Gravel crunched under my boots as I walked backwards down the street. It was the same road we'd found ourselves on after stepping off of the Ascension, the same road that led to every scavenging spot I'd ever been to. It was called Riverside Avenue, and while it was aptly named, I never ceased to mentally cringe at the utter lack of creativity displayed by my forefathers.
I hated being assigned to rearguard. No amount of training or practice could ease the panic that clawed at your thoughts after hours of only being able to stare at things you've already passed. Yes, Kroffman and Pavel were a mere ten meters ahead of me, scanning every nook and cranny and crevice and shadowed window for possible hints of danger. Yes, they were both armed. But Pavel would be rendered nearly blind if he happened to lose his glasses and I refused to trust Kroffman’s ancient eyes. When it comes down to it, guns are nothing more than very jam-prone metal tubes that are difficult to aim accurately at close range. Reaction times are easily slowed by a lack of proper nutrition. Mistakes happen all the time. Accidents occur even more. I could be silently snatched away by some hideous monstrosity at any moment, dragged to some grisly lair, and my comrades would be none the wiser until they turned around to ask why I was being so quiet. I shook my head until my teeth rattled in an attempt to banish every ridiculous doubt from my mind.
They were talking about baseball. Kroffman was attempting to explain the rules of the sport while Pavel questioned him about everything from what the uniforms looked like to how it was possible for the massive neon numbers to change every time a run was scored. I couldn’t help but smile as the impatient veteran tried to describe why it was so important for a grown man to hit a ball with an expensive stick. Pavel was giving an admirable effort but it was clear he'd been left behind. I knew far too much about baseball. I would sit on my father’s lap and eat fistfuls of cereal from the box while he pointed out individual players and listed their batting averages. The New York Yankees were my favorite team because they always seemed to win. No matter how far back the videos went, the boys in the dark blue hats always seemed to come out on top. I admired that. Some of the games were in black and white. Others bathed my eyes in high definition color while enthusiastic commentators layered their input over the crowd’s constant roar. I never got used to seeing that many people in one place.
I tripped over a chunk of concrete and nearly toppled to the ground.
“Daydreams get you killed, boy,” Kroffman chided me without even bothering to turn around. I nodded to nobody in particular, hefted my carbine onto my shoulder, and continued my backwards stroll at a more cautious pace.
Buildings teetered in loose formation to my left, all handsome brick facades and broken glass windows that allowed the stale darkness within to bleed out onto the street. To my right, the river chugged ever onward. I imagine that, at some point in the past, it was possible to see across the vast expanse of water and wave to someone on the opposite side; but now a light fog danced just above the surface. I raised my arm and waved to the opposite shoreline. For a moment I swore I saw a tiny shadow waving back.
A savage screech tore through the silence and I nearly tripped again. Slipping into a firing crouch, I turned my carbine towards the row of abandoned storefronts and let the air slowly ease from my lungs. Sputtering laughter was my reward for being so quick to react. I turned to see Kroffman and Pavel nearly doubled over with the effort of restraining themselves.
“It’s just some damn seagulls,” Kroffman wheezed, pointing towards a flock of indistinct shapes in the fog. Walking over to the side railing, I could barely make out individual features of the birds. Still, it was obvious something was very wrong with them. Gaps studded the silhouettes of their wings where feathers had rotted and fallen off. They wobbled on the short breeze, labored flaps and survivalist willpower the only things keeping them in the air. Periodically, one or two of the gulls would hurl their sickly bodies into the polluted depths and emerge with even sicklier fish wriggling in their beaks.
“The world is only populated by predators and prey,” my father used to say.
“That’s not true,” I’d foolishly replied. “What about plants and stuff?” He’d smiled at me like a spider does when first meeting the grasshopper who had strutted right into his web.
“Plants are the most ferocious predators of all. They feast on the sun’s love, engorging themselves upon its warmth until the sun finally decides they’ve had enough. We used to be predators. Oh what fine hunters we were... We had spears, and then we had bows, and then we had guns—we had nets that could haul thousands of pounds of fish from the oceans every day. Our favorite game was of course each other, and so we invented bombs and tanks and other weapons for just that very task.” He’d looked down at his feet and released a long sigh. “But we’re not predators anymore. We cling to our fully automatic fangs and pray they will keep us safe, but they can’t, nothing can, not from the monstrosities we’ve created. In this new world order, we are so very far from the top of the food chain.” That was when he still said ‘we.’ Before he started referring to human beings as ‘they.’
