D knelt down beside the grave.
His father spared no expense. He never did when it came to his mother.
All Hallows Eve. The day the dead are meant to come back for one night only. It had never worked. D never believed in it anyway.
He placed the solemn bouquet on the dark damp earth. A wind blew for a moment, rustling his hair, shaking his hat, rustling the plastic around the flowers and the leaves of the Ivy on the statue.
His mother had never been given a gravestone, but a large, extravagant statue of an angel weeping. Ivy crawled up the statue.
D noticed his was the only bouquet on the grave, and that the ivy was piercing its way through the statue. His father’s was the first and biggest bouquet each year. He came to pull the ivy clean off and leave the statue undefiled for his son to mourn later.
The pupilless angel kept looking to the skies as the overcast weather decided it was time to rain. Water splatter on her eyes, then gave her tears, majestically sliding down her cold cheeks before she was drenched in a baptism, as was D.
D wondered at his fathers missing bouquet and the vines, until he soon reached the conclusion that he didn’t care. He didn’t care about the rain, either, be it deluge or purification as it soaked and swelled and muddied the holy ground.
Tracing the simple words of the plaque under the angel’s feet, anointed with the simplest of liquid, ‘I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU –VLADAMIR DRACULA’ D found the only water falling down his face was cold and emotionless as a corpse.
He slowly rose and turned, not looking back at her dripping wings, her hard hair falling in a frozen cascade down the pedestal, her face dreaming of her lost child.
D stepped indifferently through the black puddles and slick mud to his horse, tied under a weeping willow. Two mean wandered past him, chatting idly about yet another death and yet another job. One of them pointed to the angel. D paused and turned, watching them dig next to his mother’s grave. They left it and the flowers undisturbed, so D turned back and went back to walking trough mud.
Mounting the horse, he turned it and left for another year.
"You never cry D," his companion said sympathetically. "You’ll always be blind to the world, won’t you? Well, that’s fine. Your eyes see enough. Let’s get you to town."
* * * * *
D could remember his father’s large and gentle hand, as he towered over him. He remembered the hand through his already long hair, which the court complained made him look like a girl, as his father kissed him goodbye.
"I want you to be safe," his father whispered, hugging him so tightly he lifted him off his feet for a moment. "I want you to see the death of us all someday, and I want you to live past it. I love you."
His mother came in, her beautiful face stained with tears. She hugged him, she cried on him, she asked him to grow up and be something she’d always be proud of.
He was given to a pair of human parents, grew up and watched them die, and left. He never cared much for them, despite the fact that he always wanted to be like them.
He never saw his mother again.
* * * * *
Gradually the rain grew heavier and heavier, the sky darker and darker as the hidden sun vanished beneath distant mountains.
The rain piled u on Ds hat, soaking it so the rim flopped down in front of his face, and then washing all over him when it was no longer held above his eyes.
The lonely hotel looked like the walls had been made out of too many slants. The windows glowed with an ominous bright orange light.
D dismounted and tied his horse to a post with two others. None of the horses felt like being social.
He wandered into the old saloon-like restaurant of the hotel. After shedding his cloak he took off his had which the rain had rendered pathetic. He freed the pin from his hat and wrung it out above a spittoon that was now an umbrella stand full of umbrellas resembling closed flowers, despite the fact that there was only one person in the place and she was cleaning glasses behind the counter.
The phone behind the counter rang. The lady at the bar grabbed it by a twice duct taped handle with her pale chocolate hand.
"Yah?" she answered. She listened for two seconds and then took it away and held it on her shoulder. She whistled at D. "Hey, you! You just takin’ up space! You named D?"
D nodded.
"I think yer dog wants you," she said, holding the phone out. D took it, careful not to let their fingers touch.
"Yes?"
There was heavy agonized panting on the other line. It lasted a minute before they started talking. "My contractions started an hour ago."
