Page 17 of The Last Feast

Our fingers stick together with the viscous liquid drying on our skin. But they’d be like that even if it wasn’t there, so I don’t try to remove the blood as snow crunches under our feet. We just keep walking through the field connected to the forest.

It’s late, and the moon is huge, illuminating our path with its silvery light. I can’t go home covered in blood, so I lightly pull her to the left. “This way, baby.”

She skips closer to me, and I wrap my arm around her hips to haul her up.

The softest giggle floats out of her as she throws her head back to look up at the branches obscuring the moonlight.

How has she just killed a woman and now she’s giggling?

Yet I can’t stop smiling as I watch her, in awe of the way she moves through life without burdens.

I press my lips to the middle of her neck to feel her soft laughter, but her chest expands as she pulls air into her lungs before letting out a loud howl that sets off the nocturnal wildlife hiding in the forest.

She said she was just Hana, but she’s not just anything.

Hana is the remedy to painful existence.

With half her face painted as a skull, bloody freckles on the other side where I’ve rubbed the paint away, and her lips stretched into a wide smile, she’s everything and nothing.

We were both right, because she’s a contradiction.

A woman with childish joy at morbid events.

Haunting yet full of life. Violent and gentle as she cups my cheek.

Fuck, I’m falling in love.

No.

Not falling.

Plummeting into an unknown I’ll never be able to predict, like I’ve been pushed out of a plane at a thousand feet with only Hana to act as my parachute.

“Break me, bite me, or mend me?” I whisper against her lips as she leans over me.

My crazy woman softly bites my lip in answer. I know the route with my eyes closed, so I keep walking deeper through the trees to the unused path of my grandfather’s hunting cabin.

“When was the last time you had anything to eat?” I ask as I hug her tighter.

Her eyes sparkle under the silver light as she dramatically drops her voice. “You.”

I laugh with more lightness than I’ve ever possessed.

It makes time pass quicker on a never-ending day, because just like Hana said, there’s no tomorrow.

We exist now without worries, and we could die at any moment, so I treasure each second of her presence.

Even though the snow begins to fall on my bare chest and arms, I enjoy the cold, her warmth pressed against me.

The fencing around the cabin hasn’t been disturbed, since the hunters know not to go near it and any teenagers who have tried would be found due to my parents’ connections.

All their status and respect means they can seek justice for an empty building, but they can’t use those same means to get it for me.

Hana stares at the cabin with wide eyes.

It’s a cabin in name only—the Aigner property stretches into the forest, stealing nature that should rightfully belong to the inhabitants of the planet.

But my grandparents desired privacy, so it was justified to them.

The modest wood cabin that was the original Aigner family home some generations ago is barely visible as I carry her through the imposing conifer hedgerows.

That cabin should have been my warning sign as a child that my family doesn’t acknowledge what they deem the ugly parts of life.

They don’t restore what’s broken. They ignore it until it’s beyond repair and mask the stench of the rotting timber with more trees.

Taller and even denser in position to hide their neglect.

The key is still in the same place: on the porch light that automatically turns on as I step onto the storm porch.

Snow falls off my boots, melting into the brown stones, and I keep one hand on Hana’s ass to balance her as I chip the ice away to free the key.

She twists her head every which way, noting the ornate carvings on the bullnose trim around the porch.

If she’s reconsidering her request for money, I’ll empty every account I have to keep her.

I’ll even take her to my parents’ house, introduce her as my wife to collect the next sum of my inheritance. With her, it’d be worth it.

Holding the icy metal in my fist to warm it, I take the opportunity to press Hana against the door and kiss her.

She smiles straight away and massages across my shoulders.

I shiver when her icy fingers dip beneath the neck of my t-shirt, so I don’t take more and instead open the door to get her warm.

The lights are all automatic, and my mother loves keeping up the name she married into, because an Aigner has to be strong, even down to the shitty, empty house no one uses.

It’s why I know everything will be fully stocked despite no one using it.

Keeping up the appearance for ghosts is more of a priority than having any semblance of a relationship with her only child.

But when we walk through the large foyer and my boots dirty the marble floors, I can’t help but laugh.

The huge gold inlay of a cursive A in a ring is pretentious, gaudy, just like the obnoxious Louis dining chairs around an empty marble dinner table, a crystal chandelier hanging above it.

“I’ve really dirtied your name now,” I say to the ghost of my grandfather as Hana slides down my body, staring at all the glittering crystals around each light fixture.

“Who are you talking to?” She looks up at me without any judgment, making me eager to spill all the Aigner family secrets.

“My grandfather. Something happened when I was younger, and I told my family, but he said I was sullying the family name by talking about such things.”

She slowly raises both hands then lifts her middle fingers before turning in a circle. “Fuck you, Jamie’s grandfather.”

More of the paint has been rubbed off her face, only to be replaced by blood splatters. But she has her bloody fuck you fingers in the air and a smile on her face.

I definitely love this woman. I’ve always thought it was an illogical emotion, one that excused shitty behavior and allowed parents to hurt their children when they didn’t return it.

However, with this woman I barely know, it suddenly has meaning beyond those things.

Maybe it’s always meant to be illogical, and that’s why there are so many different depictions of love in art and media—you can’t love anything the same way.