“Come on, Silas,” Pavel called. I stared out across the water for another few moments—past the fog, past the seagulls squabbling over barely digestible strips of flesh, to where a tiny shadow waved at me from the other side.
Several more hours took us to a charming community that bulged against the river’s edge as though the newer houses were determined to force their elders into the water at a rate of one inch per millennium. Riverside Avenue was abruptly cut off by a backyard fence, and instead of ploughing through the flimsy barricade, it veered off into a suburban nervous system. We'd picked this enclave clean well before I was allowed on patrol, leaving only the gutted shells of tasteful homes in our carnivorous wake.
I’d always imagined that it had started with an idea plucked straight from an architect’s head, that the idea had been buried deep within the earth, that it had been tended, nurtured, until one day it blossomed into a two story tree house that completely devoured it’s tree. Then the seeds of that lovely house were planted in perfect little lots all around it until the whole garden was infested with middle class families and packs of well-trained golden retrievers.
Despite his earlier assertion regarding shoelaces and flossing, Kroffman told us to take a breather once we were surrounded on every side by several rows of houses. We found a secluded yard with a rotting picnic table and swing set, cleared the surrounding houses just to be safe, and finally allowed our guard to drop. Kroffman groaned against the backs of his teeth as he lowered his frame onto one of the table’s bench seats. It creaked with displeasure but was otherwise stable. Pavel and I dropped our packs into the grass and, naturally, plopped ourselves into the pair of swings. I ignored the rust that fell like snow into my hair as I pushed my tired legs back and forth.
Pavel, as usual, became immediately bored and cast his gaze around in search of something worth commenting on. It didn’t take him long.
“Why were people always so interested in sailboats?” I followed his extended arm and saw, through a window and across a dusty living room, a painting of a sailboat. Its frame was cracked and drooping on the left side, leaving an entire corner open to nature’s corrosive touch. A small skiff battled valiantly against a raging sea of peeling blue while lines of white with beaks circled overhead. The man on the boat was little more than a stroke of flesh beneath a wide-brimmed hat, but he still managed to look remarkably sad. “I mean,” Pavel continued, unease creeping into his voice as his question went on unanswered, “this must be the hundredth time I’ve seen a picture of a sailboat. I don’t get it.”
“It’s because sailboats represent everything we want out of life,” I replied. “A sailboat is everything a man can ever hope for.”
“I still don’t get it…”
I stood up with a groan and wandered around the yard kicking stray pebbles through the grass. It was happening again. It started every time we passed through the suburban sprawl, every time I marched down the same sidewalks worn bare by generations of impatient feet. The laughter of children, the rhythmic footfalls of trophy wives out on their morning jogs, excited barks as dogs greeted owners after a long day at the office—sounds, voices, feelings, sensations, emotions—swirling around me on gusts of imaginary wind. I kicked a pebble and tried not to guess how many people had died within a hundred yard radius of where I was standing.
As though reading my thoughts, Pavel mused, “Do you think any of the purges happened here?” I stifled a shiver as the word was mentioned. We’d all heard the stories from before—how trucks full of soldiers and ammo boxes would enter a quarantined neighborhood and trucks full of white-faced soldiers with empty rifles would leave.
“No,” Kroffman growled from his rickety perch, “this is too posh for any of that. The people here either caught a plane ride to safety or just battened the hatches and rode it out.”
“Can we just go to the boardwalk already?” someone snapped. It took a moment to realize it'd been me. Pavel walked over and playfully punched my shoulder.
“What’s wrong, Silas,” he sneered. “Afraid of ghosts?” I looked past him down the empty street, shrieks of joy and Labrador barks still ringing in my ears.
“Of course I am,” I said flatly, finally turning to stare at him. “Aren’t you?”
