K. M. DouceLLC

​

I

“I’m lucid. This is A dream. I know it,” Kassandra Blake shouts her declaration to the sky and takes off flying. “Show me something I’ve never seen, Oh lord of the dreams!” She glides above the city lights, twirling and diving, flying like superman across a kaleidoscope sky. 

Kassy’s not quite 15 yet, but reading and dreaming have been her vibe for as long as she can remember. She fancies herself a savant of sorts, a prodigy of lucid dreaming. She has ambitious experiments in mind for tonight. She read somewhere that if you direct questions or requests to the source behind the dream, you can often experience unexpected results and even visit unchartered territory; which some say reaches beyond your own mind to a destination where yours can meet with the minds of others. 

With her declaration of lucidity and request to experience the unknown, Kassy hitches a ride through the expansive breaches of her psyche to the farthest depths of the universe. She surrenders to the night and can’t remember ever feeling more alive.

She mingles amongst the cosmos, eager for an enlightening experience, taking care to control her emotions lest she lose her precious lucidity tonight. 

The collective awareness has lessons for her, and she’s stoked she’s made it to the venue with her awareness intact. 

She swirls and loops and swims and spins and rides the current of time timelessly. She marvels at the galaxy that unfolds before her eyes. The stars dance, swirl, and morph into elaborate symbols and constellations, and Kassy rips through like a hurricane, casting stardust across the ages.

She feels an effortless connection with everything that ever was and ever will be. A peaceful, infinite awareness floods her senses, her being, and mounts to a wondrous exhilaration that nearly collapses the dream. 

Kassy, not ready to relinquish her precious awareness in the unconscious realm, decides to drop in on her best friend, Ravyn, to reclaim some control over her dreamscape.

It takes little more than a thought before she’s found the right rooftop and perched herself at Ravyn’s bedroom window. She peeks inside.

Ravyn’s sprawled across the bed like sleep surprised her when she walked in the room. Fully clothed. TV blaring. She didn’t go to sleep. Sleep came to her, and she’s out cold.

Kassy only has to intend it, and immediately she’s sitting on Ravyn’s bed. 

She watches her friends breathe. Watches her sleep. She tries to rouse her. “Don’t you wanna fly with me?” But, Ravyn’s peace is unbreakable. 

Kassy makes funny faces and even gives Ravyn a wet-willy. No dice. She pulls the covers off the bed, tossing them up into the air where they float around the room as if in outer space. When jumping on the bed singing, “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful,” at the top of her lungs doesn’t wake Ravyn, Kassy let’s go. She shrugs, “Maybe next time, love.” 

She crouches down gives Ravyn a kiss on the cheek and prepares to do a backflip dismount off the bed. 

Just before she springs up for her aerial, her peripheral catches a glimpse of her reflection through the vanity mirror, summoning her over with a head tilt.

The dream architect isn’t finished playing, and Kassy’s break did just the trick. She’s in complete control of her emotions. She’s lucid. She’s ready. She’s all in.

She approaches the mirror and realizes that her reflection is actually walking away from her. Not only that, but she appears to be growing older the farther away she gets. 

Kassy senses that time is short and decides to take a running leap through the mirror. She catches up with her reflection all at once and in every regard. She’s awestruck by the changes that have come over her.

She suddenly and entirely looks and feels like she’s nearer her twenty-fifth birthday than her fifteenth. She feels wiser, fuller, more solid in her being. Her smile feels stronger, surer, more genuine somehow. Her hair, healthier, longer, stronger. She stands taller and walks with a more steady, confident stride. Kassy no longer suits her persona, but strangely Kassandra won’t do either. 

To be sure, She calls to her personified reflection who has wasted no time waiting on her and is now leading her by nearly a block; “Aye, Blake.” Her Other pauses and turns to look. 

“Wait, up.”

Blake catches back up with herself just as she enters a modest, yet expertly decorated domicile. There’s not an abundance of furniture nor décor, but there are so many books that Blake’s head swoons as she wanders around the room taking it all in. She floats up to the highest shelf that must be nine stories high and finds a first edition copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll; her childhood favorite, still in her top three of all time. 

Blake grabs the book, opens it, and takes a gentle whiff. She’s always loved the smell of an good old book. The aroma excites her favorite part of her psyche. Like Pavlov’s dogs, her inner bookworm’s mouth begins to salivate.

She floats down to a huge, comfy chair and wiggles down into the cushion. The furniture in this place is perfect, old, solid, expertly crafted. The lighting’s warm, lovely, and inviting due in part to the smoldering fire in the cast iron, wood burning stove glowing in the corner. Its burnt orange glow gives a toasty vibe like a room flooded with light of a summer sunset. Blake could stay here forever.

