Rose

by Ripley Proserpina

  “That’s what I’m saying. It’s us against the world. I’m trying to prove to people you aren’t crazy, and, selfishly, that I’m not as well. I can’t even get another doctor to come for blood draws. They want no part of this.”

  There were times when Rose had wondered where the other doctors had gone, and why Dr. Stone was the only one left. For the first few years after everything had happened, there’d been a dozen different doctors testing and examining her, but one by one, they’d moved on. Being a teenager—and a supremely awkward one at that—she hadn’t asked where they’d gone. In fact, she’d been pretty grateful to have less appointments and people poking and prodding her. In hindsight, though, she probably should have asked.

  “You don’t work for the CDC anymore?”

  He ran his hand through his blond hair and sighed. “I do. I’m just not… They can’t dispute my findings, but they won’t publish them. Someone else has to replicate them, and no one wants to touch this.”

  This. Meaning her. She shouldn’t feel guilty about that. It wasn’t her fault this had happened to her. But the thing was, she’d become accustomed to her weirdness. She lived with the pain and the weird flare-ups of symptoms and pretty much accepted them.

  That didn’t mean she didn’t want them gone, she really did, but the thought that he affected someone else’s life… it bothered her. Sighing, she gave in. “I’ll come back,” she said. “But not today. We’ll schedule around my work.” Seeing his chance, he opened his mouth to argue, but she shook her head, cutting him off. “I work hard to get these freelance jobs. You say you care about your career, so you should understand that I care about mine.”

  “I do,” he said. “But you’re a photographer.” There was a lot of disdain dripping from his voice that made some of her sympathy for him wash away.

  “Not everyone wants to be a doctor,” she replied. “Though I could be—I’ve hung out long enough in hospitals.”

  Dr. Stone snorted and put his hands on his hips. “Fine. We’ll schedule it later. Call my office and set something up.” And with that, he left, dismissing her completely.

  He was a weird guy. At times way too interested in her and her unnamed and strange condition, and at others, forgetting about her completely.

  Rose glanced at the clock on the wall as she left the office and exited into the larger hospital. The entrance was newly redone, glassed in and bright with sunlight. She stood for a quick moment, getting her bearings. Outside, it’d been windy and cold, but here, just for a second, she could pretend that it was summer.

  Striding toward the door, she mentally ticked off the time she had left with the right lighting to get the shots she needed to and edged past other people. If she hurried, she could catch the bus and make it to Arnold Arboretum to take pictures of their bonsai collection.

  A revolving door endlessly circled, and Rose stepped into the space, shuffling forward when something hit her, right in the stomach. It was a feeling, warmer than the sun, that started in her belly and welled up to her chest. Instinctively, she put her hand over the spot just as she caught movement from the corner of her eye.

  There on the other side of the glass was a man. She’d never seen him before. He was tall, much taller than her, but his eyes… They were so dark they seemed black… and familiar. He had short dark hair and tan skin, like he spent most of his time outdoors. And his hand was in the same place hers was, on the center of his chest.

  They held gazes only for a second before she was outside and the tinted glass reflected nothing except the cars pulling up to the front doors and the bus she was about to miss. But the sensation was still there.

  She was tempted to run inside but that was crazy. Wasn’t it? She’d never seen that man before, and she’d look like a madwoman, spinning through the door to find him.

  And for what? What would she even say to him?

  A car honked its horn, startling her back to reality.

  Catch the bus.

  Go to work.

  That was what she needed to do.

  With one last glance toward the window, she jogged in the direction of her bus, getting to the door just as the driver started to close them.

  “Good timing,” he said as she swiped her bus pass.

  She nodded and made her way to an empty seat, gaze on the hospital.

  The bus jolted as it pulled out into traffic and she sat down. The need to turn around and look behind her was hard to ignore, but somehow, she managed it.

  She had no room in her life for strange things and strange feelings. So as much as she wanted to, she didn’t look behind her and kept her eyes trained on the city and moving forward.

  3

  Horus

  The girl stood outside the doors, staring through the glass even though it was tinted. She wouldn’t see Horus, standing on the other side, staring back at her.

  He kept his hand on his chest and on the strange burning that sat beneath his skin. What was that?

  Millennia lived and he’d never felt this before.

  The autumn sun was bright, and it made the girl’s hair shine a dozen shades of brown. It was nearly as dark as his own, if he let it grow longer.

  The wind picked up, tousling her curls around her head, and she narrowed her dark eyes. Horus stepped closer to the door, tempted to go out there and speak to her.

  And say what?

  She glanced over her shoulder when a car honked and took off toward one of the exhaust spewing busses lined up outside waiting for passengers.

  He caught a flash of reflected light as the door started to close, and he eased forward, placing his hand on the glass as she disappeared.

  The bus drove away, and he stood there, watching it. The farther it went, the more the warmth eased until it disappeared completely.

  He had the strangest urge to follow the bus just to see if the feeling returned. He wanted it to, actually. It had felt good, warm and… light, almost like an emotion.