“Lights… the first thing you noticed was always the lights. It was like god lit a million tiny suns and cast their illumination across the sky until it caused your eyes to water if you looked up farther than your sneakers. There were boys in funny hats everywhere you looked, trying to sell you cotton candy that made you sick and soda that made you fat. You never wanted any of it, but you bought it just the same, because that was part of it, part of the experience. I didn’t go here of course, no, I grew up by the ocean. So you could hear the waves crashing, always crashing, above all the other sounds. Children crying, girls shrieking, metal grinding against metal, hawkers hawking their wares—it was all just as much a part of it as the rides and the lines and the ridiculously expensive photographs. During the off periods, we would dangle our feet in the water and eat greasy hotdogs and pretend we couldn’t hear the girls making fun of our sunburned backs. We loved to sneak through gaps in the fences and look at the machinery that brought our favorite rides to life. They weren’t running for months after all, and even though it wasn’t dangerous we’d get chased off by some part-time security guard or another. One time Jimmy got pepper sprayed when his shirt caught on the top of the fence.” The old man fell silent, smiling lazily as nostalgia dripped from every breath.
“Really?” Pavel replied, looking around with judgmental eyebrows. “Because it looks like a total shithole.”
“Bite your tongue when it comes to things you know nothing about,” Kroffman snapped. “It’s not just about what it is, you stupid boy, it’s about what it used to represent. I took my first date to a boardwalk just like this one, lost my virginity in the bushes underneath a roller coaster. Different girl of course, Molly Flannigan, prettiest red curls outside of Ireland… Tighter fit than a corked bottle but she kissed like she was trying to chisel out my molars with her tongue.” He visibly shuddered at the memory before glancing in my direction and lifting his chin towards the broken down collection of carnival rides and ramshackle food huts. “What do you think, Connelly?” I looked between my squad mates and then shrugged.
“It kind of looks like a total shithole that used to be something amazing.” Apparently my fence sitting paid off because he laughed and said,
“Isn’t that just the story of my second divorce.”
“You complain about your ex-wives a lot for someone who hates complainers so much,” Pavel noted with a sly grin.
“And you talk a lot for a kid who couldn’t get into a girl’s pants if he had her tied up in his basement.” That shut us up, Pavel because of how firmly he’d just been put in his place, me because of how unavoidably creepy what he’d just said was.
We wandered off across the boardwalk, each picking a direction that struck his fancy. I’d been to the area several times before to scavenge, but this was my first chance to explore without any sort of specific goal. We'd picked the boardwalk clean, even going so far as to strip down a tilt-a-whirl for scrap metal that I knew was still just sitting in storage. We tended to collect a lot of junk like that, objects that were either broken or simply worthless, things that reminded us the word “humanity” used to mean more than the name for a species.
I kicked my way through a mountain range of shriveled newspapers, barely noticing the yellow paper as it crumbled and stuck between my shoelaces. A pair of hot dog stands stood together, competing for my attention. One had an enormous plaster hot dog sticking from a pole. The other sported a modest sign on its front that guaranteed satisfaction in every bite or your money back. Neon tubes that had been contorted into letters by industrialized snake charmers were now reduced to shards of glass that reflected colored sunlight directly into my eyes. I fought the urge to rifle through every cabinet and hidden alcove; I knew there were no treasures left to find here, but survival is not an instinct that can be turned off at will.
I have always had a difficult time grasping the concept of money. It seems like such a trivial, useless thing, slips of paper that can buy a man his life’s desires, or suffocate him beneath a mountain of its absence. A dollar cannot put food in your stomach, cannot provide a source of clean water, cannot assure safety. It is decent at kindling fires but other than that we simply let children stack it into towers that shower to the floor whenever the Ascension lists gently from one side to another. Everything I have ever needed could be scavenged from the rubble; or, less often, taken. Unlike some of my comrades, I've never had any qualms about doing what needs to be done to continue our survival. Blood washes off just as easily as dust.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
A brightly painted storefront caught my attention and I kicked the door open with ease. Kroffman used the phrase “like a kid in a candy store” to describe quite a few occasions, but until now I'd never really understood what that meant. Plate glass counters funneled customers past the candy cane coat racks, goading them into a sugary trap that could only be bribed. Peeling stickers of lollipops and rosy-cheeked children welcomed me. Dozens of machines wept rust at the knowledge that they will never again bring ruin to someone’s teeth. But it’s the counters themselves that held my attention--because they were empty, so disturbingly empty. Perfectly even rows of wax paper and cardboard boxes eagerly awaited merchandise that would never arrive. Putrid tubs of what had once hopefully been ice cream lurked beneath a sliding glass window. “Made Fresh Every Day!” signs made promises they couldn’t keep.
