I stare at the clock. Oh, right. It’s only the second week of August. She doesn’t start preschool until next week.
Whew. I flop on by back, relieved, staring at the ceiling.
“Hey, Jeff,” says Danny, like he’s standing next to me. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m at home. Sam’s still not ready to be alone, so I’ll be working from here for a couple days.”
Jeff Rodriguez murmurs.
“Yeah, absolutely. If that happens, I’ll ask her sister to come by and be with her, but unless things are on fire, I want to be here for her.”
Aww. Warmth spreads over my chest at hearing that. I am so damn lucky. Maybe there is something to that guardian angel thing. Who gets hit by a car, flung into a tree, has their throat cut open, and winds up home feeling fine days later? Some questions will devour the mind and aren’t even worth considering. At least, for now.
Shying away from the furnace of a window, I scoot across the bed to Danny’s side and get to my feet. M
y muscles protest every motion, reducing my attempt to walk to the bathroom into a drunken stagger. That’s what I get for staying up all damn night. Like a zombie, I shamble into the bathroom, hike up my nightgown, and sit on the toilet.
After a few minutes of nothing, I tap my foot on the rug. “Any day now…”
Well, this is alarming. Doesn’t feel like I have to go, but I can’t remember the last time I peed. The heaviness in my limbs increases, making me feel welded to the toilet. Ugh. Is this fatigue normal? Maybe when they gave me that transfusion, they used stale blood or something. Sitting there in total silence, my senses hone in on my heartbeat. Each pulse happens slower and slower, with a feeling like a fist pressed against my breastbone. I shiver with panic when I can count to ten between beats.
I shouldn’t be alive.
But I don’t feel in great distress. Groggy yeah, but in the midst of cardiac failure? No.
Twenty seconds pass between beats. I count to twenty again, and another squidgy compression follows. One beat every twenty seconds is not normal. My hands look so pale, I can’t believe what my eyes are telling me. Come on, Sam. Wake up. This has to be another dream like that black prison cell. There’s no way I’m sitting here alive with a pulse this sluggish.
It’s clear I’m not going to pee, so I stand up and let my nightgown fall back in place. Terrified of what awaits me, I creep over to the sink, shying away from the mirror. After standing with my gaze aimed down for a minute or two, I summon up the courage and look at myself for the first time since the attack.
My face is so white, I gasp. Even more surprising, I look like I’m twenty-five. All the stress of the house and two kids had started to create some wrinkles around my eyes and mouth, but they’re gone. Not even a tiny drop of blood mars the gauzy collar of bandages around my neck. They’re as immaculate as when first applied, and my skin isn’t even discolored where it peeks past the edge. An icy chill rolls down my back from dread, and I think my heart pumps twice in ten seconds. I raise a shaky hand and grasp the bandage, tugging it down in search of the long, jagged line where the doctors sewed my wound closed. Pristine white skin emerges, without a trace of injury or discoloration.
I keep pulling, tugging, twisting, until the whole bandage tears loose, exposing my neck.
My unblemished, perfect, neck.
“This isn’t real. I’m dreaming.”
Dumbstruck, my arm falls limp to my side, the bandages dangling from my fingers. Nothing makes any sense. I’ve always had a fair complexion, but this is ghoulish. My heartbeat is too slow to keep me alive, but I feel fine. I haven’t gone to the bathroom in days.
“What’s happened to me?” I whisper.
A blemish appears on my cheek in the mirror. I fixate on it, but… it’s not a blemish. It’s a black tile in the shower behind me. I’m… slightly transparent. My eyes widen and my jaw hangs open. With each passing second, my reflection grows more and more indistinct until it’s gone entirely, and I stare at a hollow nightgown.
The bandages slip from my fingers, falling to the carpet by my foot.
Barney keeps singing downstairs.
Anthony and Tammy sing along with the show.
Even the clicking of Danny typing on his laptop sounds like it’s coming from the bedroom.
I don’t have a reflection.
Shrinking away from the mirror like a little girl frightened of the closet monster, I backpedal until I’m sitting on the edge of the bathtub, staring into space. I’m so shocked, I think I’ve stopped breathing. That’s impossible. I clamp a hand over my mouth and pinch my nose shut, counting to sixty. Once. Twice. Three times. No urge to gasp for air. No lightheadedness.
My hand falls limp into my lap. No desperate rush of air flows into my lungs.
I glance at the mirror, feeling betrayed and abandoned, before staring off into space for a while.
“Well,” I deadpan. “This isn’t normal.”
The End
Samantha Moon Origins continues in:
Pale Moon Calling
by J.R. Rain &
Matthew S. Cox
Coming soon!
~~~~~
And read the original series here:
Mother, wife, private instigator... vampire!
The first book in Amazon’s #1 bestselling vampire mystery series:
Moon Dance
Vampire for Hire #1
by J.R. Rain
Available now!
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback * Audio
~~~~~
Also available:
An error at a particle physics laboratory has altered the dimensional alignment of the world, strengthening magic and revealing long forgotten magical creatures. Investigating the story of a lifetime, reporter Solstice Winters is about to discover why she never fit in... she’s about to discover what she really is...
Convergence
Winter Solstice #1
by J.R. Rain &
Matthew S. Cox
Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback
~~~~~
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Return to the Table of Contents
Also available:
Division Zero
A novel by
Matthew S. Cox
(read on for a sample)
Chapter 1
Crisis
Adrift in the wind, a catchy advert jingle wafted down from above, ensnaring Kirsten’s thoughts as it had been designed to do. The melodic din drew her eyes up to a sky the color of soot, hidden somewhere beyond the frenetic clutter of hundreds of moving objects. Glittering ad-bots saturated the grey fifty feet above her, flitting just below faster moving lanes of hovercar traffic. Smaller bots zoomed along, careening around lumbering giants struggling even to move forward. The boxy droids lit the smog with a patina of bright holograms that soaked the street below with unabashed commercialism. Any of the products they hawked could be hers with two taps of a thumb on the screen of her NetMini, arriving within minutes via flying delivery bot. Sadly, none of them sold love, sincerity, or a do-over for her twenty-two years on the Earth.
Running away from home had been the scariest decision of Kirsten’s life as well as the easiest. It had taken her only ten years, not to mention the urging of a ghost, to make up her mind; and ten minutes to vanish into the endless glittering night of West City. She could not forget what her mother had done; those memories would haunt her forever, as they had that morning.
The form-fitting uniform did little to protect her from the cold car hood as she waited, on the verge of tears. Nicole would return soon, and she did not want to answer the barrage of questions that would follow being caught crying. She shifted to allow feeling to return to her butt, one side at a time, and stared at the window of the shop her friend had entered. The redhead chatted with the clerk, an infectious smile across her face. Kirsten’s head sagged forward as she picked at the retaining strap securing her sidearm. In less than an hour, she might need to use it on a living man. The same dread came back each time she tried to put the dream out of her mind, leaving her doubting she would even want the food Nicole bought.
Why do people always look at the sky for answers? There’s nothing up there but smog and useless crap no one needs to buy.
She shrank away from gleaming steel edifices towering around her. Today, just like the people, the city felt like it wanted nothing to do with her. She looked down to Earth, to the unending flow of humanity that squeezed past where the wide patrol craft intruded upon the sidewalk. Glowing cybertattoos, luminous hair, blinking electronic devices, and the occasional loud conversation leapt out from the sea of people and caught her attention for a second or two at a time. She watched them go by, all walks of life, from wealthy businessmen to body-modifying cyber freaks, every one of them oblivious to her presence or mood. She folded her arms and wondered how they would react if they knew they passed three feet away fro
m a psionic.
She imagined them screaming and running, eyes filled with terror.
A crowd two steps away, yet as alone as if she floated on the other end of the universe.
I’m being silly, this is just newbie work. I’ve been doing this for six years―why am I letting it get to me today?
Sure, Division 0 stuck a laser pistol on her hip and sent her out here to be shot at; but they cared more than her own family had. They also did not want to burn her at the stake for her gifts.
A cheery singsong voice patted her on the cheek as her friend returned. “Hey, I hope you like jalapeños in your egg. It’s all they had left.”
The uninvited happiness drew her attention to Nicole weaving through the river of people with her arms held high. Two plastic cartons teetered atop two cups of coffee―an effort to shield them from the jostles of passing humanity. Glossy black tactical armor gleamed in the ambient light as she moved. Kirsten felt silly for not having requested the same for this run; her I-Ops uniform, made of thin cloth, seemed a stupid choice for front line work. Just as Nicole reached the curb, a teen a little younger than them shot through the crowd on powered wheels sprouting from cybernetic legs the color of unpainted steel. He parted the river of bodies, Nicole included, away to both sides as he rumbled past. Kirsten leapt in an attempt to save at least one of the cartons as they went flying, but stopped when they both stalled in midair like paused video.
Nicole narrowed her eyes at the boy, and he swerved with a startled yelp to the left, as if shoved by unseen hands. He bowled, screaming and flailing, into a pile of trash with a loud crunch. The clatter of some unseen metal object rolling away tarnished the subsequent silence. Kirsten knew what her friend had done, and smiled despite her anxiety. Coffee and food floated over to her before Nicole released her telekinetic grasp on it.