Blake snuggles up in the most comfortable chair she’s ever been in and cracks open the book. She doesn’t read a word before she’s back on her feet, mouth waterin’, belly talkin’, feet shufflin’ directly towards the unmistakable aroma of seafood gumbo on the boil. 

She staggers sleepily to a kitchen that’s bigger in and of itself than the entire remainder of the house. It’s huge, but still very homey, quite welcoming. 

Blake slides her palm along the length of the stone bar countertop. Her behind finds a stool. She settles into the cushy seat and props her elbows up on the counter, chin on fists. There’s an older woman, maybe in her late seventies, preparing a meal for quite a few with ease. 

“Nay-nay,” Blake whispers to herself. She smiles with a nostalgia she can’t fully comprehend. The woman seems so familiar. So much so that Blake has a name for her, but not much else aside from a genuine if not inexplicable affection. Blake can’t seem to find the awareness of who this woman is, but she knows she loves her and can’t wait to taste what’s in that pot. 

She watches attentively as the grandmother goes about her work. She washes the veggies in the colander, turns, and glides across the stone kitchen floor with a grace uncommon in women less than half her age. Her confident movements are wondrous to watch, her artfully, soulfully articulate handling of culinary artifacts feels like art. 

Blake senses a familiarity in the old woman’s firm yet gentle grip of the knife as she effortlessly chops piles of onions and bell pepper and celery and garlic. She’s been doing this for lifetimes, and still loves it. There’s something majestic in the way the blade’s handle balances just right in her fingertips’ nimble grip, facilitating those surgically swift movements.

Blake looks down at her own hands. For a moment she feels stuck, perplexed. Her head tilts like a puppy trying to understand its human. Then it re-dawns on her; “This is a dream. Damn, it’s been so long I forgot.” When Blake looks down at her hands again, they’re covered in blood. “Huh. That’s interesting.”  

She turns to the woman and presents her hands for inspection. “Nay-nay?” The grandmother stirs her pot, blows the spoon, and tastes her rue. “Yea, Bae?” She smacks her lips several times and scrunches her nose up.

“What’s this mean?” 

The old woman puzzles at Blake’s outstretched hands for a moment. 

Blake glances over into the enormous pot and notices there’s a large, mean looking fish, maybe a beta, swimming around in the gumbo like it’s a fishbowl. Blake opens her mouth to inquire about the fish but stops herself from interrupting the answer to the question she just asked. 

Instead, she smiles and smells her hands. She doesn’t appreciate the stench, evidenced by her pinched expression and shaking head.

“Well, Suga, I believe that’s-” 

“Nay-nay?” The woman’s answer is interrupted any way.

“Is that Kingston?”

“Yes, ma’am.” A young boy, probably around four, struts in from behind Blake. She twirls around at the sound of his voice and finishes the three-sixty as he strides by with the swag of a grown man, his poise and confidence ages beyond his years.

 “Grab Nay-nay that file` from the freezer, Bae.” Kingston retrieves a jar of fine green powder from the freezer. 

“You makes this, huh, Nay-nay?” He totes the jar in both hands across the kitchen and hands it over. When his grandmother relieves him of the burden, he breathes a sigh of relief and swipes his brow with the back of his hand. 

Blake chuckles at his demeanor. He jumps up onto a barstool beside her and stands in it to watch Nay-nay do her thing.

“Um-hum. My daddy, your Paw Paw, he gave me dat sassafras tree-”

“That one?” They both gesture toward the same tree out in the yard, her with her head and eyebrows, him with his arm out stretched until the tip of his tiny finger touches the window glass. Blake smiles warmly.

“Um-hum. It was a gift from your grandfather before he passed. God rest his soul. I been makin my file`, well er’body file` er’since then.”

“That’s why you makes the best gumbo?”

“You think it’s the best?” Her eyes light up with the compliment.

“Oh, yea.” Something in his answer, that personality, his attitude, the way his head sways with his response, the subtle bass in his little voice. That kid has an old soul. It’s so familiar. He’s been here before. Nay-nay and Blake both get a kick out of his wit. 

“Well thank you, baby.” Nay-nay kisses the boy’s forehead. Now what can Nay-nay do for ya’, suga?”

Their gentle love carries Blake on a wave from this dream to another. She drifts down a neighborhood street in the dead of night. 

It’s dark, calm, quiet, still. Blake notices a distinctive, pungent odor in the air she’d recognize anywhere, but can’t tell where it’s coming from. 

If there’s smoke, she can’t see it.

She wanders up to a home. A young man dressed in very fashionable formal attire sways slowly on a gliding swing, his foot tapping out a rhythmic beat. He sips whisky neat from a rocks glass and smokes a blunt. 