I continued towards the back room and was surprised to find it locked. Apparently God had heard my previous thoughts on how fruitless a search would be and had decided, with a very human sense of ironic humor, to prove that there is always something else worth discovering. My boot once again provided a key and what I found on the other side was not as surprising as I would have liked it to have been. Everything needed to run a tidy little office had been pushed against a far wall, leaving enough room for a foam mat and a sleeping bag to be stretched across the floor. I immediately raised my carbine and checked every corner of the office. No one was there. Someone had discovered this hideaway, set up a place to sleep, hung an empty kerosene lantern from the ceiling fan by a length of twine, and then left. The fact that the door had been locked implied that he, or less-probably she, had left with the intention of returning home after a hard day’s work. Or perhaps he/she had a home range of safe houses that supported their nomadic lifestyle.
I noticed something poking from between the mat and the sleeping bag and bent to pick it up. It was a book of some sort, wrapped in purple synthetic leather with a pink butterfly on the front. The back cover advertised it as the perfect diary for girls of all ages. I opened to a random page and then another, and then to the first page and the last page, and then to several more random pages. They were all the same, every single one. The same poem stared at me each time I turned a new leaf, ten lines written with cultured grace and immaculate spelling, without any of the jagged black corrections that marred my own writing on those rare occasions I found both spare time and a creative mindset. I read the poem once, and then turned the page and read it again.
Run run run, Little Rabbit, run
Run away from me as fast as you can
As fast as you can and even faster still
Until your little rabbit legs can run no more
And then keep running and running and running
Because when I find you, Little Rabbit
I will break your little rabbit neck
And leave your little rabbit body in the dirt
So you can look down from little rabbit heaven
And know you could have run much faster
Without really knowing why, I dropped the diary into my pack before rising back to my feet. I left the back room, left the candy store without looking back at the rosy-cheeked children who begged me to stay, and continued down the cramped street. My thoughts of what to do next were disrupted by the unbelievable majesty of the ferris wheel that dominated the horizon and so I decided to head in that direction. I walked back and forth through chained off hallways until I finally hopped over the turnstile and strode up to the foot of the steel behemoth. An MP5 and deflated backpack leaned against the ticket booth and I craned my neck up to see Pavel lounging in one of the gondolas. He was looking out across the city, so concerned about his glasses sliding off that he held them against his nose.
“Enjoying the view?” I called up to him sarcastically. He jumped at the sound of my voice and nearly toppled onto the floor of his capsule.
“Actually, I am,” he called back. “Get your ass up here so you can see it.”
“I’d really rather not,” I replied. He shook his head and said,
“Quit being such a pussy.” Leaving my carbine and pack next to Pavel’s, I stepped up onto one of the wheel’s monstrous supports and grabbed onto a pair of light bulb sockets. I hauled my undernourished weight from one row of fixtures to the next, avoiding the ones ringed by broken glass until I could stomp them free of shards with my boot to make the return effort less hazardous. It was not a difficult climb, but my parka and weighted belt ensured that my hair was slick with sweat long before I reached Pavel’s gondola. A short leap carried me from the support to my destination and once it had stopped rocking from my impact, I pulled myself up with a grunt and rolled onto the seat. Pavel watched me catch my breath for a few seconds before he yawned widely and draped his arm across my shoulders.
“Well now that we’re all by ourselves we can finally act on all those impulses we both so obviously feel.” I met his over-exaggerated smile with a glare and said,
“Pavel, we both know I could get a way better, and much more handsome, man than you.” He Gasped with mock outrage and replied readily,
“Oh come on, Silas, just a little smooch?”
“You do know that I’m still armed, right?” I shot back, repressing a smile of my own as his arm instantaneously retreated and he scooted several feet farther away from me on the cushion.
We both looked out across the city, through the jagged spires of perfectly spaced windows, over the grid of precisely aligned streets that all ran parallel and perpendicular, past the stop-motion caravans of abandoned vehicles with their doors thrown open as though they could flap their wings and escape their open tombs. I had seen aerial photographs of the city and maintenance maps, but nothing in my short experience could rival the sprawling canvass that stretched far beyond the horizon. Whichever painter had designed this engineering masterpiece had evidently grown tired of it and doused it with buckets of green and brown and grey and black and all the other colors and hues that spoke of wreckage and decay.
“Do you see that?” Pavel asked, pointing far off into the distance. I leaned forward and, just at the edge of my vision, I saw it. An enormous stretch of mottled grey cut through the city like a blade left propped up on one side.
