Blood & Monsters ~ (Adriane)

The wolf and the rabbit,
The lion,
The doe,
The faster you run,
The farther you go,
The rabbit, the rabbit!
Stormy and spry,
Flighty of paw,
And glassy of eye.
The wolf, the wolf,
Follows her home,
Tears through her blood
And leaves nothing but bone.

Dune and I were talking.
Not about much. Not about anything important. Not about us.
Just talking.

“You feel very far away just now,” he had suddenly said. Said that - right out of the blue.
Before, we had been discussing the advantages of paper clips over staplers or something. And then suddenly - WHAM! And it hit me real hard, right in the face, because I had been thinking the same thing.

It’s like, wow. Where did that come from? Who did Dune borrow the perspective from?

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. I tilted my head like a puppy raises an ear. Smiled a little bit.. Kind of sadly. “You’re pretty smart sometimes, you know that?” I told him.

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh. Good. I was hoping that didn’t sound lame and sentimental.”

I laughed lightly. “Yeah. Just don’t do it too often. It’d ruin your reputation.” He feigned a miffed expression.

It - then - had been before dawn. You’d think - wow, you wake up before then? Well, no. But neither of us tend to sleep much these days.

Can’t imagine why.

The sky was lightening, yet the city had never slept. The darkness softened and the color from the shadows began to drain.

“I….don’t really know where I am right now,” I had admitted.

“Yeah. We need to get out more.” He smiled wryly.

We were perched above, near the second floor, on some old crossbeams. Like pigeons or rats. Except pigeons or rats don’t laugh nervously every time the beam shakes a bit.

I took a slow, deliberate bite of my apple; then twisted around so I was standing - like on a balance beam. (You know.) (The kind that float a few stories above the floor.)

Sunlight slid between the cracks in the roof, dappling the wood around us in watery, sallow fragments of light. I stood up straight, for a moment a shadowy silhouette, dust billowing like smoke around my jeans. I tossed the apple to Dune, who took a bite and looked thoughtfully into the distance. “You’ll be okay. We’ll all….be okay,” he said softly. Ah.

I may feel far away, but I do not feel alone.

We talked, again. But he left, after a bit. I guess he thought I might need some time to myself. I watched him go. Should’ve followed. Didn’t.

I scaled to the top of the warehouse - the windows had been blown out, the glass sprayed across the floor like ashes from a flame. Everything was rotting, everything was broken. Which means the windowsill was a perfect place for perching, and there, now five or six stories up, surrounded by broken bottles and graffiti, I watched the sunrise. I do not know how long I was there, staring at the cars rushing beneath me. I would guess an hour, although time had slowed and the world had faded to me.

Pigeons fluttered from beam to beam, their soft cooing stirring the air. The room was flushed with golden light.

Something creaked behind me.

I slid off of the windowsill, chinks in the ceiling streaming a hazy fog across the floor. I proceeded warily, not just because I was afraid that the floor would collapse beneath my feet. I chewed the rest of my apple, then threw the core aside, letting it roll and bounce into a pile of rubble. The room opened up, the eaves low and ragged, like gaping jaws and broken teeth.

I turned a corner - the air was noticeably cooler in the shadows. Stale papers blew across the floor, and the glass crunched underfoot. On one side of the open hall was a shelf, the hinges rusty. It had long been wrenched open and the bottles and contents had been strewn across the floor. I kicked one with my boot, and it rolled and listed away with a soft tinkle. Some were labeled, but most had been smashed to fragments. There were dark stains, showing where the liquid had once seeped through the floor.

I flipped a few over with my toe; tried to read the inscriptions. ROHYPNOL. SECOBARBITAL. BEMEGRIDE. ADRENALINE.
The adrenaline one was empty.

Click!

I whirled around so fast I barely had time to blink. Something sprung like a viper and grabbed my arm, pulling me close to it - breathing fast - can’t see- prick. I let out a hiss of rage as a tiny, burning, howling dot of pain slid into my neck like the stinger of a wasp.

It was him. Dune was long gone. No chance. No one with a crowbar. No one to save me. Ugh! I am so stupid! Stupid!Stupid! I was mentally banging my head into a desk.

I tried to fight, tried to move, but my head was getting foggy and the syringe…a syringe?? He had it…holding it over me, filled with clear liquid - the point of it had been pierced through the surface skin by my neck…. I hadn’t even…hadn’t even…
Terror surfaced through my veins, howling along my throat. Everything roared: RUN RUN RUN RUN. Blood screaming, my heart beating faster and faster and faster and….

And suddenly I could not feel it beating at all.

{Someone’s coming!! I’ll close the laptop now…more tomorrow! Promise!)