Black Dove

17

"Don't move!" He screamed with a tone that could not go unheard. It cracked against the air and shook my core. "Joan! Stop!" A sharp something was on my neck. "You crazy bitch!"

Suddenly, the only thing I knew was pain that came sharp on my side, close to the one I had once felt in my thigh. I knew there was a knife in me and howled to have it removed. "Get it out," I cried, whimpering like a child.

"Get it out," I repeated to the dark-haired boy straddling me over my hips. He held a sword to my neck. His lips were frowning in disgust but his eyes were filled with something else like restraint or mercy. "Get it out," I whimpered again.

Roy got off from the top of my laying body. His mooneyes vigilantly followed my movements and expression.

"Take it out," I hissed venomously. My head throbbed from every direction. What happened? It felt like my neck was holding bricks of lead inside my skull. I glanced around and found myself on the battlefield. People were laying in the dirt, and the floodlights reflected off pools of red. A moment ago, all of these people were standing, and now they weren't.

Roy kicked a short sword away. It was covered in blood and had snags of skin and hair along the blade. After a moment I recognized it as the one I stored under my hammock, the one I brought with me.

"What are you doing? Get her!" Someone shouted. I glanced over to see it was a Paw, adorned in black and blue and holding a war axe.

"No." Roy defended. "She's back now."

"Take it out. Take it out already."

Roy remained still.

"Get this fucking knife out of me," I grasped the handle myself and then realized that the slightest movement sent unrelenting electricity through my body.

"Don't touch it, we'll take care of it correctly. Right now, you could bleed out."

"What happened?" I groaned.

"You cleared the battlefield."

When the alarm went off my mind rendered reality. The pain across my body was very real, as was the deep gash in my side that now had several stitches and a large bandage that wrapped around my torso. I had no idea how much I did yesterday. The bath still had a maroon line on the bottom from bloody water trickling to the drain. Despite my attempts to wash the blood from the white tub, it stayed. Most of the blood, to my surprise, was not mine. The only mark on me was the goddamn stab wound above my left hip.

"You must be exhausted," Roy said. I was still just staring at the ceiling.

"My arms and legs want me dead," I moaned. "Can we--"

"--Yes." He answered for me. I was going to ask if we could skip the run today. "We can sleep an extra hour," he grunted, his voice scratchy from the strong and evident pull back into the beautiful void we call sleep.

When the alarm went off the second time, I was even more surprised that the hammock was still supporting me because I felt like a rock.

As I was about to ask to skip a day of work, Roy sat up on his bed and croaked with a morning voice, "now we have to get up, or the General might eat you for breakfast."

"I'm sure he won't be mad..."

"...there's a lot of clean-up to do. And explaining." He said again.

I shuddered. My head underwent another wave of misery as I thought about the bodies. "I'm a secretary, though."

"You're a Paw still, and you need to report in. Let's go." He was already rummaging through the cabinet.

At General Ajax's office, Roy and I found ourselves in his office with crossed legs and fiddling fingers. A typical morning consisted of five minutes waiting for him. If we showed up five minutes later, he'd call us late. Neither of us wanted to end up like the poor chief who waltzed into a rover meeting last week thirty minutes late and left with a large red mark across his cheek.