  “What are you looking at?” His brother Seti’s voice was quiet, curious.

  “Something strange just happened,” he said, rubbing his palm over the center of his chest. And since he had no secrets from his brother, he went on, “I saw this girl, and I felt this…” His voice trailed off as he thought about the way she’d stood, glaring at the glass. She’d stood straight and strong, almost defiant.

  “Lust?” Seti asked.

  Horus lifted an eyebrow and glanced at his brother. “You think I don’t know what lust is?”

  Seti smiled. “Probably not anymore. When was the last time you—” He waggled his brows.

  His younger brother, so similar to him in appearance, had the worst habit of saying whatever popped into his head.

  Horus studied him. They used to have the same hair and wear similar clothing, but recently, for some reason he didn’t understand, his brother had started to change. Now, instead of short hair, he had a stylish cut. His dark hair was long on the top, falling into his eyes so he always had to flip his head or push it out of his face. It was irritating to watch.

  Nothing Seti could do would change their builds or height, but if anyone really looked, his brother was slightly slimmer.

  Horus rubbed his knuckles over his cheek. Seti’s face was scruffy, like he hadn’t shaved in days, and his dark blue eyes danced. Horus didn’t understand why he’d changed, and it made him respond harsher than he should have. “Fuck off, Seti.”

  His brother seemed unperturbed by his tone. “I just want to make sure you know what’s going on. The changes in your body can be confusing—”

  Horus rubbed his hand over his closely shorn hair and wondered what he’d done to be saddled for all eternity with a brother who delighted in pushing his buttons. “This is what happens when I try to treat you like an adult.”

  Seti nodded. “It’s true. You’re an exceptionally slow-learner.”

  Ignoring that, he tried to get them back on track. “Did you take care of the cameras?” he asked.


  “Yes.” His brother shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket—something Horus would never wear, especially not with the unpredictable weather of New England—and rolled back on his heels. “Are you ready?”

  Tempted to rub his chest again, he closed his hands into fists. “Yes.”

  4

  Rose

  By the time the bus turned the corner, the feeling in Rose’s chest had lessened, and by the time it rolled to a stop at Centre Street, she wondered if she’d imagined the entire thing.

  The warmth was gone, like the river of pain had washed it away. It struck her that, for the time the feeling had been there, she’d felt good.

  Normal.

  It made everything hurt so much more. She got off the bus and strode down Arborway, the road that led to the Arnold Arboretum. This was one of her favorite places to photograph, even in the fall. The Arboretum was part of Harvard University, and it was awash in color right now. It was a piece of the country, right in the neighborhood of Jamaica Plain.

  As a freelance photographer, each day brought something different. Today, she was photographing the bonsai for an article in a tourist magazine, but once she was done with that, she was going to hike to Peters Hill. From there, she would see the skyline of the city, and if this weather held out, and she was patient enough, she would have some beautiful photos for her portfolio.

  The Arboretum was familiar to her, because it was one of her favorite places. Like when she was a little girl, Rose loved being outside. It had been hard for her, for a long time, to feel safe enough to go outside. At any moment, she expected to be attacked. Her anxiety could have crippled her for life, but her mother had handed her a camera, one of those cheap ones that weren’t even made anymore, and told her to take some pictures. There was something about the viewfinder—looking at the world through it—that allowed her to function.

  It didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid. She took precautions all the time—like the pepper spray hanging off her bag and the knife in a pocket of her camera bag—so she could go about her life.

  Rose found a bench and got out her camera. She had plenty of space on her memory card and there was no reason she couldn’t distract herself from her constant pain.

  With her light meter in hand and her camera slung around her neck, she started out. Her arm didn’t hurt anymore, or maybe it did. It was hard to know what actually hurt when everything hurt all the time. Sometimes, when she visualized her pain, it was a slow-moving slime.

  She knew what it came from. It came from the demon who’d attacked her. Dr. Stone told her he thought she was exposed to some kind of chemical that acted on her nervous system. It made all of her nerve endings flare up, like they were exposed to something painful, even though it’d been years since she was bitten.

  When she was younger, she told him she’d been poisoned, but nothing in his blood draws ever showed anything other than red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Everything that should be there, was. And anything that shouldn’t?

  It wasn’t.

  Even today with the tissue sample he took, it wouldn’t prove her skin could be as hard as rock. The cells would look like every other sample he’d taken. She was wearing long sleeves today, but she had some tiny silver scars from biopsies. The only time she scarred was when Dr. Stone went all the way to the subcutaneous level. Otherwise, like the entire event itself, there was nothing to show for the pain she endured.

  She set off in the direction where the bonsai collection was kept but snapped pictures all the way there. It wasn’t necessarily the best time to capture the lush colors of the Arboretum, they were a little past peak foliage season, but there was something beautiful about watching all of the plant life cycle down and get ready for the long New England winter.

  It was here, looking through her viewfinder, zooming in on tiny blades of grass or a lone orange leaf clinging to a maple that she forgot about her body. What she told Dr. Stone about being a three on the pain scale when she was really a ten, hadn’t been a lie, per se.

