Blooded: Dead Things

by A. D. Key

The scary man staggered forward and I noticed he had a name sown into his charcoal gray shirt. “Lee!” The girl gasped like she suddenly recognized him. As if her breath galvanized him, his arms reached forward. His dirty hands coming within inches of her slim shoulders.

  A popping sound echoed off the four cardinal points; north, south, east, and west. I had fired my pistol.

  It was only when Lee’s skull finally hit the bright yellow lines on the pavement that the girl peeked over her shoulder. Leon and I lowered our guns, striding over to the short, thin girl.

  She breathed in the fresh, warm air. Probably trying to soothe her jumping heart that thrashed wildly from the adrenaline spike. “Um…thanks, I think,” she thanked me.

  “You’re welcome,” I responded taken aback. My cousin and I never receive gratifications because the people we save do not know they are alive due to the two of us. “You are?”

  “Lana Queen.”

  “Did you know him, Lana? It sort of seemed like you might,” Leon said.

  “Uh, sort of. The last time I saw this…man he was dead. Last night.”

  “Him and others, lady,” I remarked.

  “What my cousin, Lucas, means is you should listen to the radio…or watch the news.”

  “Someone’s coming,” she told us.

  We looked in the direction of our car. Recognizing the accelerating suburban feels like the top layer of my skin slowly being pulled off from foot to skull.

  Standing in the middle of the street, the three of us crossed back over to the cemetery side in fear of being caught underneath the wobbling tires. They skid on the paved road coming to a rough halt.

  The four-door vehicle is in a horrendous condition: the passenger side has obviously been pushed in almost to the center, deep scratches extend in every direction, and all the glass was busted and missing.

  The dented door opened, and the hysteria in the woman’s face… If she had been wearing mascara it would be everywhere. Her eyelashes buried behind extremely swollen eyelids. “May I stay with you?” She asked and dolefully said, “They’re dead. My mother, father—” she saw the man on the pavement with the name Lee sown into his shirt— “brother, and…” She trailed off, too pained to accept his and the other two deaths.

  Leon nodded in remembrance of the unfortunate encounter.

  “We aren’t from this city or even this state. And we ain’t staying,” I gritted out, walking away from her. “Leon, let’s go.”

  Lana gave her attention to the distressed lady. “What’s your name?”

  “Kimberly.” A small flow of wind ruffled her dull, stringy hair.

  “Kimberly, why is your family dead?” she asked.

  My jaw locked and I’m pretty sure my smooth face turned the color of Santa’s pants as I stood in front of the car door. “Leon. Get. In.”

  “You should…check on your family,” Leon recommended to the girl with multiple abrasions on her face. I stomped heatedly to the front of the car.

  Lana eyed the long barreled shotgun Leon held. “I don’t have weapons like that.”

  “Is that your house over there?” Leon’s head bobbed.

  “Yes.”

  “Get in.”

  She started to follow Leon but he halted, having nearly bumped into me. “Um, no!” I glowered down into Leon’s eyes, like a king being forced to surrender his territory. “Brighton, I met by your damn self!”

  “After her,” he challenged. I just wanted to leave. Go home.

  Swiftly, my cousin threw his palm to his forehead, blinking rapidly. “No. No,” he moan agitatedly and swung open the passenger door throwing himself onto the seat. He was getting a vision.

  “Backseat,” I pointed for Lana to get in, and then referenced Kimberly, “Can she follow us to your place?”

  The girl nodded and Kimberly scrabbled onto her shredded seat; neither of them knowing what was happening.

  Lana climbed in the backseat of our old blue Chevy. I slammed the door. “Take that gun from him.”

  Leon didn’t object when his Potential reached over the slick blue seat, taking his weapon. Who knows what he could do in this blacking out state? He didn’t have a suicide wish, or a homicidal one for that matter.

  I reversed the car and maneuvered to the gravel and dirt driveway.

  “What’s he doing?” Lana asked. Leon rocking violently.