Blake notices him, squeals, “Vrail,” shoots up the steps, and hops up into his arms from the top one.

The young man jumps to his feet, and in a half stride, scoops Blake up in his arms and spins her around in a huge bear hug. She giggles like a little girl. He laughs and smothers her face with kisses. 

“How’s my baby sister doin?”

“What are you doing here?” Vrail sets her down to catch her breath and balance. He resumes his position on the glider and motions for Blake to sit beside him. He hits the blunt and relaxes, head back, eyes bobbin’, saturating the atmosphere with exhaled smoke. He adjusts his dreadlocks and smiles at his baby sister through a thickening cloud. 

Blake loves watching the smoke move. She watches it bellow and issue from Vrail’s mouth and nostrils and engulf his face, head, and torso. She gawks with curious intrigue, taking note of everything the smoke touches. It weaves through Vrail’s dreads and intermingles with his facial hair. 

She can almost feel what it feels. 

The smoke grows and flows and creeps across the floor and seeps into the cracks. It slithers up the walls and weaves through the shutters’ slats. Blake feels almost lifted herself, swathed in indica smoke. She begins to giggle. 

She catches it before it gets out of control and clears her throat. She tries to sound serious for a second.

“So, the shutters don’t shut?”

“Nope.”

“So they’re nothings.” A chuckle slips out.

“They’re open.” The lack of expression in Vrail’s reply strikes Blake as hilarious. She gets weak with laughter. Tears stream down her cheeks, and she tries to catch her breath between scattered chuckles. 

Vrail stands up, stretches his legs a bit, and rubs his neck. He squints down the road at something Blake can’t see yet. She stands up beside him to get a look at what he’s seeing.

“Where does that bridge lead?

“The other side.”

Blake puzzles at the absent look in Vrail’s eyes. She looks back at the bridge.

“Can we go?”

“When it’s time, you’ll know.”

Vrail sits back down, hits the blunt, and passes it to Blake. She slouches down beside him. She hits it and chokes immediately. Vrail chuckles.

“I’m being promoted soon, you know.” She doesn’t know. In fact, she has no idea what he’s talking about, but she can’t stop coughing enough to speak yet. Vrail chuckles. “They all love you once you’re gone, I hear.” Blake wants to ask what he’s talking about, 

but she can’t catch the cough. Vrail just laughs until she settles down to giggling off and on to herself. Then he laughs even harder. He offers her a swallow of his whisky. She takes it and coughs until her eyes pour tears this time. 

The choking gives way to undying laughter. They laugh and linger together for a good minute until Blake notices a large dog, like a black wolf, stalking down the dark, desolate street. 

She marvels at its flexing muscles and glistening coat, jet black with a crimson aura. There’s something of a regal shimmer about the beast as it approaches the porch, silently staring Vrail dead in his eyes. 

Blake follows the dog’s stare to Vrail’s unflinching grin. He sips his whisky, hits the blunt, and passes it. Blake hits it and stares at the intriguing creature. 

She exhales a cloud of smoke in the dog’s direction, and all at once, the dog and Vrail take off running. 

The dog bounds full tilt down the street into the pitch-black darkness. 

Vrail darts into the house. 

Blake follows Vrail, perplexed but intensely curious. 

An unpleasant odor greets Blake at the threshold like a bulldozer at a bar mitzvah, giving her more than a moment of pause. She holds her breath to avoid her gag reflex and advances into the eerie, dark, and dusty interior. It appears to have been abandoned years before. A thick layer of dust covers all surfaces, the floors, furniture, fixtures, appliances, everything. Blake doesn’t know the house, nor does she like the feelings it gives her. The hall stretches and twists in her vision, so she tries to spin to stabilize the dream, but that makes things worse. Now she’s woozy. She leans, more like stumbles, nearly falls really, through a door that leads down to the basement. She clumsily staggers down the stairs and sits on the last step, resting her head on her knees.

She breathes slowly and deeply, her eyes heavy and kind of sore. They burn a little under the lids like she has a high fever or something.

She scans the empty room with her swaying head and stinging eyes. It’s empty aside from a vanity and little chaise set square in the middle. Blake stares at it for a while; the heavy, antique, hardwood mirror; the cheesy princess paint job that she tried to peel off in the back; that sturdy bench, stool, chair thing with the fancy velvet cushion that no one had a name for, but everyone loved to longue on, like a chaise, but short. This vanity is hers, but this is not her room, not her house, and not her basement. 

She feels woozy again. The room starts to spin so she shakes her head again, and again, takes a couple of deep breaths. 

No use. Her mouth starts to water, salty, warm. “Oh, God.” 

