Blood Moon

Chapter Nineteen - Romeo and Juliet

Nina's laced curtains were more for decoration than function and the bright morning light cut through them like paper. In victory, the light stung my eyeballs as drowsily I opened them. While sleeping I had managed to form a cocoon of duvet around myself, recruiting layer after layer of warmth to my cause. There was, at that moment, no better place to be. Except, perhaps, if Nina had been there too.

Instead, music could be heard from downstairs - Nina's morning duet with the radio and was that... pancakes I smelled?

Suddenly restless I wrestled from my warmth trap. It was strange, my heart appeared to be heavier than normal and so to compensate I danced around the room plucking my favourite brown hoodie from the wardrobe. The jumper that just so happened to be Nina's.

Only at the last moment did I grab the knife - the front pocket of the hoodie making the perfect hiding place. I had chosen the blade for it's small size and yet it too felt very heavy. Soon my soul would spread out across the world, I would feast on the remains of humanity. Nina would decompose and I could compost her, be with her once more. My stomach flipped, the thought of rotting flesh didn't seem so tasty anymore.

Lilo's body -my body, did it matter?- fought every wretched step I took down the stairs but it still carried me there. Into the kitchen, where the beautiful smells from the stove fought away any trace of lingering sickness.

That was,until I saw Nina. Her curly hair was tied back in an elegantly messy bun and she wore a bright swirling jumpsuit. Her back was to me, as she flipped a pancake in a graceful arc and just like that my hunger dissipated.

My hand reached for the knife but just in time she turned to me, "Lilo! I didn't hear you come in." Then she punched me. "You duvet hogger, I woke up at 6 freezing. If you cocoon yourself a third night in a row you're going on the sofa."

I managed a weak smile. "You'd miss me."

"Not as much as you me." Nina plopped the pancake onto an already steaming plate and slumped herself down onto the sofa. "I'm done working," she announced. "You can serve up." She seemed tenser than normal, memories of the bomb most likely still haunting her.

Breakfast, I reflected, could not hurt. My sisters couldn't get much angrier anyway.

"Sure, what topping may I tempt you with madam?" I gave her a fake curtsy, we'd rehearsed our breakfast routine many times.

She was lying with her belly facing the sofa so to watch me she had to tilt her head. "Ah you pose a difficult question. I'll have cheese."

This made me genuinely angry. "It was meant to be a rhetorical question, why would you not have nutella?"

She shrugged. "Just not feeling it." I was half tempted to serve her nutella out of spite but given it was her last meal, grated the cheese. Nina giggled lazily, "I've never watched someone grate cheese more angrily."

"Too right." I don't want to brag but for someone who had been human for two weeks I was a natural at teasing Nina. "More for me though."

Grabbing both our plates, I gave another curtsy before jumping at her legs. She screamed, sliding them out the way just in time. "Hey that was terrifying."

"I'm sorry if I wanted some land on this sofa." I tore into my pancake, trying to concentrate on the taste of hot nutella. Not feeling hungry anymore. Normally, when there was silence between the two of us, it was a peaceful entity. Now though, the silence fed my thoughts and it became impossible to enjoy a good breakfast. Our last breakfast. So, I turned to her. "Can you talk at me?"

She turned, her face suddenly serious as she wiped a dribble of nutella from my chin. It was a code we had started using after the march when she too, had not coped well with silence. "Ok, how about a memory?"

I nodded but it was too late, my thoughts had finally settled. I loved being alive.

I loved her.

So I was going to keep doing it, for as long as they'd let me anyway.

After all, what was the chance that after floating through space for billions of years I could fall to Earth at the very time she existed. I would choose this breakfast over the billions more years I could have had any day. Her pancakes tasted far better than her flesh.

"Can you remember when we skipped school to go skip stones at the pond? Back when you were new in town." My heart sank, this was not a memory with me. Nina did not know me.

It felt very difficult to breathe but someday I would tell her everything. She would understand, Nina always understood.

I awoke from my thoughts to realise she was looking at me, her eyes seemed sad.

"Do you remember Lilo?"

I laughed and took her hand. It was not forbidden for me to kiss her now. "Of course I remember."

"Ok so despite you being Miss Perfect I convince you to leave school. Then we go to the lake and you spend the whole time skipping stones successfully, yh?" I nodded again. "But I pretend I can't because when you teach me your hands go on mine. But it goes on for years because I can't admit I could always skip stones and when I tell you, you get really angry and storm away. And it's only after we make up that we finally kiss on the beach and-" Nina stopped talking to sob. Confused, I reached to brush her hand away but nothing I could do would get her to stop shaking. It was as if my mere presence made her flinch.

There was a sickness growing in my belly.

"What's wrong? It was good, we kissed? Kissing's good? Nina?" She squeezed me very tight then began to step away still shaking with tears.

My throat tightened.

The bile travelled up Lilo's throat and I retched, again and again onto Nina's sofa.

"Me and Lilo kissed once we'd finished skipping stones and I was new in town. You and Albie took me in."

I couldn't breathe. "Nina-" If I had not been so consumed in thought I would have tasted poison in the nutella. There were no words left in me but I needed to tell her, Nina I love you.

She stood over me now, as I choked. Each word she spoke, she spat and the moisture mingled with my tears. "I don't know what you are or how you got into her but I hate you." A great sob shook her and I felt the fire that burnt in her envelope everything. She must have realised, at this point it burnt her soul. Realised and not cared, for she hated me that much.

I had forgotten, while pretending not to love her. That the love she covered me with was not intended for my soul. How had she not known? I am certain I could pick Nina's soul out of an army of them. That is, if any soul survived in this inferno of a fire.

As if she could read my thoughts. "Mostly because of what you did to my Lilo but also you fooled me. You." I wished for death then, wished for the oblivion it would give me so I would not have to see the disgust on her face. "You, the thing that was not even clever enough to clear their search history after googling bombs. Fuck I'm so stupid." Her burning hands pulled at her hair and the sparks ignited it. Nina was in flames now. They caught the flowery curtains first but quickly spread through the rafters of our little cottage.

Nina blurred in and out of focus and even the growing heat of the room felt strangely far away. I had been stupid too. Did I really think I would return to being a fungus? No, I am Lilo now. My sisters had always intended me to be a martyr, if they had told me would I have attempted the mission anyway?

Never had I felt so alone than in my final moments.