D held the phone away from him, looking at it as if it had made a rude pass at him
"I fell off my horse. I couldn’t reach you. There’s a barn just outside the city, two miles to the southwest. I need you."
"Who is this?"
"Please, I’m having a baby. It’s a half. I’m human. The father’s coming for me. I don’t want to go back, please!"
"I’ll wait for him at the crossroads."
"Good, that’s the way I came. That’s how he’ll come for me. I’ve only got a hundred dollars." The woman in the barn he couldn’t see screamed and swore violently for a few minutes.
"What’s your name?"
"Enigma," she answered, then screamed. She hung up on him.
D handed the phone back to the woman at the bar. She nodded to him and took a cigarette from on her ear as she put the receiver back.
"Your girlfriend?"
"I don’t know her."
"Whatever. You gonna order something, or are you here just to get out of the rain?"
D didn’t answer. He looked at his flopping hat and put it back on anyway. He walked out the door silently.
Outside somewhere lightning flashed and thundered rumbled, not at all off-sync.
The radio in the back changed songs from ‘Monster Mash’ to ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’.
The place was morbidly calm with the incense of tobacco wafting through as the storm continued outside.
* * * * *
The crossroads were quiet, despite the roll of thunder and the frantic pour of rain. An occasional bird would chime in, not wanting to be left out of the orchestra.
The horse didn’t mind waiting. It nibbled at the soggy grass and liked the feel of mud on its hooves.
The parasite did mind, but kept it’s mouth shut. It was wet enough as it was.
Down the road, far beyond where the mud path disappeared into the trees and the darkness there was a flicker of something white.
Lightning flashed and D ignored it.
The white thing grew closer, though it was still a blur now. D knew what it was. A horse. A silver horse.
The horse kept coming, the rider vaguely taking shape against the shadows.
Lightning flashed again, trying to divert his attention, this time less than a mile away. D kept ignoring it.
An owl hooted a foot away. It had found something close.
D kept waiting as the silver horse ad it’s dark rider came close. They slowed to a soft splashing trot a hundred yards away.
They arrived not soon enough for D.
The man was indeed a vampire. Long curls of hair flying past his shoulders, oozing its elegant way down the saddle and plastered to his black cloak. A doublet-like shirt poked out from the darkness and cloak, bright flashes of velvet nosed their way out of the slashes on the sleeves. His pants and boots were heavy and elegant, made more for a violent sport of dancing than riding, especially in the rain.
D noticed he was wearing dark glasses, a total incongruity with the rest of his outfit, but somehow blending in and making the man look exactly like who he was meant to be.
"Ho there," he said, either to D or the horse.
He was talking to the horse. It stopped and then shook it’s mane, spraying dark silver across the night. It took a step forward.
He nodded in D’s direction. "Ho."
D watched as the horse took another step towards the sign pointing the directions of two towns.
"You’re name, stranger?" the man asked.
D again replied with silence.
"I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing."
The horse took a step and nodded to D’s horse.
D’s horse replied with a wet whinny.
The man’s horse nodded and took another step.
The man sniffed the air. "Dahmpil, aren’t you?"
D nodded as the horse approached the sign, finally there.
"I’m sorry if you’re deaf. I don’t know what to say," the man said, long fingers tracing over the carved words on bother signs.
"I’m not deaf, nor am I mute," D answered.
The silver horse turned in the direction D had recently come from.
"Beautiful night, isn’t it?" the man asked, fidgeting with the reins. Lightning flashed. Thunder roared in proud response.
The man took it as an answer and shot the horse into furious gallop, charging down the path toward the barn.
D followed.
"She hired a hunter, did she?" the vampire asked, his horse in the lead. "Nothing shall keep me from my wife."
D ignored what he said. His own father had been a vampire, his mother a human. She laid dead in the ground now, a new hole next to her, a new companion for her to wander past Styx.
"She has a lover, did you know that?" the man asked.
"It’s not my place to ask."
"It’s not your place to care. She can have her lover. I’ll miss her. I come for my child."
