heartbeats that thundered like war drums, beating away in the other apartments and even out on the streets and farther. It was symphonic. The sweet metronomic music of blood.
She felt hungry. More hungry than she had ever been. A thick fog seemed to fill her head. She was being consumed by this primal hunger. She felt loosely in control. She was lunging headlong into the night. She felt inhuman. She felt powerful.
11.
When Zara awoke she felt different. She was no longer hung over, and felt pretty good, except for her neck, which still throbbed a little. The strange dream—or nightmare—seemed to linger as she lay in bed. She couldn’t remember the details of it, except for an image of a man, sitting in a chair and casually drinking wine. There was a battlefield too…wasn’t there? With thousands of spikes forming a forest all around him, and a red sky overhead…and…there was….was…then she’d lost it. The vague images vanished like a specter.
She looked at the clock and saw it was a little past 6 p.m. She had slept the day away. She got up and went to the bathroom to see why her neck was bothering her. When she looked in the mirror, she saw two tiny dots. She gasped and looked away. There was no way , she thought. This was some kind of gag. She looked again. They were still there.
Aside from her neck she felt fine. Better than fine. Invigorated. But her mind was spinning. She was undergoing something new and terrifying. She felt it deep inside of her and she was pretty sure it wasn’t covered in the Our Bodies Ourselves book she had gotten from her Aunt Maggie some birthdays ago. While she gingerly touched the markings on her neck, fighting off her growing panic, she suddenly noticed that her own thoughts were accompanied by other voices.
They were fleeting voices that whispered to her in some strange language. Sometimes many voices speaking in unison to form a sort of chant. When she tried to focus on the words they vanished, leaving her only with her confused thoughts. Am I going crazy? She wondered.
She went out to the living room and pulled open the curtains. The sun had just gone down, but was still casting a dark red light over the metropolitan skyline of Denver. Standing there, her skin seemed to itch. She closed the curtains and sat on the couch. She checked her phone. Eight messages from Twig. She didn’t feel like a lecture, so she just deleted them all . Wasn’t that what mom did whenever she woke up from a night of self-inflicted embarrassment? Pretend it didn’t happen?
Her paper was due the next day and she decided it might make her feel more normal if she did a normal thing like homework.
She went over to the small kitchen table where her laptop was still open, her history book beside it. The voices had all gone silent, except her own, which was busy laying out possible scenarios involving spider or snakebites. She typed a few lines to set the stage for the essay, and then began to leaf through the pages of her book for useful dates and names. She was making some progress when something caught her eye in the book—a painting of a man—and the room seemed to suddenly become airless.
In the painting, a man clad in ornate armor was impaling a semi-nude woman with a long spear through the chest. The woman was dressed in peasant rags, and appeared to be begging for her life to be spared. But clearly mercy was not being granted to her. In the background a gruesome battlefield smoldered under a blood red sun, and countless bodies were skewered on pikes, left to bake and rot as a warning. The man with the spear was grinning with utter satisfaction. In his other hand he held a long flowing war banner that blew in the wind. The words on the banner looked similar to those that were etched on the
She felt hungry. More hungry than she had ever been. A thick fog seemed to fill her head. She was being consumed by this primal hunger. She felt loosely in control. She was lunging headlong into the night. She felt inhuman. She felt powerful.
11.
When Zara awoke she felt different. She was no longer hung over, and felt pretty good, except for her neck, which still throbbed a little. The strange dream—or nightmare—seemed to linger as she lay in bed. She couldn’t remember the details of it, except for an image of a man, sitting in a chair and casually drinking wine. There was a battlefield too…wasn’t there? With thousands of spikes forming a forest all around him, and a red sky overhead…and…there was….was…then she’d lost it. The vague images vanished like a specter.
She looked at the clock and saw it was a little past 6 p.m. She had slept the day away. She got up and went to the bathroom to see why her neck was bothering her. When she looked in the mirror, she saw two tiny dots. She gasped and looked away. There was no way , she thought. This was some kind of gag. She looked again. They were still there.
Aside from her neck she felt fine. Better than fine. Invigorated. But her mind was spinning. She was undergoing something new and terrifying. She felt it deep inside of her and she was pretty sure it wasn’t covered in the Our Bodies Ourselves book she had gotten from her Aunt Maggie some birthdays ago. While she gingerly touched the markings on her neck, fighting off her growing panic, she suddenly noticed that her own thoughts were accompanied by other voices.
They were fleeting voices that whispered to her in some strange language. Sometimes many voices speaking in unison to form a sort of chant. When she tried to focus on the words they vanished, leaving her only with her confused thoughts. Am I going crazy? She wondered.
She went out to the living room and pulled open the curtains. The sun had just gone down, but was still casting a dark red light over the metropolitan skyline of Denver. Standing there, her skin seemed to itch. She closed the curtains and sat on the couch. She checked her phone. Eight messages from Twig. She didn’t feel like a lecture, so she just deleted them all . Wasn’t that what mom did whenever she woke up from a night of self-inflicted embarrassment? Pretend it didn’t happen?
Her paper was due the next day and she decided it might make her feel more normal if she did a normal thing like homework.
She went over to the small kitchen table where her laptop was still open, her history book beside it. The voices had all gone silent, except her own, which was busy laying out possible scenarios involving spider or snakebites. She typed a few lines to set the stage for the essay, and then began to leaf through the pages of her book for useful dates and names. She was making some progress when something caught her eye in the book—a painting of a man—and the room seemed to suddenly become airless.
In the painting, a man clad in ornate armor was impaling a semi-nude woman with a long spear through the chest. The woman was dressed in peasant rags, and appeared to be begging for her life to be spared. But clearly mercy was not being granted to her. In the background a gruesome battlefield smoldered under a blood red sun, and countless bodies were skewered on pikes, left to bake and rot as a warning. The man with the spear was grinning with utter satisfaction. In his other hand he held a long flowing war banner that blew in the wind. The words on the banner looked similar to those that were etched on the
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