The Deadly Nightshade

by Justine Ashford

  When I was done, I took a long look at myself in the mirror while I waited for him to finish. He would have disapproved if he had been paying attention—“Vanity,” he would have said, “is a worthless trait you have no use for, mija.” Nonetheless, I examined my dark olive skin and brown eyes, both of which were generous gifts from my mother; looking at my own face always had the somewhat bittersweet effect of reminding me of hers. Just as I was beginning to search for more of her distinctive features in my own, my father ordered me to fetch our rucksacks so we could get going. Within a short while we were on the road.

  We walked through the deserted, dust-strewn wastes for miles as the merciless sun beat down upon our sweat-drenched backs. Along the way, we passed a few dozen buildings in various degrees of ruin, some of which appeared raid-able, but with no surefire way of determining which were abandoned and which weren’t we ran the risk of encountering others each time we entered one. Luckily, we managed to collect our supplies without incident; within two hours we had gathered four cans of tuna, three jars of preserved fruits and vegetables, a small container of beans, and four bottles of water. It was a lot to carry in our bags, but my father took the majority of the supplies so I wouldn’t be too weighed down. Although it seemed like we had hit the jackpot, this food would probably only last us a few days; two mouths are a lot to feed, after all.

  “Look there,” my father said, pointing to a big boarded-up building with a faded sign hanging above it that read “Uncle Johnny’s Corner.” “I haven’t seen a supermarket in ages. I’ll bet there’s a month’s worth of good food in there just waiting to be taken.”

  “What about the boards on the windows? Someone might already have claimed it.”

  He smirked. “You’re right. Good observation, mija. Still, I don’t think we should pass up the opportunity. It’s early enough that if anyone is there they might still be sleeping. Listen, you stay here and keep lookout while I see what I can find. Call out if you see anybody coming. If I’m not out in a few minutes you run back home, understand?”

  “No, I’m coming with you.”

  “Look, we don’t have time for this. I need you to stay here and keep watch. If anyone’s in there I’ll be able to handle them.”

  I acquiesced reluctantly, sheltering myself in the shadows of the building’s overhang while my father crept stealthily inside. I stood there for what felt like a lifetime, watching the road for the slightest indication of movement, though the only activity my eyes picked up were the mirages that danced tauntingly on the horizon. Many minutes passed, but still my father did not come out to give me the all clear, and soon a cold sense of foreboding began to creep up within me. Pressing my ear to one of the boarded-up windows, I listened for movement inside, but heard nothing.

  “Where are you, Papá?” I whispered.

  A few more moments passed, but still no one exited the store. Unsure of what else to do, I drew my katana and slowly and quietly crept toward the door and slipped inside. At first, stepping into that store was like stepping into the void—barely any light shone through the boarded-up windows and a thick cloud of dust particles stood suspended in the air, further obscuring my vision. I stood by the entrance, allowing my eyes to adjust and holding back a fit of coughing, until I was able to make out the rows upon rows of shelves before me, many of which had been entirely stripped of their contents. On the floor lay a mess of rotten, stinking perishables, barely recognizable as things that once were edible. A few cans and containers sat among them and, too compelled by the sight of food to remember why I was there in the first place, I was about to throw a couple of small bags of rice in my rucksack when a faint noise from somewhere at the back of the store—like the sound of a can being dropped—drew my attention. With my sword at the ready, I hurried toward the source.

  I slinked from aisle to aisle, poking my head around each row of shelves to see if anyone was present, then, when I was sure the coast was clear, running to duck behind the next. When I reached the eighth or ninth aisle, I peered around the corner and found myself paralyzed by the sight before me. There in the middle of the floor lay the freshly decapitated body of a man immersed in a growing pool of scarlet blood. Panic welled within me against my will at the thought that this body could be my father’s, but upon closer inspection I was relieved to discover it did not belong to him. The cut that had separated this man’s head from the rest of him was clean and even—made by a sword, no doubt. Stepping over the corpse, I continued to make my way through the store until I reached the second to last aisle, where I spotted my father using his katana to slit the throat of another unsuspecting man. Blood spurted from the man’s neck and showered the floor, and his cry was muffled by my father’s hand, which he held clamped over his victim’s mouth. Slowly, my father let the man drop to the ground, which made a sound similar to the one I had heard earlier.

  “Papá!” I called.

  “I thought I told you to stay outside,” he hissed as he wiped the blood from his sword. He turned to glare at me, but the look on his blood-speckled face transformed from one of rage to one of horror in a millisecond. “Nightshade, watch out!”

  I turned and ducked just as the axe came whizzing past my head, tumbling to the floor as the colossal beast of a woman who had swung it let it crash down in the place where I had just been. With a shriek, she thrusted her weapon down upon me again, but I just barely managed to stop the blow with my katana. I kicked at her with my feet as she pressed the axe down so that it was only an inch from my face, but the weight of the weapon and the woman’s force were too much for me to bear—another second and my arms would give out and both the sword and the axe would come down upon me.