D never paused his horse, but the vampire did.
"My name is Mikel. I intend to be a good father." He silently slid a gun, a small sawn-off pistol from a holster buried in the black folds of his cloak. He didn’t turn as he shot D’s horse. He didn’t need to.
He was blind.
His horse charged off as D crashed to the ground, his horse thrashing about and screaming in pain. The force, the fall, the flailing—his ankle took it all as he crashed to earth, twisting it viciously.
D pulled himself out from under the dying equine, the parasite complaining as he crawled in the mud on his hands.
He washed his hands in a puddle before taking the hilt of his sword in his hand.
While he was gone he got two letters from his real family. The first was a simple letter, telling him that his father was passing his own father’s sword to him. The second had been a garrulous poetic letter smudged with tears telling him his mother had died.
He had burned both letters.
He sliced through his horse’s throat, more blood mixing a disgusting concoction on the ground. The screams died instantly.
"You don’t have much luck with those do you?" the parasite muttered.
The silver horse faded into the lightning and darkness. There was no point anymore. He had failed to protect. He had lost the battle. He had lost a hundred dollars. Alone, under a weeping sky and oddly twittering birds, he had lost his honor.
* * * * *
It was hours later. He was soaked in complaints from his hand and mud from the storm, which had finally died.
Swallows came out, darting here and there, suddenly changing direction, dangerously close to D.
One looped and looped and looped, and then, in a majestic dive after a bug, a young hawk flew in and grabbed it in it’s talons.
The sky was growing pale and the clouds were leaving. They had had their fun, now it was time to rest. The sun wasn’t up yet.
He had reached the barn, not very far from the crossroads.
Mikel was there, crying softly, holding a woman’s hand. He had roughly bundled a small something in his cloak.
He heard the barn door open and didn’t look up.
"I loved her. I would have let her have her lover, she knew that. But she didn’t want the baby. Her lover didn’t want the baby. She refused an abortion. I didn’t want to ruin either one’s life. All I wanted was my child."
D took a few steps, the hay in the barn muffling his shoes. There was no telephone here. She must have had a cell phone with her. A very expensive thing these days. She must have bought it with her husband’s money.
"There was too much blood," Mikel whispered. "Too much blood. My daughter was too cold alone in the barn, with nothing but her dead mother."
D just stared at the scene on the hay. Mikel had a staff out, by his side. D now knew of his disability. All he could think about was the three legged mourning the four legged and the two legged, who had wanted them both dead.
"Thank you."
D tilted his head in confusion. Even if Mikel was looking at him, he couldn’t have seen. "Why?"
"You wanted to protect her, and the child. No matter what. Most would kill the child, and her for having it. Fate already has, though. At least you didn’t try. She didn’t even have any money, just a gun with two bullets. I wonder why."
D didn’t answer. He let Mikel keep mourning his wife. He knew the answer. She had been looking for a dhampil hunter to save her, no doubt thinking only a half would care. She didn’t care. She was going to kill both dhampils in the morning.
"What is your name?" Mikel asked, getting up, taking his staff with him.
"What are you going to do with them?"
"I’ll tell her lover. I know him. I’ll tell him she’s dead. He’ll have them buried in a human grave, with a human funeral. She always wanted human things. It’s not my place to mourn when I make the dead uncomfortable. Who are you hunter?" Mikel asked again. D couldn’t help notice the fast, monotonous dit-dit-dit-dit of Mikel’s talk, like a dripping faucet on a pan.
"My name is D," D answered, finding the vampire intriguing in the oddest way. He felt and urge to take his hand. What he’d do beyond that he didn’t know.
"Bastard!" Mikel roared. "Liar! You have some heart to protect the living and mock the dead in the same day!"
"I meant no harm by it."
"You can’t be D," Mikel said.
D felt himself reaching out to touch Mikel’s pale hand, as he studied his blunt, pale Romanian face. "Why?"
"D is my brother’s son. He died. Our king’s son is dead!"
