Rabbit Blood

Chapter 55 - The Day Of Reckoning

Leslie thanked Baby Jesus for the thudding music below; it concealed the loud tearing noises from her own room. It let her work, with her bare hands and claws, to pull down Rosie's hateful messages. Even so, it took most of the night. When the wall was stripped clean, she hid the paper shreds under her bed. Safe. Out of sight.

Then she collapsed.

Next day, the astronauts came to visit and saw the bare wall - at least, Leslie was pretty sure they did. "What the fuck," the female groaned.

"Hallucinations again," the male explained. "No accounting for their behavior. You know, I'd really like to keep her under my personal observation. Get to know the disease!"

"Under your... No! She's not a lab rat!"

Leslie nodded. "Lab rabbit, " she said, "labbit... I hope it's fatal. What planet are you guys from?"

No response... but they carried out a second examination. Her restlessness had ceased (so long, marching millipedes!), but a new symptom replaced it. Leslie was changing color. This time, the fur came in pink, to match her eyes. At least she might leave a fashionable corpse.

For the remaining days of her fever, Alastor returned, dragging her back to the moonlit swamp. Dark was the night, cold and muddy was the ground, and he restrained and bit her struggling frame, reducing it to carrion with his bladed teeth. She never saw his demon form. That was the sole saving grace.

Sometimes, Shadow Man paced her bedroom in predatory silence: not hungry, per se, but waiting, waiting for the shift change. Sometimes it was Alastor's cane. She was sick of all three.

Night after night of it. Pain. Dreadful pain.

And at the tail-end of the sickness, mental reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. She had to laugh.

o - o - o - o - o

By the penultimate evening of November, Leslie was in her right mind. Not fully well, but better. About 80%.

She saw the room as it was. Her poor bedsheets, rumpled and covered in dried sweat and gravy. The single wall, basically destroyed. The armchair she'd toppled in her attempt to get near the ceiling. Torn, red-striped scraps of wallpaper lay beneath the bed, still covered in scratchy ink. So it was real.

It took twenty minutes to rearrange them all, like jigsaw pieces. When she did, the writing was a puzzle in itself. Sure, Alastor was a flesh-eating bastard, but what made him lucky, exactly? Was Leslie both the harlot and the thief? And what was up with the cross-eyed dolly?

In any case, she flung the scraps back where they belonged, so nobody would see. She stripped the bed, then righted her armchair and sat in it, to let the mattress breathe.

She checked her phone. Two missed calls: one from Alastor, one from an unknown number. There was also a log of fifteen attempts to call Karlton, which she couldn't remember. That was a bit embarrassing, but understandable. Being so terrified during the fever, she might want to... well, talk to an old friend. Someone who knew her best.

But of course, Karl's living-world number hadn't worked. She should erase it from her contacts, and get his new number the next time they met.

While she was at it, Leslie deleted the Alastor playlist, and all of the songs it contained. She had no need for them anymore. In a few days, she'd simply let their contract expire. Then she'd make a plan to get far away from Alastor. Maybe she could rent a place with Angel Dust, if he was willing.

Or maybe...

No, the number didn't work. She wouldn't even get an answering machine.

She pictured Karl cooped up in his own room... probably making a stress-nest, the way he did sometimes. If he had headphones, they'd become a permanent fixture on his topsy-turvy head, blasting Chris Cornell or whatever lyrical psychedelia he could immerse himself in. He'd been good so far about keeping his distance. What was the harm, she wondered, in visiting him again? Just temporarily, for comfort's sake, until this thing was over.