She covers her mouth, but the vomit gushes out anyway. 

Onto the hardwood floor, Blake spews… fish? 

Guppies, goldfish, and a beta like the one in the gumbo; they swim along in the grooves between slats. Their fins flick and tickle Blake’s toes as they weave between them and finally disappear through the cracks in the floor.

Blake slumps down into the chaise. The reflection in the mirror is so bright, she has to cover her eyes. She lays her head down on the cool, polished surface of the vanity. 

The cold feels good on her face. 

She breathes steadily, deeply. 

Her head hurts. 

Bad. 

It’s pounding in fact.

What kinda’ dream?

How long’s this shit gonna’ last anyway? 

“As long as it takes.” Vrail startles Blake up right. Her eyes hurt. He smirks in the mirror, leans with one hand on Blake’s shoulder, and retrieves something from the vanity drawer.

Blake likes his hand there. It’s soothing, lovely.

He produces a straight razor; a beautiful antique, heavy and sharp.

“What’s that for?”

“Your face.”  

His hand strokes her cheek gently.

Blake stares at her reflection for a moment then squints at Vrail’s smirk. He offers her the razor. “Go ahead. It really only hurts at first.”

Blake studies the blade but can’t decide what it is that she’s looking at. Her lucidity is waning.

“Is this a dream?”

“As much as any other.”

Blake nods her understanding and grabs the razor. Vrail stands behind her, both hands on her shoulders, watching in the mirror with delightful anticipation.

Blake folds her ear back and places the razor in the crevice behind it. 

She stops.

“You’re not my brother.” 

No attitude. No apologies. No hard feelings. Just facts.

Vrail grunts and vanishes.

Blake slowly stands and turns. She’s bombarded by a scene of horrific violence. Her jaw drops, literally. 

The vanity mirror is starred, shattered, spattered with and nearly floating in soppy, frothy blood, as if someone’s head was shoved through it, and they bled out right there. 

A thick, tacky slick of coagulated blood coats the floor and the vanity surface top. Sticky sickles drip from the corners to the floor and onto the wobbly, crooked, and cracked chaise. When her eyes meet with those of the partially decomposed body, festering on a filthy old mattress in the corner, her legs lose the nerve to hold her, and the chaise nearly collapses under her weight.

Like a looky-loo passing a train wreck, she struggles to but can’t look away. Flies crawl across his glassy eyeballs, swollen, blistered lips, and slimy, black tongue. The smell plows her like a Mack truck. She drops to her hands and knees and gets sick again. 

More fish. They flip and smack around in the sticky gore, spattering Blake’s face with a clumpy, icky muck.

Turning her back on the bloating body, Blake climbs back onto the bench.

She clutches the vanity with all of her might as if she believes that might stop the room from spinning. 

It doesn’t. 

She steadies herself, but the shock of seeing her own reflection almost knocks her back to the ground.

She looks like she was beaten about the head with, well, a room, I guess. Or at least its walls, its floors, and all of its contents. Both eyes are black. Her nose, broken and bleeding. There’s a hole in her upper lip big enough to stick the tip of her tongue through. Her left eye socket is crushed. She can feel the bone fragments grinding beneath the skin when she palpates the saggy, lumpy sack of gore that was once her cheekbone. The back of her head is slightly caved in at the base on the right side, just above the neck. The stain of a blood cascade covers her back and neck. In fact, blood has crept into her every crevice. When she blinks, her eyelids smack.

“The fuck happened to me?”

Blake hears the sounds of that fat dead guy struggling to his feet. She catches his reflection in the mirror as he stands fully upright. She turns just as she’s tackled out of the chaise and slammed into the vanity. 

​

II

 

Kassy wakes up hollering and fighting the covers. She jumps to her feet and hits the lights. It takes her a minute or two to catch her breath, doubled over, head shaking, sweating and struggling to fill her lungs with air.

Thank God that’s over. Her entire body shakes, but her hands most notably. 

How long was that dream?

Felt like forever.

She snatches her dream journal up off the floor where she apparently flung it in her effort to wake-

Kassy stops dead in her tracks at the sight of her reflection in the blood-spattered vanity. 

It’s Blake’s; battered, bruised, and bleeding.

“Holy, fuck. Is this still a dream?”

Blake holds her nose but breathes freely.

“I am still dreaming.”

Blake plunges her entire arm through the broken mirror and manhandles her stammering doppelganger.

“Wake up! Enough is enough!”

Blake knows that the fastest way to collapse a dream is through extreme emotion, so she lets loose. She hollers at the top of her lungs, throws things across the room, bangs her fists against the walls, flips the bed, and finally bears down on her reflection intent on only one thing, waking up. 

Still, she dreams.

Exhausted from her utterly useless temper tantrum, Blake collapses, once again, into the vanity chaise. She bounces her head rhythmically on the heirloom, tapping out a beat that she can’t quite place, but reminds her of Vrail. 

And just like that, he’s there, sitting on the edge of her bed, rollin’ a blunt, tapping out the same beat with his foot. He smiles from ear to ear when Blake looks up.

“Damn, baby girl.” His expression and body language convey a sincere empathy that Blake appreciates. Her heart is comforted by Vrail’s presence. 

“Your face is makin’ my head hurt. Definitely makin’ my heart hurt. You know, if you do the work…” he motions to the straight razor on the vanity with a lip and eyebrow point. He grimaces at her pitiful complexion over the blunt as he seals the seam with his tongue and fingertips, “…you truly do your part; the pain never returns. You’re too beautiful for all those bruises, baby girl. You gotta’ own the anguish, embrace the process. Surrender to it. Look dead in the face, that which you fear the most and give it hell. There’s nothing here to fear, shorty.”

Blake stares at her reflection in the mirror. She sees something unfamiliar in her eyes. Something sinister. Something unkind. She studies her face, her imperfections, her idiosyncrasies. She dreads the contents of her memories, but she swallows her fear and searches her eyes for the details she’s terrified to remember. 

The smell of his hand.

Whose hand? She can’t remember, but the smell, when he put his hand over her mouth to stop her from screaming, from yelling; from speaking. From breathing. 

His hand. It smelled like…like metal, like money, like copper, like blood; and she couldn’t escape it, and it was hers, her blood. All of it or most of it, he had dug it out of her. She remembered the digging, the nauseating digging. His fist, digging, clawing, grabbing, pawing. 

FUCK!!! YOU!!! 

(She’s loose again. The savage within; she remembers and she’s here and she’s relinquished her fear and she’s starving and aching for something to kill.) 

The voice comes from a place so deep within that it shakes the entirety of eternity. Something opens up and the totality of rage itself is personified in Blake. At that moment she becomes rage and lets loose on a rampage. 

She explodes on the vanity, kicking, punching, scratching clawing. Her bloody palms and fists smear and fling blood everywhere. She growls and screams and hollers and curses. She lifts the chaise up over her head and smashes it over and over and over again into the floor, the wall, the bed, the vanity. 

Her only intent is destruction, and she obliterates the entire universe, only to find that a moment later it’s been restored to pristine condition for her to completely annihilate again, and again, and again. Her rage, it seems, is never spent. It’s infinite and all-encompassing.

Eventually though, after hours or days or lifetimes of destroying everything she can get her hands on, Blake’s anger concedes to an overwhelming sorrow surpassing any depth of despair she’s ever sunk to. She melts into the floor engulfed in the heaviest anguish her soul could even imagine to suffer. Her breath is stolen from her lungs and sorrow bleeds from her ears and tear ducts. Her heart dies and revives with every beat only to die again a thousand times.

“What? Why? Me?”

Each word is separate, deliberate, difficult to articulate. Each syllable takes its own full breath and then some. Blake’s chest heaves forcefully and lifts her up off her feet. Only the tippy tips of her toes scrape the floor as her sorrow pulls her across the room and down a dark, twisting, kaleidoscope of a hallway. 

She’s paralyzed and can only watch the horrors that pass before her eyes beyond every threshold she’s dragged passed. She prays silently and relentlessly for each to be the last. 

Her parched, bloody lips barely part, “Please,” she pleads.

Pain courses through her veins. It’s all she can see, all she can smell, all she can be. Every scene she sees is hers. The pain is relived in her being with each tableau she beholds. All of the times, all of the ways, all of the nights, all of the days. Endlessly imaginative, clever in their sadism, Blake’s memories need no help in tormenting her. She remembers.

Finally, the hallway leads into the basement.

Into the basement. 

Into the dark, grimy, blood-drenched basement. 

The stench, she can taste it. It abates the sorrow temporarily.

She prays it leaves her with peace.

She breathes.

She prays.

She breathes.

She pulls herself up from her knees and finds the familiar vanity chaise. 

She stares blankly at her darkening image in the mirror. A surge of loneliness brings her to full lucidity. “Why… won’t this dream end?” She goes limp in the rickety old stool, staring up into the ceiling, breathing.

Her arms dangle limply to the floor. The straight razor balances on her fingertips. Its weight is familiar and comforting in her loose grip.

She closes a sure fist around the handle and sits up straight. 

She looks into her eyes. She studies them for an answer, for a glimpse of her self. 

She folds her left ear over and touches the blade to her skin in the crevice just behind it but stops again. 

She squints into the darkness behind her reflection in the mirror. She’s sure there’s someone there. She watches indignantly as a dark figure emerges from the nothingness and approaches her from behind. 

He wears dark, expensive looking church clothes like a southern preacher. They make eye contact, Blake and this stranger, in the vanity mirror, and he places his hands on her shoulders. 

She smiles absently and something sinister slithers across her face. 

It quivers.

A flicker in her eyes signals the rage is returning. Her nostrils flare.

The man removes his suit jacket and hangs it neatly on the stair rail. He adjusts his suspenders and rolls up his sleeves. His jet-black hair is salted at the temples and a single white vein, like a lightning bolt, cuts directly down the center of his well-kept goatee.

The preacher man runs his fingers through Blake’s hair. 

She rolls away. 

He grabs a fist full of hair and scalp and lifts Blake to her feet. His lips brush against her ear, spittle mists her neck. “My pleasure can be yours, or your burden.” He slams her back onto the seat. 

“Start here.” He places her hand holding the blade behind her left ear.

He caresses her face, smirking. It sickens her, but she swallows her disgust. She swallows, but it wells up.

She swallows.

It wells.

Oh, well. Here comes the rage. The transition is absolute and instant. 

Blake spins around and pounces on the preacher’s chest. She straddles him, straight razor to his throat. His Adam’s apple taps the blade every time he swallows hard. And he just keeps swallowing. Hard. He’s nervous. 

“Nip tuck. Nip tuck,  your second chin, celebrity skin, your cocky, condescending grin.” Blake mocks him through a clenched, psychotic smile. She can’t help it. It feels good. She digs the tip of the blade into the soft tissue under his chins. 

With each syllable, she steadily increases the pressure on the razor. She delights at the first hint of blood, initially just a single drop squeezed from between the blade and flesh. 

The drop becomes a drip, that quickens to a stream. The blood pours before you know it, and Blake is bathing in it. 

She rises to her feet vindicated by the totality of her vengeance. She clears her throat and spits clean in the dead man’s eye. She kicks him, stomps him, and curses his name, whatever his name is. 

She stands and smolders, the rage finally draining to emptiness. Cold, dark emptiness. Crisp, lonely emptiness, but at least now she’ll be in peace.

“Will you?” 

Blake turns to find Vrail sprawled out on the vanity chaise. He stands and motions for her to sit. He takes a blunt from behind his ear, sparks it, and takes a monstrous hit, exhaling a lingering sea of smoke. He offers it to Blake with a smirk and head tilt. She declines with words, but as she gets comfy, she accepts the blunt; maybe because the hand off was so smooth and natural and she’s exhaustedly running on auto pilot. None the less, she takes a massive hit. She doesn’t choke at all this time, nor does she laugh. She just stares at her fucked up reflection in the fucked up vanity mirror.

She sighs.

Her eyes consult Vrail’s.

He smiles and hands her the straight razor.

She nods and takes it confidently.

She starts behind her left ear. The blood, warm and gooey and thick, streams down her neck and folds over her chest. 

She slices smoothly and expertly across her throat and up to her right ear. She digs her fingers under the flap of skin, and Vrail stops her, shaking his head, gently pulling her hand from her face. “Not yet. Do the top first.”

“Okay.” Pulling her fist away, “I got it.”

The blade stings when she starts again behind her left ear and slices up and across her hair line above her forehead. 

She loses her breath when the blood cascades over her face, for a moment, she thinks she’s awake. Her whole being shutters with the final stroke. A chill runs the length of her soul.

She digs her fingertips underneath her facial dermis. It’s warm, gooey, and extremely difficult to grip, keeps slipping through her pinch. 

“Don’t dig. Just…like this.”

Vrail demonstrates on himself. He grabs his forehead and slides his palm down his face. His stays intact. 

Blake’s slides off her scull like saucy cheese and toppings sliding off a hot slice of pizza, with ease.

She breathes deeply, stands strong and steady. At first, she refuses to look at her reflection, but Vrail persuades her.

“Look. Look at your eyes. I was always a little jealous of your eyes. Tell Ravyn I’m sorry I gave them to King. Don’t let her stay angry with me forever.”

“What?”

She turns to inquire more, but Vrail has disappeared once again.

All alone with absolutely no place at all to go, Blake looks at her reflection. Her eyes are her own. Her face, flawless. The bruises, the scars, the blood, the broken bones, all gone, all restored to her previous perfection. She turns again to find Vrail but he’s gone, gone, and so is the basement. So is the vanity. All that’s left is a palpable darkness. Blake’s eyes search for any sign of light. Her ears strain for the slightest hint of sound. There’s only silence.