  She was a tough girl. Her mom always told her she had a backbone of steel and a stubbornness that wouldn’t quit, and that was the reason why, when every other person who had been attacked died, Rose lived.

  Maybe she believed Rose when she told the story about the demon and angel, or maybe she didn’t. After all, no one else did. Except maybe Dr. Stone…

  Rose didn’t want to think about Dr. Stone. She agreed to continue with the blood draws. That was that.

  No reason to think about her future and that it held more days that were really and truly tens on the pain scale. Ahead of her would be days when she couldn’t get out of bed. Bad times when she curled into the fetal position, wishing someone would close the curtains, and tried to stay as still as possible.

  She didn’t feel that way today. Today was manageable. Today was a beautiful autumn day where she could walk under her own steam past the visitor’s center, down to the bonsai collection.

  Overhead, Canada geese honked and she lifted her gaze to the sky. Canada geese. Why weren't they called, ‘Canadian geese?’ They flew in a vee, flapping their long wings. She’d seen them up close before at a school field trip to Walden Pond. They’d landed there, the teacher said, to take a break on their long flight south. Rose remembered how cold that day had been, a little like today actually. Blue skies. Sunny. With a wind that made her nose run and wish for a hat.

  She zoomed in on the birds, but she didn’t have the right lens on to catch them very well. That was why, when a huge shadow passed by, she screeched and jumped.

  Much lower, at what felt like arm’s length, a pair of geese flew over her. Their squawking was so loud it masked the other birds and traffic. Lowering her camera, she watched them fly lower and lower until they disappeared from sight.

  Here was her chance to get them up close. Not far along a little dirt path was a wetland. They must have landed there to take a breather. As far as she could tell, they were flying against the wind, so it made sense to her that they’d land, eat some fish, poop, and then keep flying.

  As she started down the trail, she started thinking about birds and bird poop. Did geese poop when they landed? Or did they poop from the sky? Given how huge they were, that was a scary thought. If she got hit by goose poop, it’d probably be like being hit by a meteor or a penny dropped off the top of the Empire State Building.

  Up ahead, the birds continued to honk, almost as if they were letting their friends know to keep going, and they’d catch up later. She followed the noise, going in the direction she thought they’d be. The trail skirted the wetlands, so she wasn’t sure how close she’d get, and she knew better than to step off the trail.

  But she was lucky.

  There they were—right at the edge of the wetlands. The past few days had been rainy, and the ground was swollen and boggy.

  The wind blew, and it went right through her jeans and jacket. Shivering, she brought her camera to her eye and stepped to the edge of the path. The toe of her boot sunk into the ground just as the cold seemed to stab her directly in the chest.

  It was like being stabbed by an icicle or sucking in nitrous oxide and freezing from the inside out. The pain buckled her, hit the exact same place she’d earlier felt such warmth.

  She curled over with something that started as a shiver but turned into something harder, more painful. A part of her mind caught the sound of the camera shutter. All at once, the birds rocketed out of the water and a form, something from her nightmares, something she’d never forget and yet she couldn’t believe she was seeing again, launched itself out of the water. Its clawed hands grasped ineffectively at the birds’ legs but came up empty. It hissed, angry, until it saw her frozen by the water.

  The pain in Rose’s chest grew, and she stumbled back. The thing smiled, gray lips splitting wide to reveal sharp teeth.

  “Pretty girl.”

  No. Rose dropped her camera and stumbled away. When she’d been a little girl,
the creature had caught her by surprise. She hadn’t seen it coming in the dark.

  Now every detail was clear. It moved fast, much too fast for something that didn’t seem able to stand. Dragging itself by its arms and fingertips in a way that reminded her of a crocodile emerging from a swamp, it shot toward her.

  She fumbled for a moment, weighed down by her bag, as she searched for the knife she’d never had to use before. It was in the side of her bag, and she made a promise to herself that if she survived this, she’d wear it on her belt like a commando.

  Maybe the cold was making her clumsy, but her fingers didn’t work right, and the thing grabbed her leg before she could pull the knife out. Just like had happened before, it tugged her hard and brought her to the ground. She saw a flash of teeth, heard ripping fabric, but that was all. A second later, it howled, frightening the birds from the trees.

  Fingers clutched at her knees as it hefted its weight onto her. She rolled, grasping for the bag and closed her fingers around the cool handle of her knife. Inside, her chest ached, and she had trouble drawing a breath from the cold.

  Claws raked her skin, she could feel them, the sharp and ragged edges, but they didn’t pierce her. They couldn’t. Not without a whole hell of a lot more force. For the first time in her life, she was grateful for her strange skin.

  “What are you?” it asked, but Rose had gotten hold of her knife now, and she swung toward the creature with all the force she was capable of. The blade sliced its face, easily penetrating the soft skin into the bone. It howled and struck like a snake to bite her neck.

  Its teeth cracked, and it reared back, giving her enough space to kick and stab her way free from its weight. She bent her knees, trying to keep her balance as it tried to bring her back to the ground.