SHORT STORIES{collection]

LIGHT AND BLOOD

My first memory is of crying alone in a sea of corpses.

My tears had long gone dry. Like the blood, caking around their flesh, making dark rivers over the rotting landscape. Their faces—what remained of them—held a shadow of dread. Every single one of them. The murdered and the murderers.

My parents lay before me, their vacant eyes staring into the stars. The houses were no longer burning—rubble and ashes on a crimson mud.

I was alone. Crying. Until my sobs matched another's.

You were as broken as I was, naked and lost in the sea of corpses. We were the only two that did not drown. The only two who wished we had. I crawled to you. My hands aglow. It was as if I held the sun in my palms. Your legs were twisted the other way. I folded them together, making a criss-cross of bed where I would lay.

I remember how you held me, so gentle the way a fog kisses the ground. I lay there in your arms, curled up like a foetus. You curled over me like summer.

I bit into your thigh. You didn't even flinch. Perhaps you were too broken then. Perhaps I was too hungry to care. It didn't matter because we must have been beautiful—a shimmering red island in a sea of death.

I drank you in, your sweetness swirling over the walls of my mouth. You melded with the glow emanating from my body. I closed my eyes. Feeling you feeling me.

Intertwined forever.

In light and blood.

#

Faith woke up screaming. The ghosts were still scraping inside her head.

The caravan door opened and Victor walked in. His hair was scruffy and he smelled of sand. "Hush, Muffin." He pulled her into his arms. "It's okay. I'm here now. I'm here."

Faith tried to speak, but her tears wouldn't let her. Dreams aren't real. She clutched Miffy more tightly and wished she were braver.

"Want me to read you a story?" Faith shook her head. She was too old for stories. "Beetroot juice then?" Victor's beetroot juice was the best, but she didn't want it tonight. She shook her head again. "Tickle-boo?" He did not wait for her response this time and poked her waist. She giggled and poked him back.

That sort of worked.

She looked down. Her hands were still glowing. That always happened after the nightmare. Victor took them in his and rubbed the knuckles with his thumbs. She followed the light as it travelled his hands, along his arms before it withered away. When she looked up, Victor had his face all twisted as if lifting something heavy. He always looked like that when she glowed.

Victor pulled away. Confusion shrouded his eyes as his fists curled and uncurled on his lap. "Muffin, you want—you want to talk about it?"

She didn't. Victor had heard all about her nightmares. She had it so many times, he could probably recite the scene detail by detail. "Will you just sing for me, Victor?"

He hopped into her bed, her body melding comfortably into his like dough to a mould. He wrapped around her, making a blanket. Her fingers played with the hair on his arms. Victor felt like a massive stuffed bear. A giant Miffy. He was the best place to be.

He sang. He picked the one in that language she did not understand. She loved his voice. It reminded her of mountains—strong and scenic—the peaks touching the clouds. Victor was the rainbow, splashing trails of colours along the path traveled.