call me Bliss

“You don’t have to do this,” The words sounded hollow and ridiculous as soon as they left my mouth. They were false, and I knew it, and she knew it.

“I don’t want to do this,” she responded, and maybe it was just because her voice was so quiet that she sounded a little hoarse. Or maybe she was being just as honest as I wasn’t. Maybe that was why she was the one who was going to get out of this.

“We could just both stay,” I pleaded once more, one hand trying to lift, but still held firmly down by the vines she’d uprooted, tying me down at the base of the tilted-over tree with its roots flailing and exposed to the air like an upended turtle’s thick legs. The top of the tree actually brushed against the high, dark-leaved hedge.

“I can’t stay,” she said, and her voice cracked. She actually looked down, and my heart crumpled a little for her, watching the deep breath inflate her chest and lift her shoulders, and then slowly subside again. “I can’t stay, and I haven’t got enough for us both.”

I knew the knife; I’d seen it on the belt of the fae creature that had kept us both for so long. How she got her hands upon it I shall never know, but had I any doubt as to her determination even with all that regret, it was gone when I saw the intricately etched blade winking in the blue light of today’s sun. A thousand tortures unimaginably worse than what already we had suffered awaited her now if she went back – both of us, because I’d been gone long enough now that surely I’d be declared an accomplice, no matter what.

My blood ran cold; if she left me here, I’d be punished for her escape, regardless of the fact that I’d clearly been struck and bound, made to stay.

“But you can help us both get away,” I whispered, and lifted my chin from my chest to leave my throat bare. Wordlessly she set the point of the knife against the thick vein on one side, and in spite of being prepared for it the small jab made me hiss, my head jerking back. The spill of wet down the front of my shoulder and chest was immediate, and she hurriedly put a bowl underneath, murmuring words I did not know as used the knife to stir my blood into the herbs waiting there. with great care she painted the red mixture onto her eyelids, above and below, and then in a thick stripe between them across her nose, and from the sides away back across her temples. By the time she was done, I was growing dizzy, but I kept my eyes upon her, watching the mixture dry.

The air grew thick and prickly with the invisible gathering of power, and I could feel bits of it flitting past me to paste itself to her face, to her eyes. I surely wasn’t the only one who could feel it. I hoped the drying would go fast.

She watched me as well, occasionally testing the darkening stripe with her fingertips until it was dry, and then looked up past me, up the length of the tree at the hedge. A happy sob came from her lips, and I twisted weakly to see what it was. I saw only the top of the tree, nestling against the hedge.

“What is it?”

“The way home,” she whispered, voice thick, and I relaxed between the roots again, looking at her.

Distantly, there was the sound of a horn, and she went pale beneath her strange paint, though not as pale as I, tied down to be left for those who would come.

“Please,” I begged, and lifted my chin, pleadingly. A tear slid out of the corner of her eye, and though she glanced past me again at the top of the tree, she stayed her clear desire to flee, just long enough to cut me free of the world before our captors finished tracking us down.

~~~~~

This was written as part of the 31 Things In 31 Days project, being run on the page of the same name on Google+. For more information or to participate, go there.

Day Four prompt is courtesy of Eric Albee on Flickr, distributed under an Attributions-only Creative Commons license. http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericalbee/6632588919/:

Pets aren’t family members.

Snooky is a dog. Snooky is my pet. Snooky wasn’t there when I was learning to walk, or ride my bike. Snooky didn’t teach me how to read, or sneak me a half cup of spiked eggnog behind the couch when my mom wasn’t looking. Snooky wasn’t even born until I was well beyond puberty.

But Snooky also doesn’t give a shit about money, or houses, or suntans, or whether or not we remembered to bring home 1% milk instead of 2% milk from the store because the 2% tastes cheesy.

Snooky wasn’t there when I was in the hospital.

Snooky didn’t show up till after. When I was finally discharged, and my mother and my sister fought about who had to drive me home while I sat there in the wheelchair, one fingernail digging dirt that wasn’t really there out from under another fingernail, contemplating pretending I was in a drug-sleep again so that maybe they’d stop pretending they thought I couldn’t hear them and we could just get out of there because dammit the fluorescent lights hurt my eyes. When my mother had hugged me and wished me a safe trip home (because she’d used the ultimate maternal argument-bomb of “I gave BIRTH to you both…”) and hurried out the rotating glass doors, leaving my sister to nearly dump me out of my chair before she figured out how to kick free the brake and push me out to the car. When she got me back to my apartment and stood there on the sidewalk staring at the half-flight of stairs down to my basement apartment and muttered something about how I should get the super to put in a ramp or something, and fell on her ass under the chair in the process of wrestling me down them and don’t think for a moment I didn’t hear her cursing as she stomped back up, then down again to dump my purse in my lap, leaving me to fumble out my keys and lurch through the doorway myself.

When something else lurched, in the darkness, scraping against the cheap linoleum floors. Snooky showed up then, bolting in through the open door out of nowhere, barking and snarling and snapping. I was muzzy and muddled, trying to get my chair turned around, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t enough light coming in the open doorway to let me see the body that fell to the floor, one tendon shredded off the back of the ankle. I would have been able to see if it was bleeding, but it wasn’t. It reached out, exhaling, and grabbed the edge of the doorway to pull itself forward and out onto the cement landing, leaving nothing in its wake but a weird slaughterhouse stench and Snooky, little white ball of dirty barking fluff, barking like she thought she was an Irish Wolfhound protecting her ancient home. Damn little thing got her paw up on the door, her weight enough to push it closed but slowly, as I watched the figure roll on its side, remnant of a face leering.

The door clicked gently shut. A moment later there was the sound of footsteps, followed by a thud, and screaming. My sister, I knew that scream. It usually sounded angrier.

I waited until Snooky stopped growling at the door before rolling close enough to try to open it; it was nearly night, but I could see my luggage. Duffle bag, really. I could see the dark pool that looked like it had waterfalled down the steps. I saw Snooky, darting out to sink her teeth into the bag and dragging it, ruffing muffledly through the fabric, into the apartment.

Snooky’s always here, now. Growls at the door sometimes, or leaps into my lap when we hear steps and screams. Sometimes I open the window, and Snooky darts out, coming back with a bagged loaf of bread that hasn’t yet gone over thanks to preservatives, or a can with a missing label. One day Snooky spent the whole time dragging back scrap wood, and then a packet of nails that must have come from one of the buildings that had been starting to get renovated before I went in the hospital.

We keep to ourselves, Snooky and me.

~~~~~

This was written as part of the 31 Things In 31 Days project, being run on the page of the same name on Google+. For more information or to participate, go there.

Day Two’s prompt: