by Rook, Rowan
Baby's fishing for a dream,
Fishing near and far,
His line a silver moonbeam is,
His bait a silver star.
He finally began to feel tired. …So tired. He stared up at his mother’s face one last time before closing his eyes and letting his limbs go limp.
Sail, baby, sail,
Out upon that sea,
Only don't forget to sail,
Back again to me...
Back again to me.
Chapter Four: Another Morning
“Mason!”
Knocks pounded the door.
“It’s seven. Get up!”
Pound, pound, pound.
Mason stirred, the noise slowly dragging him from the black abyss of slumber. He could easily sleep in until noon, but school started at eight nowadays, so on weekdays, he had to get up way too early. It seemed especially horrible today. He was exhausted, his limbs aching in protest at the simple thought of sitting up. His eyes didn’t want to open. He just wanted to lay there some more.
“Mason!”
He opened his mouth to yell an indignant ‘just a few minutes!’, but no sound came out. It was like there was no air in his lungs at all.
…Eh?
His eyes blearily fluttered open. He was lying on his stomach, with a view of his right hand. White carpet framed his fingers and contrasted the dark grime lacing their tips.
Wait, why was he lying on the floor?
Ah!
Adrenaline shot him to his knees. He didn’t have to wonder whether the night before had been a nightmare. It hadn’t.
The carpet was painted red beneath his left ankle. Crusty black fluid stiffened the fibers and stuck to his skin. Blood. He lay in a mess of blood, vomit, and he didn’t want to know what else. It was his lack of voice that stopped him from screaming.
“Mason! You’re already half an hour late!”
Had he…survived?
“Get the fuck up!”
He opened his mouth and moved his tongue, but stayed silent. What was wrong? Why couldn’t he talk?
Then it hit him. He wasn’t breathing.
The burst of panic was enough to get him to his feet. He fought for air and gulped it down before pushing it back out with a shaky sigh. His chest stopped moving as soon as he exhaled, his lungs heavy and stiff. He could force breath through, but he wasn’t breathing naturally.
“What, did you die in there?”
He drew in another forced gasp, just enough to find his voice. “J-just give me a f-few min…minutes.” It wilted as the air leaked away.
“Be down in ten, or you’re going to school without breakfast!” Martin’s footsteps receded down the stairway.
Mason grasped for the place above his ribs, where his heart should’ve been beating. He checked his throat and strangled each wrist in search of a pulse.
Nothing. His body was still and quiet. A cold spider crawled up his spine and bit the back of his head.
…Was he dead? He had no breath, no pulse, no heartbeat. Maybe he had died last night. Maybe he was a ghost.
No. He pinched an arm. It still hurt. It still felt like flesh. He still felt bone beneath meat. There was no body on the ground, either – of course not, he was still inside it.
So then…what…the hell…was this…?
He searched again for his own vital signs, half expecting them to suddenly spark back to life. But they didn’t. They weren’t there. They were gone.
His skin was cold, too. So cold… He wrapped his arms around his chest, realizing for the first time that he was shivering.
His eyes drifted to the mess on the floor. He felt dried saliva caked to the side of his mouth, and something else – he didn’t want to know what – crusted around his legs and feet. A rancid menagerie of scents slipped through his nose every time he forced in air, enough to make him wince.
Corpses leaked every manner of fluid as their organs shut down. Saliva. Urine. Feces. Blood. You name it. It was all there on his once white carpet.
He shuddered, dragging his eyes away to the sterile gray walls. Fresh bile threatened to crawl over his tongue.
He’d undoubtedly died that night. He was still dead now. His body was nothing but a corpse.
So then, why was he still in it?
His head throbbed, monitor-framed images of what he’d read the night before drifting through it with the soft metallic glow of the screen.
Sorrel Falley died. Her body disappeared. There were still occasional reports of missing corpses. People had seen the ‘dead’ lurking outside their old homes.
Mason stared down at the palm of his hand and wiggled his fingers to make sure they still moved. They were paler than he remembered. He ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth, searching his teeth. His canines were just slightly longer now. He pricked his tongue at the tip.
Oh…
He swallowed an instinctive rasp, legs shuddering beneath him.
Oh lord.
Was he…like her now?
“Mason, five more minutes!”
What…was he going to do? He couldn’t go down there like this! He couldn’t go anywhere like this!
He swallowed another batch of breaths and tried to force his lungs into a rhythm.
Would they notice? Would they be able to tell? Would anyone notice that he wasn’t breathing if he forgot to keep cycling his lungs?
He couldn’t stay in his room, though – Martin wouldn’t allow it. He couldn’t stay up there forever. He needed to go downstairs. He needed to act like everything was normal until he figured out what was wrong.
First things first: he needed to take a shower.
****
Mason scrubbed at his limbs with frenzied, wild fervor, as if he could pull it off. It. Whatever it was that’d happened to his body. But no matter how much he pulled and rinsed, nothing changed. His legs were raw and red. The skin on his calf broke, but didn’t bleed.
He slouched against the shower wall, knees curled to his chest while water splashed against his scalp and dripped from his hair. It gathered at the tip of his chin, plopping down in dull, rhythmic drops. His eyes stared blankly at the two red marks marring his ankle. They were already nothing but scars, yet they’d been fatal.
He was dead. He’d simply never abandoned his corpse.
At least his senses still worked. He could still feel the water pounding atop his skull. It was warm. Hot. It tingled almost painfully against his cold skin.
No. Maybe he wasn’t dead. The dead couldn’t feel anything, after all. But he certainly wasn’t alive, either. He existed, he was there, he felt the same inside, but…
He took a deep breath and let it warm his innards. His limbs remained cold no matter how much steam he swallowed. They probably always would.
A knock echoed from the bathroom door. “Mason? Is something wrong?” This time it was Merril’s voice that came with it. “I’m going to school today, but we have to leave soon. Aren’t we going to walk together?”
“C-coming…” He stammered with forced breath.
Should he say he was sick and try to get out of school for the day? Sick was an understatement, after all. He could spend the day doing more research online, for all the good that would do.
Still… He pictured Merril’s hopeful face, and Martin’s stern one. Merril was finally feeling well enough to go, and that meant that if he stayed home, he’d be alone with Martin. He frowned at the thought, in spite of himself.
Suddenly claiming illness might also draw attention. He didn’t want that. The best thing he could do was try to act as if everything was normal.
He chocked down a laugh. The last time he’d decided that, it’d worked out brilliantly.
He dragged himself from the shower with stiff, shaky limbs, snatched a towel from the hanger, and dried himself at the mirrored sink.
Well, at least if he was a walking corpse, he was now a very clean one. His skin had paled, but he’d been pasty to begin with, so if he
was lucky, then no one would notice. He bit his graying lips. At least his eyes looked normal – they weren’t glazed or, he shivered, rolled back.
He startled and sucked his teeth in, though. Fangs. He leaned in close to the mirror, hesitated, and opened wide. Fangs replaced his upper and lower canines. He ran a finger along the thin white shapes, their tips sharp against his skin. They weren’t terribly large, but all the same, he was going to have to be careful when he smiled. Heh. Like that was something he had to worry about.
His slight amusement wilted away as the pale face in the glass chuckled with him.
So…he really was like a ‘vampire’, then. He didn’t want to think about what else that might entail. Vampires were creatures of fantasy, but this was reality. He wanted to believe that the rest of the stories wouldn’t apply, but the memory of blood sucked from his ankle left dread in his stomach.
No. He couldn’t dwell on any of that right now. It was impossible to come up with answers he simply didn’t have, and there was no sense in worrying about what ifs.
He brushed his teeth and got dressed, the daily motions so routine he didn’t have to think about them. He wiped the steam off his glasses and settled them on his nose. It was all just like any other day.
Mason gave himself a final examination in the mirror. Yes, he looked normal enough. Pale, but normal. He wasn’t suddenly going to start…erm, rotting or something, was he? He cringed, before realizing that if that were the case, he would’ve already been right in the middle of rigor mortis. Perhaps nothing would progress beyond coldness and paleness. After all, that girl had died over two years ago, and she’d looked plenty able when she’d broken through his window.
He heaved a bitter laugh and turned away from the glass.
Normal. Act normal! He paused, practicing his manual breathing one last time, before stepping out into the hall.
****
Rain pattered on Merril’s tartan umbrella, sliding off and binding her and Mason in a wet circle. It was a gray, misty morning. He walked quickly to keep pace while his eyes dragged on the sidewalk below.
Merril frowned. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”
Mason shook his head.
He’d ended up missing breakfast. Hell, he hadn’t even had time to pack a lunch. But it didn’t matter – he wouldn’t be able to hold anything down. Even the thought of food made his stomach clench.
“Come on, I’ll even give you my Cheetos!” She grinned. “I snuck a bag from the cupboard when Martin wasn’t looking. Well, I won’t give you all of it, but we can split!”
“No.” He didn’t look up. “Keep your lunch. I’m fine.”
She stared for a while, trying to catch his eye. When she failed, her hand reached for his. Soft, warm fingers brushed against his wrist before he flinched away and tucked it in his pocket. He couldn’t let her feel how cold it was. She blinked, just staring while her hand returned to her side.
“Sorry.” He started, before remembering how much she hated empty apologies. “It’s, uh…” He licked his lips and fell silent, throat clenching so tightly it was hard to swallow the air he needed to speak. It didn’t matter – it wasn’t like he could tell her either way. It felt strange, keeping secrets from the one person he shared everything with.
Her eyes dimmed with disappointment. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m fine!” He assured, almost too quickly. “Just…tired, that’s all.”
A brief silence slipped over them and Merril’s eyes returned to the road.
“T-thanks, though.” He stammered, afraid he’d put her out. “And for sharing the umbrella. I, err…can’t imagine where I left mine.”
“Hmm.” She passed him a mischievous smirk. “Well, you are quite the bother, and we’re going to be even later if you keep dragging your feet. We’ll have to stop at the store on the way home and pick another up for you. Can’t have you holding me back.”
He tried to smile. “Y-yeah.”