“It’s a wall,” I said with some small layer of disbelief. “It’s a giant wall.”
“Well it must have been part of the quarantines, right? The government must have put it up to segregate a district that was beyond saving.” The longer I looked at it, the more sure I was that he was wrong. The wall had been constructed on a set course regardless of what lay in its path, dissecting houses and cleaving through strip malls with arrogant abandon. From what I’d seen, the old government was quite a bit more respectful of its own works than that, weaving barriers between buildings and obstructing daily life as little as possible.
“Maybe,” I said, “but it kind of looks like it’s built out of scrap.”
“No,” Pavel replied with certainty, “No one could build something like that now. You know what Father Gregory says, ‘The erection of monoliths is a task laid upon our shoulders by the hand of God, and without his guiding touch we can no longer escape the mire of our own folly by means of mortar and cement, but must do so through purification of the soul and devoted obedience to His holy name.’”
“Father Gregory says a lot of things,” I snapped with more venom than I’d intended. Feeling his gaze boring into my skull, I turned around and looked back across the boardwalk. How sad and empty it looked. No carnies to run the carnival. No vendors to sell their sweatshop wares. No consumers to consume. And then I spotted Kroffman. Apparently the old man had navigated the minefield of collapsed and rotting wood that the original pier had become and now stood at the boardwalk’s farthest tip, eyes pointed decidedly towards the river. I had never seen my superior so relaxed. His arms hung purposelessly at his sides and his legs seemed to slowly unbend as he was liberated from the weight of one worry after another. ‘Run run run, Little Rabbit, run,’ I thought in a sing-song tone. It looked to me like Kroffman was tired of running.
“Well… what’s the worst thing that could happen?”
“We could all be torn apart piece by piece and devoured alive over the course of several agonizing days.”
“Alright, that does actually sound like something I’d like to avoid.”
“Both of you shut the hell up,” Kroffman hissed without taking his eye off of his rifle’s scope. We’d been crouching completely still behind the burned out sedan for so long my knees had locked up. The hunting rifle rested on the lip of the passenger side window, aimed through the vehicle and out its twin on the driver side, swaying ever so slightly back and forth. Pavel stared at the same thing as the rifle, the same black doorway that led into a bland concrete convenience store with an enormous red K on the front. I occupied myself with scanning the streets and alleys behind us just in case.
The parking lot was the only tangible obstacle between us and having a secluded place to take shelter for the night, but an earned instinct for apprehension kept us from just marching in. What appeared to be a serviceable nesting place would be equally attractive to others. For almost an hour we had watched the entrance for any signs of movement, and so far we had been left wanting. Twice Pavel had suggested we seek a different shelter, and twice Kroffman had told him to keep his wet-eared opinions to himself. I had long ago accepted that my squad leader’s mind was much like that of a rabid dog; once he had something grasped firmly between his jaws, he would rather die than even entertain the thought of letting it go.
More out of sheer boredom than anything, I slowly pivoted and added my gaze to theirs. The longer I looked, the more it became apparent there was something off about the doorway, something eerily inviting, an unspoken promise that, behind the impenetrable veil of blackness, all would be safe and well. Just looking at it seemed to fill me with a warmth that radiated from my fingers and toes to the core of my being before my heart sent it racing through my arteries and veins.
I slowly stood and let my carbine hang uselessly from my fingers. The doorway pulsated at the center of my view, rushing out to meet me before retreating into itself. Kroffman’s voice registered at the back of my mind, but whatever words he’d spoken were obscured by the black square that had consumed my existence. My feet carried me forward without needing an order, bearing me against the waves of rational objection towards the black sand shoreline. The doorway beckoned close and closer, painfully close, so close my blood raced with yearning, so close that I could almost touch it, if only I reached out to touch it. I reached out and touched it.
The blackness squirmed around my fingers like tendrils of oil, tugging me into its embrace. I allowed it to guide me, allowed it to drag me willingly into oblivion… and then I stood in an empty convenience store with nothing on the shelves but dust. The blackness was replaced with darkness and I was surprised by the sadness that threatened to trickle from the farthest reaches of my imagination.
A pair of iron hands seized me by the collar and slammed me against the wall. Bits of plaster sprinkled my hair and I immediately reached for my sidearm.