Peaceful silence. 

Welcomed silence.

Wait.

There.

There’s something faint, but at first, it’s difficult to place. Maybe someone snoring in another room? 

Or is it her own breath, deep and regular? 

Maybe, but not just that. There’s something else. A mechanism or machine of sorts. A respirator? 

Yes, she’s sure of it. She’s breathing on a respirator. 

Her eyes blink slowly, open then shut again. Her brain only registers blurs of light and muffled sounds, scattered beeps, distant conversations, perhaps a TV.

Her eyes creep open and shut again. She wants to open her mouth, but it’s stuffed with tubes and shit. She tries to clear her parched throat, but only manages a forceful exhale that makes her ears pop and ring. 

That snaps her eyes open wide. She can feel her pupils contracting in the dim light. It hurts a little, like a cramp in her eyeball. She wants to feel it, touch it, her eye, her face, herself.

It takes a lifetime of wanting to before she’s able to bring her hand up to feel her face. She can hardly move at all at will. Her fingertips fumble over her lips and nose and eyes and ear. She tries to get her hand around to the back of her head, but she can’t get her arm up that far. It’s just not a feasible option at this time. 

So, she decides to search for the call button. Her eyes, still barely seeing little more than blurs of dark and darker spots, are of little help. Her hands do most of the searching, and they’re slow and feeble about it. 

There has to be a button around here somewhere. 

Where is everyone? Ravyn? Vrail? Mom? Dad? A nurse, an orderly, a security guard? 

There’s no way she’s here alone, but honestly, one or some or many of the smudges in her vision could be someone. She sure as shit can’t tell. Oh well, someone should notice eventually. All she knows is, she’s awake, and that’s not changing any time soon.

When Blake comes to again, she knows for sure there’s someone in the room with her. She’s pretty sure it’s Ravyn. She’s on the phone. 

Blake still can’t see too well even though the lighting is much better now than before, but she can hear and feel everything. 

There’s an energy pulling on her from the direction of Ravyn’s voice. 

“You can bring King here if you really have to go now, but you know I’m not leaving here until Vrail’s mom gets here…Correct, but that doesn’t change the facts…Just bring him here or call Sean to pick him up…Well I don’t know what to tell you…”

Blake can’t stand it. She wants to say Ravyn’s name, get her attention, but all she can do is breathe. She sighs, but it goes unnoticed. So, she touches her face. Her eyes, her nose, her lips. She tugs at the tubes taped to her mouth. She too weak to make any leeway, or even any noise. Frustration begins to boil in her brain.

“I don’t know what time she’ll get here, I. think…”

Blake can feel the recognition happening. Something’s clicking on the other side of the room.

“I’m gonna’ have to…” Blake lifts her hand as high as she can and lets it drop to the bed with a distinct thump.

“Oh my freakin’ gawd she’s awake. NURSE. NUUUURSE.”

Ravyn hollers out the door but doesn’t wait for a response. She’s at Blake’s side immediately. Laughing and crying and touching all over her. Blake grasps Ravyn’s arm clinging with all of her might to the only part of her she can reach. 

Blake’s emotions make it hard to breathe and the machines go crazy beeping, but Blake and Ravyn’s eye contact is staggeringly unwavering, unbreakable. 

A moment ago, Blake could see nearly nothing; now all she can see are those eyes. She missed those eyes. How long has it been since she’s seen them? Ravyn looks grown. At least a couple of years have passed. Blake wonders what year it is.

Blake’s eyes plead with Ravyn’s to never let them go. Ravyn’s promise, and they never do. They stay fixed on Blake’s, searching for all the time they’ve missed. “Where you been, love?” Blake’s only reply is to tighten her grip, swallow hard, and let the tears flow.

Finally, a nurse arrives. She quickly realizes she has no hope of getting between these two, and so she gets to work quieting monitors, checking vitals, and adjusting levels from the other side of the bed. When she’s satisfied with the chart, she pushes a button on the bed remote.

“I’m calling the doctor up to approve us to remove the tubes. Just try to relax for a few more minutes. It’ll feel much more comfortable to breathe that way until the doc removes the tubes. Hang in there, sweetie, it’s almost over.”

Blake still hasn’t taken her eyes off of Ravyn, but she nods her understanding and breathes easy. Her eyes smile, although her lips can’t yet. 

She’s so content with just being, that Blake hardly notices the doctor come in. She speaks to her for some time. Blake doesn’t look. She doesn’t listen. She scratches at the tubes taped to her face, and she waits.

