by A. R. Kahler
I need to run. I need to scream. So I break into a sprint and head to the edge of the field and do just that.
I can’t get her face out of my head. The dead brown eyes and matted hair, the red pooling in the hollow of her neck. Claire, Claire—her name is a bloody mantra in my head. It echoes around me and I swear I hear a thousand voices calling the name: Claire, Claire.
The memory of her existence crashes down on me. It squeezes my chest and I fall to my knees. Hair comes out in chunks as I rip at my scalp, my eyes so tightly shut my brain hurts, or maybe that’s the memory. I scream. Choke. I roll on the grass and dig my fingers into my naked flesh and try to rip myself apart. I’m bleeding. I can taste the iron. But I feel nothing, nothing. No pain. Just the weight, the suffocation.
I had a sister.
And she’s dead.
She was murdered.
Someone murdered my sister.
The chains twist tighter and I can’t make a sound anymore, can barely breathe a groan. Hers isn’t the only face in my mind now. There’s Sabina and Roman and Paul and Penelope, the countless bodies sprawled and burning across the tent grounds as the Summer Fey attacked. All these people dying around me. All these murders.
I thought I was safe. I thought I was safe, but I’m not. People are dying and I don’t know why and it hurts, it hurts. It pulls every breath from my lungs as the darkness closes in and I lie on the edge of the field. I hear footsteps. My eyes flutter as the darkness closes in.…
The light is blinding. It burns with fire and starlight. It fills me. Burns me. Empties me with hunger.
I can barely see her through the light.
She doesn’t see me.
She never saw me.
Only Claire saw me watching, but she’s too young to understand. To know what our mother does. Who our mother is.
Mom is on the sofa. There’s a needle beside her and a rubber tube curled at her feet like a snake. Her eyes are glazed. They’re reflecting the TV like glass. Like light on glass. And the light—the light—it’s brighter than the static. Louder.
And I know. I know that tomorrow she’ll come out of her haze and she’ll yell at me. Beat me. And then I’ll hide the bruises, or the cuts if she has a weapon, and I’ll go to work and then go to class, because college is the only way I’m getting the hell out of here. But Claire? Claire? I have to help her too. I can’t make her run. I’m responsible. She’s too young.
The light, the light.
“You don’t want to see this.” I turn toward the voice, and Mab is there. She floats in the corner of the living room, glowing magenta. Her hair is a dark halo tinged with rubies, and her eyes flash green. Her dress is snakeskin and cobwebs, and when I see her, the light fades. A little. Although the edges grow brighter. “You locked this away for a reason.”
“I’m—” and I can’t speak. I look over to my mom and know she’s still alive even though her chest barely moves. She’s no longer a mother. Mommy, Mom, why can’t I find you?
“You have to accept this, Vivienne,” Mab says, and now she’s floating beside me. Her presence is electric. Her presence makes the light flare. “Your past is locked away. You do not want to see what resides there.”
“I can’t,” I say. I watch the television’s reflection in the glass of my mother’s eyes. Static. Static. So much static and light.
“You must,” she says. Her words are soothing. A coo. “Let it go.”
Then I see a face in the doorway. Peeking around the corner. Claire. She’s young, so young. So innocent. She doesn’t deserve this.
“I have to save her,” I say.
“You have a very strange view on saving,” the woman beside me says, though I’ve forgotten who she is. Claire, Claire. I have to save you.
I step over to Claire and kneel at her side.
“We have to go,” I say. I’m crying. Why am I crying? The light, the light. It tells me we must run. We have to get out of here, now. Now. Before Dad gets home. Before Dad hurts her again.
“I’m scared,” Claire says, but I pet her head like a kitten, and she closes her eyes—and the light, the light. It’s static. She flickers.
“I’ll save you,” I say.
But she flickers again, and now she’s not white. She’s red. And there are wounds in her chest, and the carpet is linoleum, and the light above is flickering, dying. And she’s dead. There’s red on my hands and red on the floor and red on my jeans and the light, the light makes it glow. The world glows red, burns white.
Who did this? Who did this?
My fingers are clawing her chest, trying to stop the blood flowing against the floor.
I scream.
I scream.
And the light screams too. It screams, but it doesn’t burn the world away. It just illuminates the blood.
* * *
I wake and wonder where the hell I am.
I’m shivering with early morning cold, and I realize I’m outside. That much is certain. The sky is a clear blue dome above me; the sun is barely past the horizon. The air is alive with birdsong. Memories of last night filter through in a pleasant haze: the chocolate and champagne, the tingle of Kingston’s kisses. I sigh, content, but something twists memory. Something says I shouldn’t be this blissed.
I feel good. Ridiculously good.
I drag a hand through my hair and watch the wisp of clouds trail above me. My hair is sticky. Kingston must have missed some of the chocolate.
The ground beneath me is muddy, and for the life of me I can’t remember why I came out here. Maybe I was sleepwalking?
I sigh. I should get up. Get coffee. I close my eyes and run a hand down my stomach, and it’s slick with chocolate too. Slick and sticky. I raise a finger to my lips. Slick and sticky and sweet. I lick my fingers. My heart thuds happily in my chest. I drop my hand to my stomach and swirl the chocolate drizzled there. I should really get moving, especially since I’m outside naked. Someone might find me. The last thing I want to do is explain away Kingston’s chocolate.
I open my eyes at the pale blue sky. It’s still early. Wicked early. I should go.
I lean my head to the side to find the trailers. I don’t.
Instead, I see Sara.
She’s lying beside me in the grass, inches away. Her eyes are open and staring straight at me, which makes me do a small jump.
“Morning, creeper,” I say. My voice is thick. I hope I don’t have morning breath.
She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t blink. Something about her looks familiar—the brown curls, the tilt of her head. It reminds me of someone I should know…
The screaming in the back of my mind is getting louder, now. The haze of waking is slipping aside.
I push myself to sitting. My hands squelch in the mud.
But it’s not mud. It’s blood. A lot of blood.
I yelp, and my heart races. I skitter backward.
Sara’s lying in a pool of blood. Three long daggers stick out from her heart: the throwing knives she’s been practicing with. Their handles are stained red.
I look down at my arms. They’re covered in scratches, purple welts. And I know they weren’t there before. I look back at Sara, and I’m already stammering. The blood. The blood everywhere: on my hands, on my body, on the ground, on her chest.
I’m shaking. Shaking. But there’s no light, no power, no flood. Memory crashes, and suddenly I remember her kneeling beside me in the night. “Are you okay? I thought I heard someone crying. What are you doing out here?”
And I remember how her throat felt between my hands. I remember how the blades felt slipping beneath her skin. I stare at my hands, shaking, shaking.
They’re red.
And I remember. I remember how her blood tasted. Like chocolate. Like ecstasy. It’s how all their blood tasted.
Sabina and Roman and Sara … their blood tasted like bliss.
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