D had no response but to stare wide-eyed in surprise. He meant to stop his hand there. He didn’t. His fingers brushed against Mikel’s and he held his uncles hand.
A warm, sultry wave washed over him, it wasn’t his own thoughts and yet, he wanted to go along with the wave as it tumbled on his mind, he wanted to obey the wave. He wanted his other hand on Mikel’s shoulder, her wanted to smell those long curls, his lips on Mikel’s neck.
Mikel slapped D in the face, rather well for a blind man.
D let his arm drop and the wave receded.
"By my mother’s scar, I won’t let you!" Mikel yelled. "You blasphemous child! You mock the everyone at every turn! You disgust me. I can’t help what I am, but I thought someone as old as you, as strong as you, as—I thought you would have the strength to fend off the magic I was born with."
"Your magic is yours! Your ability!"
"My birth was not my choice. I cannot choose who I am. I cannot choose what I am. I never chose to be an incubus."
D couldn’t help stare at his thin, almost fragile lips as Mikel spoke.
"You weren’t there. In this town. You were here and you weren’t there to stop them!"
"Who?"
"Your father’s dead! Your father, who swore his life to protect you, and often risked his life for you is dead and you could have saved him!"
"I was only here last night."
"Exactly!" Mikel screamed. D noticed he never wavered from the pan-in-the-sink-under-a-faucet dit-dit-dit-dit-dit fast way of talking.
"He died last night. Murder! You killed him by not being there. By not stopping. You killed him in your spite."
"I don’t want your words," D said, turning and leaving.
"If that can not find it’s way to your heart to make you guilty, then I wish for you to find something that will! I swear upon the holy sacrilege that will be my own mother’s death, curse you forever! Damn you forever! Fuck you forever!"
D closed the door on Mikel’s screaming.
It was dawn now.
He didn’t pause at all before walking to town. He had things to do, people to visit, places in which to mourn.
* * * * *
"I don’t know why you’re doing this," the parasite said, quietly. "But it’s good that you do. You’re soul has got too much on it, too many chains tying it up. I swear though, one of these days you’re going to get everyone killed."
D meticulously walked down the carpet to his father’s coffin. This place, towering almost to the sky, filled with stained glass depictions of forbidden acts, had once been the court, bustling with nose and vampires. Now it was silent, now it was empty. Everyone was gone. The king on his dais to the end.
He stepped up the last few stairs to the casket. Ancient and stone, symbols and words carved all over it. Monsters adorned the corners.
Everyone else had said their good-byes or fled from the day.
He had no flowers this time. He came empty handed.
He placed a hand on the coffin. It was closed. His father lay under that heavy lid, sleeping yet again in that stone box his last rest.
His father. The one who had taught his swordplay since he was five. The one who had held him when he had nightmares, the one who loved his mother. Who sent him away, who kept him form his mother.
"Damn!" he choked, falling on the coffin, hugging it as he sank to his knees.
The people in the windows gave no comfort. Nero played his violin while Rome burned and ignored D’s sobs. Elizabeth Bathory bathed in the blood of virgins while he cried. His father, who had an iron fist on his subjects, his humans, his world, who had loved him and his mother as long as he knew them was in the window, impaling someone on a thick ugly pike, glass blood dripping down it in stylized medieval.
A bird, a pitiful little chicketie heard the noise. It flustered around in the air, drawing unsightly curly-cues and circles in the air, only to fly into the window, at the glass blood, straight on.
D kept crying.
A little bird had broken it’s neck.
Somewhere, off in the corner, a large black feather with a green shine to it waiting guiltily for D to finish and find it.
* * * * *
D sat dry-eyed in the same hotel, in the same restaurant, eating the same nothing, the same lady at the bar smoking a new cigarette as the radio blared new music from to the same air.
"I wish I knew," he muttered. That was why no flowers this year. That was why there was Ivy. That was why they had dug a new hole.