  I was uncertain about the countenance of the raven-haired girl in my rearview mirror. But there were no indications of fear, unlike the hazardous clunker trailing needlessly close as if any space will permanently separate the two of us. I did not want Kimberly to die. But I wished she would just disappear.

  Leon covered his ears and I ignored Lana’s question. “Will you hand me a rag, please?” There were two wash clothes on the smooth leather seat. She handed me the first one her hand touched. I tried to give the yellowish green cloth to my slumped over cousin but he thrashed his head hard against the seat.

  I kicked the brake. Tires slid and dig up the dirt and gravel. I heard Kimberly scream and she swerved the hazardous suburban left, nearly clipping the side of the Biscayne. Lana adverted her attention to the distraught driver. But my sight never left my family.

  “Hold him back,” I said, requiring her assistance. Whipping her fingers through soft, thick hair, she pinned Leon against the headrest. I know how soft and thick it is from wrestling with him and from females.

  I forced Leon’s round jaw open and placed the cloth in between his shaking teeth. “The first time this happened to him we didn’t think his tongue would stop bleedin’.”

  Below her apprehensive hands, thin lines of blood escape Leon’s small ears. “What is happening?”

  This is when things become quieter in the seer’s mind, and his body is always inert. But blackish-red spurts of blood ran down the pulsating veins nearly popping out of Leon’s neck and his entire body shook in its upright position…

  I stared incredulously.

  “This isn’t supposed to happen?” Lana judged by my befuddled expression.

  Still seizing, Leon unintentionally flung forward; forehead aimed for the dashboard…

  …Wrong. The silence. It is just…wrong. And the colors are definitely not right: black and white.

  Light curly hair waves up and down. The girl’s face anxiously fixed like it knows something horrible is going to happen but awaits anyway. The columns on either side of her contrast to a bright white as if it were underneath a huge black light.

  The angle changes like a camera rotating behind the young female. She disappears. The sky is now light green and the grass a deep blue. As if peering down from above, Leon sees the girl lying on her back on a set of steps separating the snow colored columns. Her head rests against a porch while a silhouette feasts on her stomach.

  She screams. But silence mutes the audio.

  Slightly to the right of the two, an unseen sun—until now—quickly becomes eaten from the outside in by darkness, expelling rays of crimson.

  The screaming girl dies.

  Falling from the green sky—clouded by a mass of yellow hair—an assumed feminine body smashes without a sound into the unmoving blueness. Without hesitation, the earth surrounding her rots and webs of black expand outward from her body. The foundation underneath the dead girl with blonde curls and the feasting silhouette crumbles.

  Like someone changing the television channel, a familiar image of no-show-bar girl covered in blood awakens the seer…

  ✽✽✽

  “They’re sticky. And they sting.” Feeling the warm light on his face, Leon tried opening eyes. “And my arms are itchy.” Sitting up, confusion dominated him as Lana and Kimberly greeted him with worried expressions. I stood directly above his feet and perpetuated annoyance.

  “Why am I not in the car?” Leon asked. His hands clinging to the grassy earth in the middle of the prairie field.

  “You okay?” The voice that spoke to him isn’t the one he expected. Concerned, Lana placed a han
d on his shoulder. “What did your vision contain?”

  He looked up questionably, the sun shining in his eyes, to me. Obviously the composed girl had been informed while his eyes were closed to the world. But how much? My cousin was wondering. Leon accepted my held out hand, helping him to his feet. “My wrists and ankles are peculiarly sore…”

  I wasn’t sure what he was talking about. Lana had helped restrain him. She couldn’t have hurt him could she?

  “Yours,” I said putting the bloody rag in Leon’s palm. I stomped away, fuming through the field. Everything was upsetting me.

  “Now what?” I heard Kimberly meagerly ask while the three of them followed suit to the vehicles.

  I pretended not to hear. Leon also ignored her. “What happened?” he asked Lana. That was the last thing I heard. None of this was part of my plan. And my anger caused me to zone out.

