Scarlett: (GxG)

Chapter 40

Zoey

I was dreaming and I knew it. Most kills of the past refused to leave a mark, easily forgotten, bleeding into all the others. But there was one that managed to feel different. I didn't think of it often. And when the memory did try to claw its way into the forefront of my mind, I often poked it back into the black void that had birthed it.

For some reason, I allowed the dream to play out.

Warm blood pushed up between my toes as I stepped onto the carpet. It had acted like a sponge, drawing in all that sticky, crimson liquid so that my small feet made squish sounds with every step. The warmth was comforting but the hunger it forced in to me was agonizing, causing my pulse to throb in my mouth.

He lay up ahead. His suit was ripped where hungry mouths had torn away chunks of his arms and legs. The man had somehow managed to crawl a good distance even with the blood loss, proving just how much of a fighter he was. A sense of pride swept across me, mixing with the hunger. What I had done to him almost felt like a work of art, a masterpiece to be admired. How sad that it was only me who would get to gaze upon it.

My feet took me closer but I quickly dug them into the carpet. I knew how this all played out. The words I whispered. The blood spat into my face. My mouth pressing against his neck to finally snuff out his life as I had been told to do.

This was where it all had started, I told myself as the man's labored breaths began to invade the quiet that had fallen around me. This was where I'd truly begun to feel as if I were simply a weapon for others to use.

I awoke with a start. My heart was racing, beating against my rib cage, until I slowly made sense of where I was. Sprawled out on the ugly living room sofa with its large, vintage flower pattern. It was a dream. One I'd somehow managed to pull myself out of before things got even messier.

My mouth throbbed as the phantom stickiness of warm blood lingered along my feet. I was hungry. At least that was what my mind wanted me to believe, even though I'd already fed that morning. Closing my eyes I tried to calmly count until I felt both my anxiety and hunger quiet.

All that because of a dream. No. A memory...

After I wandered through the townhouse, I found Scarlett in the back yard. Her hands were streaked with dirt as she stuffed marigolds into the flower beds.

"I thought we were doing that together?"

I rubbed the tiredness from my eyes. The day's sunlight was just about gone. Streaks of deep orange and violet began to run through the sky. The aligning townhouses blocked the view of the sun but I imagined it dipping down into the horizon,  the array of colors becoming its beautiful sendoff.

"You were sleeping and I figured they should get in the ground. That's how plants work right?"

From the corner of my eye I watched her sit up. Today she wore a cut off t-shirt that showed her hard stomach. The shirt itself was of some metal band I didn't know.

"The sky isn't going anywhere. It's the same as it was yesterday," she said smartly, a smirk on her lips.

"Maybe."

I got down near the flowerbed with her. Scarlett and I were good at finding distractions and this was just another one of them. Something to pretend we were some version of normal when nothing about us or our situation was.

"Do it like this," I said, placing one of the marigolds into a shallow hole. "If you pack it too tight the roots won't thrive."

"Says the person who slept for the past hour while I've been out here."