As much as she knew that time was on their side --they had all of it in the world, if everything worked out to plan-- Rose couldn’t help but feel the same sort of urgency with Caleb as she would with the fleeting life of a human. Being away from him for more than a day or two felt like an eternity, and they hadn’t seen much of each other since the holidays; her with a new job at the university, and him with a side project to keep them both busy for long hours turned into longer days. It only felt right now, on her first real day off, to visit him while he worked. She brought a deli sandwich each and a pair of blood bags, packed up like juice boxes in a child’s paper bag lunch. 

      It all fell apart in front of her when Lukas showed up. She didn’t know what to do with herself after that, how to process her emotions, and meeting up with someone for dinner was likely to blow up in her face given the state she was in. She’d be cruel, she imagined, or throw whatever meal was put in front of her across the room and give horrible offense. Worse still, she’d cry. 

      No, she absolutley couldn’t go.

      She sat on the edge of her messed bed and time passed with no concern for her. The sun moved through the sky, glinted off of her daylight ring from every angle, until it kissed the horizon. A bird, then, flew straight into her window. She blinked, and looked outside to be reminded that, if she was going to change her mind about dinner, now was the time. She went through the motions of showering, of doing her hair, her makeup, putting on her clothes —-but her fingers grasped the first things she touched, her mind stuck on one thing alone. She looked at the clock once she realized there was nothing left to be done, and realized she was already late. Shit. She hadn’t sent a text to say she wasn’t coming, hadn’t told the charming, generous recluse that she’d be late... Shit, shit, shit again. Fine. She’d go. 

      When she made it to his place, tucked away in the woods, just like he’d told her, she was a fashionable twenty-seven minutes late. With a sigh and the hint of a forced smile, she knocked.

      Rose had felt a strange urge to make her new place with Caleb feel like a home, which might have had more to do with the season than any general tendency to decorate. She preferred her space clean and free of clutter, but with the first snowfall of the season finally here, she was thinking about Christmas. Perhaps she should have asked, first, but at the end of the day she didn’t imagine Caleb would care much if she put up a few small things. Until, inevitably, she was where she was now ---putting up the tree. She had no trouble dragging it into the apartment, but standing it up in the desired corner was harder than she’d anticipated. She had been tall enough to put up warm fairy lights on the mantle above the fireplace, tall enough to hang a wreath above their door (with the help of a chair), but there was no getting around a tree. Not without a second pair of hands. So when she heard the door open, she called out a greeting, interrupting the jazzy instrumental covers of Christmas carols that played from the sound system. She had put the tree down, and was now standing over it with her hands on her hips. “Care to give me a hand, here?”

      Then, there was a boy. He was only fourteen when he’d died, trampled by a horse. The way she saw him now was how he’d been when she’d found him ---chest caved in, head covered in too many wounds to count. He was bruised and battered to the point of being unrecognizable, but Rose knew him. Michael. He may as well have been her own flesh and blood. She felt a sob rise up in her throat, burning and scraping at the back of her gums to be released. When she opened her mouth, only a whimper came out. 

      Finally, she saw Caleb. He was coming to help her, running towards her, a look of concern on his face. When he reached her, he opened his mouth to say something. Instead of words, blood poured out of him. She looked down, and it was her own hand that sat within his chest, fist wrapped around his heart. She withdrew in horror, but all she did was tear the organ out. This time, the noise that came from her mouth was one no person should have been able to make. It was shrill and pained, like she herself was dying with the people around her. 

      Caleb’s body fell to its knees, and Rose followed. Her hand pressed against the hole in his chest, trying with all her might to put his heart back inside him. She was muttering the words as she did so, put it back, put it back, put it back, tears freely pouring down her cheeks. When his body finally toppled over with the force of her efforts, she fell with it, head on his bloody, empty chest. She buried her face there, that inuman sound not stopping once, and shut her eyes against the visions of her dead family. Everyone was gone, then, she supposed. She would lay there until she died, too.

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