“I think she really just wants the tubes out, Doc.” Ravyn winks. Blake swallows. The doctor gets to work on the tubes. She offers some standard apologies about the tape stinging when she pulls it or her hands being cold; Blake could not care less. This pain is meaningless, non-existent. The apologies are unnecessary. Blake is unbothered. 

It’s not until the doctor finally pulls the tubes from her throat and she gets to choking, that Blake fully acknowledges this as waking reality. She half cries half laughs at the thought. Ravyn understands Blake’s emotions, although she still hasn’t spoken a word. Still can’t.

Ravyn suddenly takes a call.

“Kassy’s awake.”

Blake cringes at the name. Ravyn notices.

“Ok, hurry up. I want him to meet her.”

Blake’s facial expression and head wobble ask, “Who’s that.”

Ravyn’s smile skillfully avoids the question.

Blake addresses the doctor for the first time. She tries to speak but can’t even whisper, so she resorts to hand gestures, pointing and squinting and shrugging. Why can’t she speak, and when will she be able to? 

Not sure if the doctor can understand her question, Blake’s eyes plead with Ravyn’s again.

“She wants to speak. Why can’t she?”

Blake nods agreement with the inquiry. Doc gives her spiel about time and rest and how everyone’s different.

*****

Blake sips tea from a large mug in her hospital bed. Ravyn sits on it with her and rubs her feet under the covers. Blake’s entire body aches. Her throat feels like she’s gargled the Mojave Desert. The tea helps a lot. She’s able to somewhat whisper and cry hoarsely, and she’s finally getting some answers.

“So how did they find me? Who found me, again?”

“Well, David went to the police and told them everything. He took them to the house to show them the bodies, his brother’s and yours. He thought you were dead, so everyone assumed you were. My dad had gotten there before they realized you were breathing. David testified against his stepdad at the trial. They only deliberated for like three hours. Those pictures were enough.”

“I can’t remember any of this. I mean, do I have amnesia, or have I been out for a really long time? How long have I been unconscious?”

“We’re twenty-two.”

“Damn.” Blake dwells on the thought, for a while. Too long. “What have I missed?”

Ravyn doesn’t know how to answer.

“So much.”

“Where’s Vrail?”

Ravyn stares.

“We have to wait for your parents to-”

“What do my parents have to do with it? Where’s my brother?”

“Your mom would really-”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“What? How? Why would you? What makes you say that?”

“Why else would you have to wait for my parents to come to tell me where he is? I know he’d never be in jail or anything, and nothing else would keep him from being right here when I woke up.”

Ravyn stares at Blake, speechless.

“Plus, I had a dream about him. He was talkin’ all weird and smokin’ hella’ weed like he was in heaven for real, and there was this weird thing with a black wolf and a bridge. I dunno, it’s all kinda mashed together right now, but he was so different.”

The look of utter amazement on Ravyn’s face confirms Blake’s prediction. She pushes a little further.

“Who’s King? And what do his eyes have to do with mine and you being pissed at Vrail?”

The blood leaves Ravyn’s face all at once, like a ghost that just realized she’s a ghost. Stupefied. 

Blake didn’t expect that reaction.

Ravyn’s cell vibrates on the table. It’s her brother, Sean. He and King are waiting on the elevator. They’ll be up in a minute. 

Sean, Ravyn’s big brother and Vrail’s best friend, strides into the room carrying the cutest baby boy Blake has ever seen.

Sean hands the baby to Ravyn and collapses onto the bed, smothering Blake in his arms.”Kass!”

Blake cringes at the name. She almost gets sick.

Ravyn notices.

Sean does not. “I can’t fuckin’ believe you’re awake. Shit you could even make it to Vr…”

Ravyn shushes Sean, but he’s already trailing off and starting to cry.

“Wait. Did it just happen? What happened?”

Sean gawks at Ravyn, “You told her?”

“Shut up. No. I haven’t said anything. She’s just accurate as hell right now, and you need to shut up.”

Sean sniffles and wipes his nose with his sleeve. “I’m a wreck, Kass.”

“Please, stop calling me that. That’s not me. I’ll never be that again.”

“K,” he smiles awkwardly. “What should I call you, then?”

“Blake.”

“Blake?” Sean and Ravyn respond in unison. “Blake it is.”

Blake reaches for the baby. 

She holds him in her lap and tickles his belly. His giggle is immediately her favorite sound ever. 

“And who is this?”

She nibbles on his belly. He tugs on her ears.

“This is King. Your nephew.”

“This is Vrail’s baby?”

“And mine.” Ravyn waits for Blake’s reaction. Blake is caught up in the universe behind her nephew’s eyes. 

King gurgles and mumbles with a rhythm that makes Blake sure he’s trying to communicate with her.

“What’s on your mind, nephew? Nay-nay’s all ears.