Good. He could grab something to clean his carpet with while he was at it. In the meantime, he could only hope Martin didn’t go in his room for any reason. He could come up with an excuse for the broken window, but for the macabre mess on the floor, not so much. He grimaced at the thought.
Neither Merril nor Martin seemed to notice anything odd aside from his own evasiveness, but he’d flown out the door without time for idle chatter. It was going to be harder when he arrived home with a handful of hours left in the day. At least Martin allowed them to spend their time and meals in their rooms. His brother had abandoned his mother’s tradition of eating at the table several years ago. If he could just make it through the school day…
“Oh!”
He startled, stopping beside Merril as she smiled at the sky. “It stopped raining! Looks like we might have a clear day after all.”
Mason let his eyes follow hers. A tint of blue peered out between monochrome clouds and brightened the dull horizon. Something else seeped through, too – the sun.
He tensed. Vampires and sunlight weren’t supposed to mix well, were they? He hesitated, almost afraid it would swelter or melt away to ash, before holding out a hand, away from the umbrella’s shade.
Nothing happened. The sun felt comfortably warm against his cold skin.
Heh. How foolish. This was still reality, not one of his fantasy films. He couldn’t help a small chuckle.
“Eh?” Merril tilted her head.
“Nothing.” Mason smiled. “It’s just nice to finally see some sun again.”
****
A new set of faces flashed across the projector and surveyed the class for the last time. Four more dead. Three more missing.
Merril leaned in closer from her seat to his left, whispering. “Was it this bad all week?”
Mason nodded silently and chewed on a pen already dented with tooth-marks from months past. It was a bad habit, and one that tended to act up when anxious. A fang nearly tore off the plastic tip before he quickly reminded himself to keep his mouth closed.
…He could’ve easily been up there, just one more image on the projector.
“Hmm.” She tilted her head just slightly as she watched the photos. “A couple of them were from this class, weren’t they?”
He answered with another nod.
Merril was as much a recluse as he was. She was out sick a lot, but when Martin forced her to class, she kept to herself. Or rather, he and Merril kept to themselves. Perhaps that was why they were so close – both at home and in class, all they really had was each other.
****
Mason clenched the edge of the toilet seat and held his head over the bowl. He retched, sending the barely digested contents of that afternoon’s lunch back up his throat. Acid spilled from his lurching stomach.
It finally started to subside after he forced down a full gasp of air, dry heaving fading into tired tremors. He wiped the corner of his mouth and left a yellowed stain on the sleeve of his t-shirt.
He’d finally taken up Merril’s offer to share a few bites of her lunch. It hadn’t gone well.
He flushed the toilet with his boot and left the stall, cursing beneath his breath. He was starting to feel hungry now, but… He shook his head, lumbering over to the sink to wash his hands. The reflection in the mirror caught his eye, and he gazed at the glass image of himself for the second time that day. His face was almost as white as his shirt. It was only a matter of time before someone said something.
A shadow shuffled beneath the crack of a stall door, the subtle motion captured in the mirror. He jumped. Was someone there? He hadn’t noticed anyone.
He watched for a while, somehow uneasy, before shrugging the thought away. Whether someone was there or not, it was a public restroom. It didn’t matter.
He was drying off his hands when the bathroom door moaned open. A boy with reddish hair and freckles padded straight for the sink. He took the basin a few spaces down, busying himself with washing his hands. The mirror exposed his blue eyes. They
were watching the glass, not the bowl.
A nervous prickle bit the back of Mason’s neck. He tossed the paper towel and made for the door before looking over his shoulder. The red-head still busily scrubbed his hands, and the other stall remained silent. He was probably just imagining things. He was on almost too high alert that morning.
He briefly considered staying and trying to make use of the facilities. It was well passed noon now, and he hadn’t pissed since he’d cleaned out the bathrooms yesterday evening. That was, well, generally a bad sign, wasn’t it? Given the mess on his bedroom floor and him not holding anything down all morning, though, perhaps it wasn’t surprising.
He shoved the door away with his shoulder and returned to the hall. He’d run off without having time to say anything when his stomach lurched, so Merril was probably worried.
Even during lunch-hour, the corridors were vastly empty – his ears easily caught the creak of the bathroom door opening. He looked back to see a boy he hadn’t noticed before emerge.
Eh? He craned his neck for a better look. So there had been someone in the stall after all?
A second boy followed – the one with red hair. Mason watched them until the first raised brown eyes to meet his.
He shivered and turned away, hurrying down the hall with quickened steps. Separate footfalls fell in line behind his. It seemed that was happening way too often recently. He just kept walking, refusing to give into his paranoia.
…He was just imagining things, right? They hadn’t actually been spying on him in the bathroom. They weren’t actually following him. They weren’t actually staring into the back of his head. Were they?
He glanced back one last time, unable to resist. They were still there. Something twitched, but he brushed it off. Perhaps they were simply going to the same place he was. He stopped by a window, feigning interest in something outside and waiting to see if they’d walk passed.
They didn’t. They paused a few moments later, sparing each other glances. They stood close and mumbled, as if they’d stopped to chat, but they didn’t seem to be saying much.
