Page 43 of The Bleeding Woods
At first, the taste of Grayson’s blood brings on nausea and panic. Then it shifts into something much sweeter. It dissolves into warm, sugary syrup that tempts my taste buds with a mixture of floral elegance and strawberry sweetness.
Blood roses bloom at my ankles. I can hear them.
I can feel them speaking to me in a language that transcends syllables and sounds.
Everything heightens, more so than they ever have on missing a dosage.
My senses are sharpened. Supernatural. I shed my skin, all of my skin, like a snake would.
It falls off in flaking wisps, ashes from a building scorched.
My inner workings, overtaken by darkness, become still and serene.
Even my heart, once so essential, slows to a steady halt.
I grow until I match Jasper’s height. Jasper is still in front of me, but now, our eyes are even and locked.
“Clara,” he says.
I plunge my hand through Jasper’s chest without a second thought. Nails meeting no resistance, it is easy enough for them to locate his inhuman heart. It is still, but very much existent. If all I am is a killer, I might as well be one on purpose.
“P-please,” he begs, at last, all out of songs.
My hold tightens, but not to torture him.
It is to secure my grip on his heart before I tear it out.
It is as black as expected. Soon after exposure to the air, the agglomeration of alien tissue disintegrates into dust. He crumbles along with it, the empowered, red smoke he once flaunted signifying an untimely expiration.
When it clears, what is left is human. Jasper is now a weak, feeble, fragile human, scrambling to his weak, feeble, fragile feet.
Is it . . . true? Is it possible to become . . . human?
He stares down at his trembling human hands, seemingly just as surprised by this new development. “What have you done to me?” His voice, once so spellbinding, quivers.
“I don’t . . .” I pause. Suddenly, I am ten times more powerful and infinitely more sinister. “What’s the matter, Jasper?”
Revenge is best served similar to the crime that warranted it.
When my voice falls from my lips, it is pure, saccharine decadence.
It is molten chocolate dripping off the edge of a chilled strawberry.
It is a dollop of whipped cream placed atop a sprinkled sundae.
It is the scent of summertime, flowers and fruit hiding within a juvenile haze of surrender.
It is also pure corruption. Dark, tempting, and delightful, it leaves wicked kisses on his brain stem, flows through his blood, and ravages his insides.
The same carnivorous butterflies I encountered have come to greet his stomach, fluttering fiendishly and with intent to wound.
I can tell it’s made him nauseous, but in the most enjoyable way.
Blush flocks to his cheeks, turning them rosy.
The hue does not stay put. It scales up his face and into his eyes until his pupils are flooded with distinct red iridescence.
My red iridescence. Jasper’s eyes glow with my red iridescence. The rhythm of the light’s buzzing I felt in the gas station bathroom has returned, but this time, I am conducting the orchestra.
“Smile for me, Jasper.”
He follows the command instantly. The forest bends to my will, branches reaching over the moment I conceptualize them doing so.
They wrap around his throat, closing the airways.
Still, despite his dwindling oxygen supply, his lips stay pointing skyward.
As his face purples and his human heart slows, the ditzy expression remains.
Finally, one last gulp for air erupts from him.
It’s defiant in the way all instincts are.
Hope is lost and his mind is mush, but such is the curse of a human form.
A few spurts of blood make their way past his lips, each like ink droplets to punctuate his life.
Blood vessels pop inside his nose, producing a steady stream from each nostril.
Jasper’s blood is much sweeter than Grayson’s.
Grayson’s was the flavor of pure grief. Jasper’s is dusted with the sugar of retribution.
I consume it with famished vigor, strengthened by every drop.
As his essence irradiates through mine, it sends shock waves and starbursts of dark, unbarred energy through my cells.
I remember everything so very clearly now.
I see every moment he made a puppet of me, every nonconsensual kiss he stole.
I feel his unwelcomed hands scouring my body, exploring my most intimate curves and edges.
I hear his voice hypnotizing me into submission, so sure I’d be perfectly pliable and willfully well behaved.
He was so enraptured with my helplessness.
He fed off it and called it love. Now he gets to understand what his version of love truly is.
Violent, vile, and completely unrequited.
Once I’ve drained him, death steals him from my grasp.
His skin hardens into bark that molds seamlessly into the surroundings.
His matter shifts to become one with the forest. Peaceful isn’t what I’d call his visage.
The smile remains, but above it, previously spellbound eyes suggest some suffering occurred.
I wouldn’t have it any other way. Hundreds of frozen faces sit embedded in the wood.
They bear the same air of agonizing euphoria.
Somewhere.
That is what he meant when he said Joey would live on.
This forest isn’t alive with death; it is alive with murder.
Jasper deserved to suffer just as his victims did.
I am honored to have evened the scales, if only a single sway.
Jasper deserved to feel as helpless as I did.
I am delighted to deal out this unsightly justice.
My ears pick up the sound of engines. I deconstruct into a tangle of limbs and travel by shadow, another ability I wish I had been brave enough to access sooner. In seconds, the source of the sound comes into view. A barrage of militant gray trucks are flooding the foliage.
They are headed straight for me.
One halts beside Grayson’s body. It shrieks as the brakes collide.
Grayson’s mother bursts from the passenger seat before the plume of dust left in the car’s wake has the chance to clear.
She stares at her eldest son in silent horror, watching as more blood roses sprout from the pulpy hole in his forehead.
Vines of deep vermilion erupt, curling around his ragged, ribbony skin.
Red petals, thoroughly nourished, bloom over his face, once golden, now granite gray.
One rose has begun to grow from his eye, the soft tissue of his eyeball serving as its soil.
Its leaves are young, fragile, and timid. He is a garden of gore.
“C-collect—” she stutters, her voice cracking before she makes a pointless attempt to clear it. “Collect the body. I want a full autopsy. Take samples.”
Her suited underlings move quickly. They zip Grayson into a black bag and carry him off on a flimsy gurney.
The gas station man in all gray zooms in with his car, throwing open the doors to greet them and their new science project.
Agent Grayson Warner—the liar, the knight, and regrettably, my something more—is nothing but a corpse to be dismantled.
A sharp pain plunges through my lower back. Then there are at least nine more, scaling my spine one vertebra at a time. When I whip around, I find a succession of pink syringes sticking out from my body. They are arranged in a perfectly straight line, emptying their contents into my bloodstream.
I feel that dreadful, familiar weakness again.
My stature crumbles. My height drops. My muscles turn to taffy left out in the sun.
I become human Clara, the one I’d cherished so dearly before learning of true power.
Once I am human Clara, I am ripe for the taking.
The EHKI operatives swarm like wasps. They slam me into the ground so hard, granules of dirt get lodged in my nostrils.
It reeks of moss, acidity, and boot-based rubber.
Gwendolyn’s pointed heels march before me, a parade float of power. I follow the length of her pale legs up, up, and up until our eyes meet. Hers may as well be the smoking barrels of two guns eager for a standoff.
“Miss Lovecroft,” she says, warm as prison bars as she juggles duty and grief, “I believe we’re done here.”
She gestures to the soldier whose hand is at the nape of my neck. He grunts in understanding. Shortly after, a loud rush surges through my ears, my vision becomes an astronomer’s observatory, and I leave my body for sweet, violent darkness once more.