graceland. carl grimes

VII

vii.

la lune
"need the cold to sink into my soul"

♱

her

I can feel the dead closing in around me, the air is putrid with the smell of necrose flesh, but I don't mind it. It's familiar. It's always been like this, hasn't it? Just me and them.

And her.

Mama—no. Not Mama. Alpha. That's all I'm allowed to call her now. There's nothing of the mother I remember in the way she moves, in the way she stares at me through that rotten mask.

Mama is a shape I buried years ago. What stands before me is a coffin lined with corpse hide and blue eyes staring out like frostbitten marbles. Too cold to be human. Too cruel to be dead. She smells of wet earth and someone else's decay. Every breath she pulls is a theft.

"What happened to your skin?"

She's testing me already. Her voice is flat, sharp like a blade against bone. I hate it. I hate the way it carves right into me, making me feel small, weak.

I grit my teeth and shrug. "He took it."

"He?" Her head tilts, just slightly, but it's enough. Enough to tell me I've already messed up.

"I mean... Hilltop. They took it when they captured me. I was in a cell the whole time." The lie rolls off my tongue, bitter and thick. "I didn't really see anyone. Didn't talk to anyone." I keep my eyes down, away from hers. Can't let her see me flinch.

But she's not buying it. She steps closer, the dead shifting around us as she moves.

"Who cut your hair?"

Him. Again. Him. Always him.

"They did." I don't elaborate. Maybe she'll think it was done to me as a punishment.

I can feel her studying me, slicing through my words like she always does, like she's peeling me apart, layer by layer. Picking at the seams of every single thing I say. "You're clean," She points out. "And dressed. Got yourself a whole new outfit."

"They let me shower." I shrug, like it's no big deal. I'm slipping. I feel it.

Her lips twitch beneath the mask, her cheeks lift, she's smiling. "So they didn't keep you in the cell the whole time." Her tone is cold, like she's savoring the lie, enjoying how I squirm.

"I—I mean..." I try to fix it, try to find some way to make it make sense, but she cuts me off.

"If you really don't know a thing about those people, then fine. But our people won't forget what I did to get you back."

"Why did you?" It's the one question that's been gnawing at me, festering like a wound. "You've got your rules. We don't take back what's lost... Did you only come back for me to see if I had information on them?"

She steps closer, those eyes piercing through me, and for a second, I see something in them. Something almost human. But then they just crinkle darkly as she smiles, and it's the worst thing I've ever seen. The dead don't scare me as much as that smile. "What a stupid question."

She hands me an apple, of all things. I take it, even though it makes my stomach churn. Like it's supposed to mean something. Like it makes everything she's done okay. The beatings, the threats, the way she's tried stripping everything human out of me piece by piece.

She moves ahead, melting back into the herd, and I'm left standing there, clutching the apple. A gift, she'd claim. A leash, I know. Sweetness rotted through with orders I'll taste later.