#nano2k23

One leg up, then the other, that’s it.

The rain is stopping. Slowing to just a sprinkle.

Where are you going to go?

The cemetery spreads out before you, wide and hilled and completely unfamiliar. You could be anywhere. Literally anywhere (maybe not literally, you are, clearly, not at the bottom of the ocean, and you are also somewhere that the stones are still written in a mix of English and Latin). You pick a direction and start walking. Sliding a little on the slopes in the watery grass until you are running pell-mell down the hills towards what looks to be a gate. Tall and imposing, like the gate to a castle, but only to the dead.

You half expect some sort of barrier to stop you walking through it. Since apparently this is where you belong.

Nothing stops you.

There is no barrier.

You step off the gravel road and onto pavement.

You look to your right and see the road curve out of sight past the gate.

You look to your left and see a brightness in the sky you think means light pollution, which means streetlights, which means town.

So you start walking left. Hugging the ditch on the side of the road because there is no sidewalk here. That’s alright, you don’t really need it. Nobody seems to be out at—whatever hour this is. There’s no moon, it’s still too cloudy. The pavement shines wet and slick under your feet, brightening more and more as you get closer to the glow of streetlights and civilisation.

You still haven’t figured out if you know where you are.

It’s hard to tell at night.

Places always look different in the dark.

Everywhere near where you live looks basically the same anyways.

You could be within spitting distance of your childhood home and not even notice.

You round a corner into blinding light and the earsplitting blare of a car horn, you’ve got just enough time to remember how much you hate LED headlights and then—

BANG!

Oh.

You think that should hurt a lot more than it does.

The impact of the car throws you fully into the ditch, you hear it when one of your shoulders crunches inward against your collarbone. You think the heavy pressure in your chest might be—oh—oh shit you are coughing up blood that is definitely broken ribs—why doesn’t any of this hurt?

Your chest and stomach hurt more from all that disgusting sobbing you did less than an hour ago than they do from getting hit by a car.

Add that to the list of things that don’t make any sense.

You stop breathing again.

Just so that you can maybe stop coughing up blood.

The tang of iron and salt on your tongue is making your stomach churn again—although, that could also just be from getting thrown several feet by a car.

You were hit by a car.

Where did the car go?

You can still hear it, engine growling a little ways down the road.

You wonder if the driver is alright.

Are you more or less dangerous to hit than a deer?

Hitting a deer can be a death sentence.

…You’re probably smaller than a killer deer.

You drag yourself back up to your feet and oh—oh there is the nausea again as you hear one, two, three, four, five distinct cracking noises, and the pressure on your chest ebbs away.

Okay.

Okay?

You roll your shoulders and are rewarded with another sharp snap as your collarbone rights itself.

You start to doubt your earlier conclusion.

You must be dreaming.

“Hello?”

Oh?

See, you are smaller than a killer deer after all.

“Hello? Are—christ alive I’m so sorry—are you okay?”

You are nowhere near the realm of okay.

But…aside from the lack of a heartbeat and the having to think about breathing and the very intense nausea, you are physically unharmed. Now, anyways. What could be said for seconds ago.

You should respond.

You can see the driver walking towards you.

“I’m okay.” You are not okay, you are not okay, you are not okay.

“I’m so sorry,” the driver says again, close enough now that you can see how absolutely terrified he looks. Who wouldn’t, having just hit a person on the side of the road. “I didn’t see you until it was too late, rain at night you—” he stops, frowning at you in the dark.

“Is something wrong?” You ask, and you don’t really know why. You don’t particularly care what is wrong with this man who hit you with his car when you were barely even on the road. You tilt your head to one side in a move you are quite sure is condescending. As though you are challenging him to say he is shaken up.

“I—sorry, I’m a little shook up by, shit, can I take you to the hospital?”

No.

That would be a bad idea for someone without a heartbeat, you think.

“Sure.” You say, and it sounds friendly enough. It’s not what you meant to say, or even in the ballpark of what you wanted to say.

But you follow him back to his car.

You don’t need a hospital.

…But you do look as though you do.

Covered in dirt, bloody-fingered and kneed, and soaked to the bone to boot.

And now spattered with mud, covered in more blood from the impact of the car.

Of course the guy wants to bring you in, he wants to make sure he doesn’t leave you for dead.

Pity he’s a little late for that.

You kill him as he reaches for the passenger door.

…

…no the fuck you do not.

You do though.

You quicken your steps up behind him and tear him away from the car before the door is even open. Your fingers dig into the flesh of his throat, your left arm wraps around his middle and pulls him back to you, blood runs hot under your fingers and your mouth follows where they’ve torn into—

No. The fuck. It does not.

You sway a little where you stand, having stopped several feet back in the middle of the road.

You stare at the man as he opens the car’s passenger side door.

He looks back at you, waves you forward.

Can you have a panic attack without breathing?

Without your heart racing?

You think you are having a panic attack.

You make your way forward, wait until you are both in the car, and then?

Then you kill him.

You reach across the console and pull him by the shoulders, letting go once he’s halfway across and tangling fingers into his hair, ripping out chunks of it with the amount of force you’re using. You squeeze fingers into eyesockets, bring your tongue to the beckoning red that leaks out—

No.

NO.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

You are sitting in the passenger seat of this stranger’s car.

This stranger whose car hit you not ten minutes ago.

Your mouth is hanging open, you might—you might be drooling?

“I’m fine.” You’re not fine. You’re not fine. You have now pictured murdering this man twice. You are so incredibly distant from fine.

This is definitely just stress, right?

You have had a very very long few hours, days? However long you had lay in the dirt and then however long it had taken to dig yourself out and then however long it took to get…here. Where you are sitting in the passenger seat of a car belonging to a man who you have not murdered.

Yet.

No yet. There is no yet. There will be no killing this man.

Except there will be.

Very soon actually.

Before he starts the car would be ideal, but if you crash as a result it will only be bad for one of you. If the airbag knocks him out all the better even. If the glass of the broken windshield lacerates his throat, that just makes it easier for you. Even if it is a bit awkward maneuvering your body across the center console in the wreck.

The blood is worth it.

Hot and salty and despite the tang of iron that should leave you feeling sick again it is the best thing you’ve tasted in—well at least since waking up. Maybe longer.

Did you even notice how sharp your teeth had gotten?

You didn’t, did you.

That’s alright.

Plenty of time for that later.

@flyingbananasaur / @vampireposter / @gewhanaa / @abalonetea / @leopardsnake-stories / @captain-kraken