Six hours at The Rusty Nail. Six hours of cheap whiskey and Frank behind the bar pretending to care. Frank knew the equation in my head. Sarah’s life plus her death equaled another drink. My hand was already lifting the glass.
Three blocks from my apartment, the street tilted sideways. My left leg dragged on the pavement. Same leg that went numb when they called about Sarah. Same leg that tingles under hot shower water at 3 AM when the memories won’t quit.
Phone buzzed against my thigh. My sister’s name on the cracked screen. I’d thrown it against the bathroom wall after the funeral. Kept using it anyway. Answered every damn call.
[Storage unit wants money. Or they toss her things. Don’t make me handle it, Cain.]
Sarah had been dead three months. Twenty-two years old. A reckless driver on a wet road. Her last text came too late to matter.
Another buzz immediately followed the first.
[Mom’s off the rails. Asking for Sarah. Cleaned her room for her homecoming. Get over here.]
I stopped under a streetlight. Leaves spiraled down in perfect patterns. Sarah used to press leaves between encyclopedia pages. Said she was saving their stories before they faded. I counted the spirals. Seven. Thirteen. Twenty-one. The world kept spinning.
My bladder screamed. Fuck it. I unzipped right there. Counted my breaths. One. Two. Three. Inhale four. Hold seven… Exhale eight. Sarah taught me that after Dad left. Lost count at five.
Phone buzzed against my wet thigh. Fumbled it out.
[Cain fyi funeral home nagging unpaid bill again.]
The whiskey backed up into my throat. Acid and regret. I swallowed it back down. Note to self: Take Omeprazole at home.
Sarah’s face crowded my head—her laugh echoing, that nervous hair flip. The scar above her eyebrow from our mountain bike race downhill. Twenty-two years gone because some asshole couldn’t keep his hands off his phone. My grip tightened around the phone until the plastic creaked. Same as when I was six and crushed that juice box across Mom’s kitchen.
I leaned against the hedge. Breath fogged in the cold air. Each exhale vanished too quickly.
The hedge shivered without wind. Not possible. I blinked hard. The streetlight flickered. My pulse hammered in my throat.
A tendril, copper-bright, or maybe just a streetlamp reflection in a puddle of piss, seemed to move from the crack. DTs. Three days without real sleep. I blinked. It was still there, wrapping my wrist. Cold. Real or not, it held on.
More tendrils uncoiled from hedge, gutter, cracks in concrete. They made a sound like tearing paper. One wrapped my wrist before I could pull back. Cold. Stronger than Officer Reyes who arrested me after Sarah’s funeral. It pulsed against my skin. Synced with my heartbeat.
“Get off me!” My voice slurred useless. Another tendril seized my other wrist. Then my ankles. I lay spread-eagle on asphalt. Stared up at stars. The Big Dipper clear in the sky. Not that drunk then. Not possible.
The hedge parted like theater curtains. Darkness behind pulsed the same rhythm as the tendrils. Steam engine smell hit me. Wet soil. Crushed mint. Dad’s workshop fire from when I was twelve.
The tendrils lifted me. Legs dangled. Left foot numb and heavy. Above me, the darkness clicked like insect jaws. I screamed but the street stayed empty. Voice died in my throat like it did at Sarah’s funeral after the second whiskey.
Colors bled at the edges of my vision. Streetlight yellow melted into hedge green melted into copper tendrils. Tasted purple on my tongue. Heard the color of Sarah’s laugh. The sidewalk dissolved beneath my shoes. Falling upward into the hedge’s maw, counting backward from ten, gripping the numbers like a lifeline as physics forgot its name.
Silence.
Landed on smooth gray floor curving upward to walls shaped like a goddamn seed pod. Whiskey vomit disappeared before hitting the ground. Absorbed. Like everything else here.
No corners. No ceiling tiles to count. No streetlights. My breath came shallow and fast. Sweat beaded on my upper lip despite the cold. Panic rising like epinephrine hitting a dead heart. Not real. DTs finally caught up. Three days without real sleep. That’s all.
My left hand trembled against the floor. The hand that used to find pulses when no one else could. The hand that held Sarah’s when the doctor said “time of death.” That same tremor now. The one I couldn’t control no matter how many breaths I counted.
I pressed palms flat against the floor. Cool. Seamless. Counted the curves in the wall anyway. Seven major arcs. Thirteen minor ones. Numbers anchor me. Must be Reyes playing a shitty joke. Or Frank slipped something stronger in my last drink.
A section of wall rippled like muscle under skin.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay. Psych break. Happens to paramedics. Happened to Chen last year after that apartment fire.” I dug fingernails into the floor. Real sensation. Real pain. “Not real. Not fucking real.”
The wall parted.
Seven-foot figure stood there. Bark-like skin like a diseased tree in the lot behind my apartment. Face shifting like living wood. Three-fingered hand holding glowing blades.
At my feet, a small creature trembled. Furred. Blue fluid seeped from its side. Made a sound like wind through dry reeds. Its breath hitched on every third inhale. Just like Sarah’s did at the end.
The alien tilted its head. Memories flooded my skull. Not real. Not real. Not—
My paramedic instincts kicked in before the whiskey could smother them. Pressure point. Elevate the wound. Find the source. Years of training screaming through the alcohol fog. I reached toward its side, forgetting where I was, who I was. For a moment I was back in the ambulance, back in my sister’s hospital room, back in the place where I could still fix things.
Sarah on a hospital bed. Machines flatlining. That hollow ache after the last breath. The doctor saying “time of death” while Mom’s wail cut through the curtain.
End suffering, the image whispered. Mercy.
Blue fluid dripped from the creature’s wound.
My hand reached for the blade.
White light glared amid humming machines and disinfectant reek.
I reached for the coffee cup on the bedside table.
The thing breathed in hitches. In. Out. Pause. Just like Sarah at the end. The blade was warm. I knew what came next. The silence after. I picked it up.