  LANA

  MAYBE IT IS THE WAY THEY LOOK AT HER, OR rather don’t, that gives Lana a sense of ease. Neither of the two cousins regard her in the way most strangers often do; avoid eye contact, shift uncomfortably, point, or make rude and undue comments—these are the most popular reactions on a long list. The shaking woman, Kimberly, and the unusually short man had been too far away in the graveyard to really see the scars. And the kid, well, he must have been raised properly.

  “You, um…” Lana bit her lip and gave him a sideways glance, unsure of how much she should tell him. “Had a seizure. The pain you’re experiencing is from where we moved you by the feet and hands.” That is the truth. She just left out the part about her super strength.

  Inside the older vehicle, Lana stared at the acre of scattered trees by the prairie.

  “So which is it? Brighton? Or Leon?” Earlier his cousin had called him by two different identities.

  “Both. Brighton’s my first name. I go by my middle name; Leon.”

  She feels bad for the light red marks on his wrists and the unseen ones. He had not looked, but she knew they had to be there on his ankles. The Shadow hoped the strangers didn’t suspect that she is not normal; Kimberly is too frenetic to even wonder why Leon has visions in the first place, so the chances of her discovering the Shadow’s true identity are slim to none.

  Lana does not want her secret exposed to the two males for fear that they will be killed. If a Vampire suspects that a human has knowledge of the night creatures then they are eradicated from the human population; save for those like her mother who do not pose a threat.

  She has an inkling that someone who sees—other than with his eyes—has to be important.

  And how many Vampires will knowingly let someone as significant as Leon live? They will either kill him or exploit him for his gift just as regular humans—Normals—would for her skills.

  The seer causes her to think about someone… The Goddess in her dreams—the one the white-haired Vampire mentioned before she fried in the sunlight and burst into emerald and white flames—someone only starring in Lana’s dreams…

  8: Friends and Enemies

  Concordia, Kansas

  POP MUSIC PLAYED inside Ganesha’s yellow Gemballa Mirage GT. “Ganesha, where are you?” The music ended. My voice undoubtedly sounded through her car speakers.

  “I’m 5 minutes away from you, Ray.” After she had dropped me off at the airport the dark-skinned eighteen year old had promptly left the Cornhusker State.

  “Someone is not obeying the speed limit signs,” my voice sang. The speed racer should not be this close.

  Ganesha laughed guiltily, and I heard her pop a potato chip in her mouth. Crunch Crunch!

  “How’s the new system?” I asked.

  “Great!” The enthusiastic girl had been given an extremely sophisticated radar detector that locates police officers on speed control as an early birthday present. I made it myself. “It is my third fav gift from you, my third fav ever! No tickets girl!”

  “What are the first two?”

  “Second, this ride!” The sleek yellow 09’ carbon edition was her Christmas present this past season. “There are only five of them in the world. What were the chances that I would ever get a limited anything?” She shoved several crispy chips in her mouth. “And you know the first, Ray,” she said, chomping on the snack food, repelling memories from her old life of neglect and poverty.

  Ganesha finally pulled up, parking her car on the slightly elevated driveway. She hopped out carrying the empty potato chip bag, a half full bottle of water, and a purse on her shoulder.

  I walked down the cedar steps directly in front of the house entry. My curly brown wig off, my real hair, long and blonde flowing freely behind me.

  Ganesha smiled at me. “The neighbors are usually out tending their lawns on Saturdays,” she said. “But not today.”

  “You miss the sounds of the mowers and the smell of the neighbors’ barbeques?”

  Ganesha nodded. It wasn’t often that she got the chance to join them for her new life demanded more from her. She did not mind though.

  It was not until a little over a year ago on her seventeenth birthday, in this very spot, that she even saw and experienced a real life barbeque. That day was the turning point for Ganesha. Two hours before the sizzling hotdogs, cheeseburgers, and chicken with grill markings, she had been thrown down by three boys to an alley floor for refusing to show them her breasts. Her punishment was two broken ribs and a black eye.

  But her reward has been far greater.

