Lucky and the Killer ✔

You Can't Follow Me Home

Zee sat the picture back down onto the polished wood. He caught his reflection in the glass window, and though he usually looked away, this time, he took it in. His hair was wavy blonde, and aside from his eyes, his face was smooth. His eyes, though, were a tired, grassy green and lined with tears like dew drops. He looked just like his father, and it made him sick. He looked back down to the floor. He was never alone, so he couldn't cry. Those days were over, and it was time for him to be a man.

He left the picture behind, turned around, and walked out of the room. He was ready to change. He shoved the feeling down. He swallowed it in his throat and walked past the guards on either side of the door.

"Sir?" his new guard asked as she walked behind him. "What are we to do about your sister?"

"Don't pretend you care, Valerie," Zee said as he walked down the hallway. She'd intentionally taken Bella's place at Zee's right hand in order to be close to him, but he knew. Doors and pictures, plants and people, brushed past him in a blur. Valerie followed quickly behind him and tried to keep up with his long strides. "I know you hate me."

"What makes you think that?" Valerie asked, but Zee ignored her. He was done speaking. He was headed out, and he was going to go alone. King took Lucky right out from underneath him, and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. At least he made it out with his pathetic life.

The corners passed, rounded, and twisted as he walked. The colors haunted him like empty skeletons. They passed by like sludge. Everything was hollow. Everything was there, but it wasn't. He blinked and dragged his hand against the wall as he walked. Things were just going wrong.

"Sir?" another guard asked from behind. They followed him like flies. The bodies walked behind him like mannequins. Their legs moved out of habit, and they followed. They just walked behind him—anywhere he went. Everywhere he went. Sir? Sir? Are you alright, Sir? Sir..., like they called his father.

"Sir...," Zee whispered. "Don't call me that."

Sunlight danced at the end of the hall. It cast squares on the floor—hot patches like bite-sized pieces of his own hell. His hands hit the door as he pushed it open. He stepped out into the sunlight and let it burn his skin.

"Stay," he commanded his dogs, and they stayed. The guards looked to one another. They murmured and whispered, but their words were lost into the wind. He walked. Step after step, he walked past the gates where his father used to sit. He walked past the patch of dirt where he was buried. He didn't glance at the gray stones, red flowers, and granite. He left it behind.

He shut his eyes against the wind as he walked blind. He didn't need to see where he was going. He could get there in his sleep. One foot, then another, he stepped across the ruptured gravel and sifted sand.

In his mind, he focused on her. He could see her smile behind purple eyes. He could smell the smoke in the air and the backseat of her car. Her skin was stretched over her bones like plastic when she was in the casket. No one saved her from herself. Lucky and Zee's mother died a long time ago.

She was buried on Earth. His father put her back there, where he found her, like she didn't matter...because he couldn't handle the reminders that she once lived. She once lived, and she once died.

He ran. The trees stood still as his spirit crashed through the wind like a tidal wave. He searched for the portal he sensed was near. Like his own kiss, the wind came back to him. To the right, the portal gleamed. It didn't matter where it took him when he stepped through, as long as it took him to the ground she was in.

In he stepped, and just like that, he opened his eyes on the other side—on Earth. Cars flew past. He looked down on them from the bridge where the portal dumped him. The wind blew against him there in the same way that it did in his home. He looked behind him. There was a scuffed-up glass door, but there weren't any guards. He let out his breath, turned on the asphalt, and walked away a free man.