“Have you gone stark raving mad, boy?” Kroffman bellowed. I flinched as spittle drenched my face before knocking one of his arms away with my free hand and slamming him back with my elbow.
“Well, Sir, it seemed like you were planning on just sitting on your ass until morning so I decided to take some god damn initiative.” Pavel made the sign of the cross over his chest at my outburst and I barely repressed the urge to strike him. Kroffman continued to glare at me, his shoulders rising and falling with rage. I knew I was misdirecting my anger at my comrades instead of dealing with the fact that I had been unbelievably stupid for no explainable reason. But at that particular moment, I really didn’t care. A tense silence followed until finally Kroffman gave a subtle nod and said,
“You may be dumber than a sack of shit and rocks, but at least you’ve got a pair of balls on you.” He turned and walked away and I knew that attempting to have the final say would be a dangerous mistake. Pavel eyed me wearily over his glasses before also turning his back on me and disappearing into the gloom.
I hefted my M4 up onto my shoulder and clicked on the flashlight taped to its barrel. The pale light juttered as I strode past the checkout counters with their ransacked cash registers and walked down the aisle directly in front of me. I glanced up at the sign hanging at the aisle’s mouth: “7 *chips *snacks *dips *bars *pop tarts.” None of those items were there of course. Signs had an awful habit of lying to me. Aisle seven became aisle eight, became aisle nine ten eleven twelve thirteen—and then I was in the bakery. Somehow it still smelled like fresh baked bread and pies of every assorted fruit. Every rack and shelf was utterly devoid of calories, some even sporting swaths of missing dust where arms had shoveled goods into waiting containers. By the look of it, we were several years too late to find anything edible. I wasn’t too troubled. After all, we hadn’t come here to scavenge, but to sleep without having to keep one eye open, though I was never quite able to drop that little habit, even while wrapped tight in my bed aboard the Ascension.
The clop of uncertain shoes against linoleum lapped at my ears and I flipped my weapon’s safety off without making any obvious movements. The store had appeared empty, but then again, that was how every ambush since the beginning of time had appeared. More footsteps echoed through the aisles, seemingly dozens from every possible direction. Whispers began to flit between my thoughts, indistinct pleas for attention that came from within my own head. I stopped, took a deep breath, and spun on my heel with my weapon raised.
There was a swarm of them. Men, women, children—clothed in working middle class t-shirts and jeans and dresses and sneakers and baseball caps. They flowed towards me as though underwater, limbs swaying listlessly through air as colored smoke streamed out behind them. I turned around again and found more of the things lumbering in my direction. The voices clamored louder for my attention, shouting at me to save them from enemies that weren’t real, dangers that could not be avoided. As they drew near, I noticed that they were all smiling wide, sincere smiles that trembled ever so slightly and promised that they were perfectly alright even as their disembodied voices continued to claw at my sanity. The translucent flesh began to slough from their frames, spilling across the floor in steaming pools that ate through the linoleum. And yet still they came, goaded by an unseen puppeteer that lifted hundreds of legs one after the other with patient motions. I felt no panic, no confusion. I fired a single warning shot into the air.
The bullet cried out in shock as it sprang lazily towards the ceiling. I watched it, second after second passing by uninterrupted as the tiny brass rocket ascended on a tail of explosive fire. Flaring bands of light rippled outward as it struck the ceiling.
They screamed. Every indistinct voice in my head erupted into a guttural shriek of unrelenting misery and hate. The force of their emotion smashed against the boundaries of my skull and I stumbled, tears clouding my surroundings even as the horde closed in. I collapsed beneath the cacophony, desperately apologizing over and over again as the voices flayed my consciousness to the animalistic bone until blood oozed from my nostrils and ears. The burning fluid filled my mouth and spewed from my lips as I gasped for oxygen that no longer existed. Frigid hands tore at my body, ripping away lanks of dripping flesh and dragging organs from my chest cavity. I became a sputtering flame at the rapidly closing eye of a hurricane, and the moment I lost hope, it stopped.
A blinding white light engulfed my vision, purging the voices from my mind and eviscerating the wraiths with silent ease. I curled into a ball as the light dimmed to a loving glow. Soft hands cradled my face… velvet hair danced lightly across my cheeks…
Don’t be afraid.
I took a stuttering breath through a throat full of clotting blood and gratefully plummeted into unconsciousness.
Don’t be afraid.