Blood & Wine

1 | Dasher

"You smell like old blood," she said, that mysterious voice that had an accent thicker than the coating of blood I wore on my skin currently. "And death," she added, and I didn't need to see her to know she was wrinkling her nose. Whoever she was.

I didn't answer her. I couldn't answer her. For the past six days, I had been walking at night, guided by nothing other than my senses and my guilt. Somehow, I had passed the border into South Carolina without knowing it, and I had stolen a car from a man that was already dead and drove it until I ran out of gas. Now I was here—in some small town that smelled like spices and swampland. I hadn't taken in anything except that I was alone, my parents were dead, and I was... alive. Here.

Her footsteps were nearly silent as she walked toward me, emerging from the darkness. "Your mom sent me," she said softly, stopping right at the edge of the darkness, in the alleyway.

I was in an alley?

"Leave me alone," I told her. I wanted to sit here and.... What did I want to do? Die, probably. What else did I have to live for? Absolutely fucking nothing. Everybody I knew and loved had been slaughtered within the last three months. "My mom is dead," I responded.

I wanted the girl and her lies to go away. If the cops were here to take me, they'd have to do a better job at getting to me than some sweet-natured girl who sounded as if she was crazy.

Or maybe she was crazy, and this wasn't the police after me. She could be one of the homeless people here.

"I know she's dead," she replied, her tone implying I was stupid for pointing that out. "I hear the dead. She's worried about you."

"You hear the dead?" I asked blandly. I just wanted her to go. I wanted to sit here and suffer with my numbness until I died. In the world after this, if anything existed, I wouldn't be in pain.

At least, that was what the preacher said.

"Of course I do." Again, she sounded as if this was something I should've known, as if this was a normal conversation in a normal situation. "She told me that you were on your way here. That she guided your steps, even when you felt alone and sick. She told me you lost your girlfriend, your father, and your unborn child."

Her voice was soft but strong. She wasn't going to leave me.

Her words reminded me, cut through the numbness I had placed inside of me to stop from hurting so damn much. Mom. Alyssa. Dad. Junior. Of course, neither Alyssa nor I had been sure of the gender—she had just found out she was pregnant a few days ago, and we hadn't even had time to get a proper ultrasound—but I swore it was going to be a little boy. Dasher Junior. My last words to her before they kicked the door down, threw me to the side like I weighed nothing, and ripped her throat out.

"I lost my sibling, too," I told the girl. The pain was becoming to deep. I covered it with that numbness again, letting nothing settle over the rift in my soul. I couldn't let anything affect me until those last moments, those last breaths.

The girl finally stepped out of the darkness. "Yes, but your mother knew your sister was never long on this Earth," she replied. "She was going to die that day, whether by their hands or not."

I blew out a deep breath at the reminder. Dina. She had been seven, my mom's miracle baby. She had barely survived the birth, then when she was two, she was diagnosed with cancer. She wasn't supposed to live, but she did. She beat it. It returned a few months ago, and it was so fast and progressive the doctor told us they couldn't do anything about it—chemo would extend her life a few weeks, but it would decrease the quality. He advised us against it.