  It seemed to happen in flashes. There was the clamor of hurried steps on tiled floor, then a blur, and then my assailant collapsed beside me, and with her the weight of the axe was lifted off of me and both of our weapons clattered to the floor. I sat up, and in that moment I could neither move nor speak nor hear nor think nor breathe, only watch. I watched my father as he kneeled over my attacker, his fists raining down on her, pummeling her thick face into a mess of crimson and swollen flesh. I watched as she tried desperately to block his punches with her hands, but had them beaten down relentlessly until she could raise them no more. I watched as her skull collapsed into itself under the force of my father’s steel fists, forming a horrendous cavern in her forehead. I watched as my father continued to pound on her long after she was dead, smashing her face into something barely recognizable as human. I watched his mouth contort into something akin to a delighted grimace—if ever such a thing existed—and I watched his visage darken as it was splattered scarlet.

  I don’t know how many minutes passed before my father ceased his beating of the woman, nor exactly at what point of my witnessing this ordeal that I began to cry, but when his frenzy was finally over and he heard my heaving sobs, he hurried to my side.

  “Nightshade!” he cried, clamping his busted, bloodied hands over my shoulders. “Are you hurt, mija?”

  I shook my head infinitesimally, unable to remove my eyes from the woman’s mutilated body, and watched as the blood that poured from it slithered toward me. Suddenly I was aware of the sticky wetness that speckled my face, and its warmth sickened me. With trembling hands, I furiously scrubbed the crimson fluid from my cheeks, dragging my nails against my skin until I had scratched it raw.

  Chapter 4

  When my father and I had both sufficiently composed ourselves, we silently filled up our bags with as much food as we could carry and headed home. My body shook the entire walk back, and all I could think about was the fact that if my father hadn’t been around to save my sorry ass I would have eaten that woman’s axe. After all the countless hours of work he had done to prepare me for dangers like that, I had forgotten my training and nearly allowed myself to be killed. I had always imagined I would be capable of holding my own in a fight, even if it was against a woman twice my size, but now I realized I needed my father desp
erately in order to survive.

  “I’m sorry,” I finally managed to choke out.

  “I told you to stay outside and keep watch. You should’ve listened,” he growled as he studied his raw, swollen knuckles.

  “I’m not sorry that I came inside to see if you were alright,” I said. “I’m sorry because I lost the fight.”

  My father turned to look at me with surprise, the beginnings of a smile creeping onto his face.

  “You’re what?”

  “I should have been able to kill her on my own, but I wasn’t. I could barely even defend myself, let alone get a swing in and fight back. You’ve been training me for years and I still can’t protect myself.”

  “You didn’t lose the fight. You only lose if you die—that’s the way it is. It was your first time in a real life or death situation and you managed to keep your wits about you and keep yourself alive. I think that’s pretty damn good, don’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Look, Nightshade, you need to know something: your mentality when you get into a fight can be the difference between living and dying. If you’re not completely confident in yourself, you’re putting your life in danger. It doesn’t matter if you’re more skilled or have better weapons or more training because your own mind is working against you, and that leaves you at a disadvantage. Understand?”

  I nodded. He was right—how did I expect to improve if I kept feeling sorry for myself?

  We made our way back to the asylum stealthily, managing to avoid being spotted by the one small group of people that passed us by. They were a gang—I could tell by their indiscretion; gangs don’t care about being seen because no one poses much of a threat to them, aside from other gangs. In a way I sort of envied them—the idea of being so dangerous that you could actually feel safe in this world was worth admiring. But there is a reason why people fear the gangs, and I doubted losing any and all sense of my morals was worth that feeling of security. My father grumbled about them until we reached home, and I predicted we would be finding a new residence before long.

  Our hair and clothes were saturated with sweat by the time we reached the mental ward, and we sighed with relief as we took shelter from the still, stifling heat in the slightly less stifling building that was our unlikely haven. Feeling the need to remove my sweaty garments, I ran up to our room to grab a change of clothes while my father went to the kitchen to sort our winnings. Shutting the door, I removed my katana and knife belt, stripped, put on my fresh clothes and laid the other ones aside. Nothing feels better than a clean cotton shirt on a hot day, except for maybe a bath. Ah, how nice it would be to bathe. Sticky as I was, I wished I could dip myself into a cold tub and scrub the salt and dirt and blood from my skin, but my father only allowed us to wash once a week or so—frequently enough to stave off disease but infrequently enough to preserve the rainwater we collected in buckets.

  Grabbing my katana—I never went anywhere without it—and tossing the strap over my shoulder so that it rested across my chest and the sword’s sheath sat snug against my back, I headed downstairs to help my father make lunch.

  I was on the second floor staircase when I heard the gunshot. For a second I was paralyzed, fixed to the stairs like bolts had been driven through my feet. No, that sound couldn’t have come from within the building—it wasn’t possible. But as the second shot rang out, there was no mistaking the location of the source. Within an instant my sword was in my hands and I was sprinting down the stairs toward the kitchen.