  Not only did she get to watch their bladders empty themselves while I snatched the delinquents off her and made them cry as they waited for the police—but she received a best friend, a real family, and a real home.

  Looking at the deserted lawns, the look in Ganesha’s eyes told me unpleasant memories from her previous life in her old house had forced themselves upon her. Ganesha refused to call the place home because HOME should be a place where one feels safe and truly wanted. And Ganesha had never felt that there.

  She once told me that at:

  Age fifteen she received a shovel to the head for flushing cocaine down the toilet and burning needles used for heroine.

  Age thirteen: Asked for a Christmas tree. Ganesha said her mother responded, “Why? We don’t celebrate that stupid shit. Jesus was invented by white people.”

  Age eight: Told to stop eating like a pig (even though it had been nearly forty-eight hours since she had a meal) because the money was needed to pay the rent; the male landlord had been replaced by a female who did not sleep with women.

  Age six: Her mother performed oral sex on a man while she sat in the same room.

  All the abusive and neglectful acts in Ganesha’s life were committed by the woman who gave birth to her. Ganesha knows nothing of her father; not even who he is or where he lives. Or if he’s even alive. She doubts her mother knows, given the woman is a drug addict and a prostitute.

  Ganesha blinked hard, shaking her head, quickly pulling herself from the recollection of the unfitted woman’s parenting skills.

  “See anything?” I embraced her with a hug.

  “Actually, no. It’s not spreading that fast. Yet.”

  Since the entire neighborhood had been warned by Jet and me about certain things, there are only two people outside today. My neighbors always listen to me.

  Facing the log house, to the left a man transported lumber into his yellow home. Across the street a woman carrying groceries waved and smiled at us standing on the paved driveway. The man and woman preparing for the zombies. They are the only ones staying in their houses. The other two families at the other end of Jet Road have abandoned their beloved homes. Granted the evidence of automobiles, swings, and kiddy pools suggests otherwise.

  Ganesha waved back. “Can anyone truly be happy when their scariest nightmares are forming into real life? Everyone believes in you, Raven. You’re the only thing, other than God, worthy of putting trust in. And by putting my faith in you it might as well be with God itself.”

  “No pressure,” I laughed.
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  “Sorry,” she smiled. Then her eyes flicked away like something was on her mind. “Ray?”

  “Yes?”

  “I know you don’t have orders to stay with the boy with that vision gift… But you didn’t receive any to leave…”

  This is my youngest friend’s way of saying that if I wanted to stay and help Leon Carmany I should. “My friendship is with you, Ganesha.”

  “I am warm and fuzzy inside,” she joked. “Thanks, Ray sista’.”

  I headed for the steps, rolling my hazel eyes playfully. I wasn’t really annoyed.

  “I love you,” Ganesha smiled and walked off the oil black pavement through the green grass.

  “You also love unicorns,” I pointed out.

  Ganesha stopped at the bottom of the red steps, mouth open. “You said you wouldn’t tell!”

  I chuckled as she pulled the chain out from under her white designer collar and pressed her thumb and index finger on the purple unicorn.

  “No one heard,” I said. And then I paused on the top step in between two hanging pots of flowers. “Well, someone did hear. Oops.”

  Her eyes went wide. “Who…?” she demanded.

  I giggled. “I think Jet’s eavesdropping.”

  Hastings, Nebraska

  BLAYNE

  “WE’RE ON OUR WAY,” he kissed the phone enthusiastically. The eighteen year old boy is joyous that he receives a signal so far down in a cavern. Even though he had been told it would work, he remained skeptical.

  Four torches burned in the cavern; his light brown hair didn’t reflect in the water. He also couldn’t see himself in the mirror anymore. He had been born Blayne Vandor—a human—but now he was something else. He didn’t need the light to see—being a true creature of the night. The way the flames pierce the blackness captivates them, similar to the way an owl will perch on a limb and intelligently watch the orange flames of a campfire rising in the middle of the night.

  “Hello, Blayne,” a deep voice greeted him from the side, feet gliding softly through the freshwater.