  Upon reaching the doorway, I came to a dead stop. There, splayed out on the floor, was a young man shot clean through the head. Another man lay beside him, choking and sputtering as he clutched his bleeding chest, good as dead. A few feet away, two more grappled on the floor in a wild ball of arms, legs, and blood; I recognized the one on the bottom as my father. Though his attacker was much smaller than him, the man’s animal strength was clearly disproportionate to his size. He screeched and shrieked like a feral creature as he wrestled with my father, and suddenly I was reminded of my nightmares.

  “¡Papá!” I cried as I ran toward the two men with my sword at the ready, prepared to defend my father.

  Before I could reach them, my father sent the man flying backwards with a kick to his stomach. His attacker landed on the ground a few feet away, then sprang to his feet with cat-like agility, locked eyes with me, and bounded eagerly toward his new target. He was upon me before I could think to react, and suddenly my sword was no longer in my hands but sliding across the floor and his bony fingers were gripping my throat with alarming force. An involuntary cry attempted to escape my throat as he crushed my windpipe, but his grip suffocated the life out of it, and it would have done the same to me if I had not acted. With one hand gripping his wrist, I pressed the thumb of the other into his eye, and, with an agonized screech, he released me. I dropped to the floor, desperately trying to summon the air back into my lungs, and in an instant my father was upon him again, this time with his hunting knife drawn and ready to execute.

  My father was about to strike when his attacker sunk his teeth into his throat. I screamed as the man shook his head back and forth like a wild dog, ripping and tearing ravenously. Blood spurted out in every direction—so much blood, too much blood. When the man was satisfied, he released my father and let him fall limply to the ground, where he began to spasm violently.

  I shrieked as I picked up my sword and thrust it into the man’s abdomen just as he turned to face me. Thick, dark blood poured from his mouth, stained his lips, his teeth. With a pathetic gasp, he lowered his eyes to meet mine; never in all my fifteen years of life had I seen anything as horrifyingly, unadulteratedly evil as those crazed brown eyes. I pushed the sword even deeper into his stomach, so deep that there was no more blade left and our faces remained only inches apart. I stared into those eyes until I saw them go blank, and then a smile snuck across my face. He was the first man I ever killed, and his death brought me the greatest satisfaction I have ever known.

  I withdrew my sword from the man’s stomach and watched his body crumple to the floor. Then, hearing my father’s strained wheezing, I fell beside him, dropping my katana and pressing my hands over his throat to stop the bleeding. His own hands clutched my wrists and removed them insistently. Hot tears formed in my eyes as I fought him.

  “S-top,” he sputtered. It barely sounded like a word.

  I couldn’t help it—the tears breached the dam of my eyelids and spilled over onto my cheeks. A firm smack to my mouth startled me. He shook his head.

  “Don’t.”

  “Let me help you, Papá,” I pleaded, covering his wound again as the hot blood seeped out between my fingers. As more and more of it slid through my hands, I began to realize there was nothing I could do; I was trying to soak up a river with a towel. “Please don’t die. I still need you.”

  “N-no.” He began to wheeze heavily, but his mouth still tried to form words. I watched for a minute as his lips parted and closed again and again, but no sound was made. “Remember. What. I. Taught. You,” he mouthed.

  “Dad.”

  “You’re . . . A . . . Survivor . . . Nightshade,” he breathed, pressing his bloody hand against my cheek with the faintest of smiles. “Survive.”

  With that, his cracked lips parted and his hazel eyes left my face and grew distant. I watched in horror as his head lolled back sickeningly and his hand fell from my face and landed limply beside him. Clenching his shirt with tightened fists, I shook him desperately, murmuring “no, no, no” all the while. But no matter how hard I shook he did not stir, and I began to scream and curse and yell and holler and spit and thrust my fist through the wall and bang my hands against the tile floor until my skin broke. He was dead. My father was dead. I had no one left. At fifteen years old, I was alone in the world.

  I sat bolt upright and, with a final shriek, scrubbed the tears from my eyes with my blood-drenched hands. He had ordered me not to cry, so I wouldn’t disrespect him by sobbing
like a bitch. He was right—I had to survive—for him. He had died protecting me, and I wouldn’t let his death be for naught. At that moment, I resolved to truly and fully purge myself of all emotions, to become the warrior he had trained me to be. From that point on I would not be the child my father had known, but the dangerous woman he had dreamt I would become.

  I was a survivor, and I would survive—even if it killed me.

  Chapter 5

  It has been four years and I am still not sure where those three men came from or why they decided to attack my father when they did. I don’t think I’ll ever know—not that it matters now. It happened. He’s dead. That’s the end of it.

  I stir from my recollection just as the rain begins to subside, and I decide to take advantage of it; I haven’t bathed in weeks, and the light shower might be able to wash some of this dirt off of me. I know it seems silly, caring about personal hygiene in a world like this, but hygiene is essential for preventing disease, and preventing disease is essential for survival. Taking a step outside the garage, I rub the mud from my black pants, T-shirt, and combat boots. It isn’t long before I am drenched, but the rainwater feels cold and refreshing in the heat of early summer. I scrub my face with my nails in an attempt to remove any grime, but it’s pretty useless without any soap, which I’m all out of; it’s been a while since I’ve made a supply run, so I’m running low on almost everything, including food.