D felt like choking on something in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t stand this feeling. He hated grief. A catarthis was beyond him, he could only talk to a parasite he hated, and never felt right being close to anyone, vampire or human. Grief stagnated and eventually made him numb. It burned a hole in his mind, creating a void that would never cease to exist.
He got up, wondering if food which he didn’t really want, didn’t really need, didn’t really care about would help. His sore feet, blistered from walking everywhere horseless clunked on the wood floor as he limped his way across the room.
He clunked his way over until he hear a soft thump instead. His mind raced back from the corners of oblivion it was sitting in, trying to forget, trying to ignore, to access the situation.
He had stepped on lace, deep green lace. He followed the lace along the floor with his gaze, trailing up a chair, up the curving butt of a woman’s gown, followed to her large round breast, to her soft flowing hair, and finally to her eyes that were on him, waiting there for his gaze to catch up with hers.
"I’m sorry," he said, watching her blink heavily shadowed and lined green eyes. He stared at her train as he stepped off of it, four lace points spread out on the floor like a cross.
"It happens," she said, her rose-shaped lips fluttering like an angel.
D said nothing as she turned in her chair, dragging her skirts and her crucifix with her torso turned, bringing her other breast into view. Under her left breast was a slit in her gown, crawling all the way around her back and back around to her front to show off her navel and a rose tattoo on her back that looked like it had a line through it.
"Vitiate," she said.
D tilted his head in confusion, flowing the lines of her jewelry down her curves and her dress and then back up. He wasn’t even aware of what he was studying.
"My name is Vitiate. Sit down why don’t you?"
"I’m sorry, thank you."
She giggled, her flat stomach half carved with fit muscles bounced while her tight dress kept her breasts from mirroring it. "Humor me, please, you look like you’ve been dragging your ass here for your whole life."
D sat down, his eyes traveling along her necklace adorned with a rose and a miniature skull.
"Enticing isn’t it?"
"What is?" D asked, his gaze jumping away from the sparkling earrings and the specks of light they left on her bosom.
"The smell after the rain," she said, placing her hand on his. "It smells… sweet."
D reached out tentatively, not knowing what was driving him, not knowing what he was doing, and placed his hand on her lace strap falling off her shoulder.
"I don’t know you, do I?" she asked, purring and playing with his hand. The parasite was keeping quiet, probably out of complications.
"No."
She leaned forward, out of her chair, dragging the crucifix off the floor, still holding his hand, his still on her arm. "What’s your name then?"
"D."
"D?" she asked, her free hand fingering the chain of his talisman.
He nodded, his hand creeping from her shoulder around to her back, slipping its way down the dress.
"What do you do?" she asked, leaving his chain o brush the hair from his face.
"I hunt."
"You kill?" she asked, her hand on his leading him up from his chair.
D nodded, following her and not knowing why, not knowing at all.
"So do I," she answered, leading him up stairs. She took him across the hall and unlocked a door. He would have stopped, he would have killed her, had he known what she was doing to him. He hated magic, he despised it, he wished it gone from his own veins. He had no idea it has invaded his mind so unobtrusively, so erotically.
* * * * *
His cloak was on the floor. His shirt had migrated to the bed post. His hat had found somewhere else to be.
She was fishing her dress off, trying to slide too many curves from the stiff thing, and he has his hands in her hair, his lips on her cheek, his feet trying to shove his unzipped boots off.
They loudly fell on the floor like huge warriors falling in battle.
They traded clothes to shed.
His hands trailed down her legs, pulling her panties with them while she slid her tongue into his mouth, groping around like melting glass, and expertly undid his fly.
He parted the kiss, wanting to taste something new.
She pushed his pants away, and let her hands work on him, play with him, dance all around on him as he trailed his tongue, his teeth down her collarbone, along her breasts, tugging on rosy nipples before moving down each rib, down the line of her pelvis, past black hair as she parted her legs and lost hold of him.
She gasped as he slid his tongue between her legs, between the fold of flesh. She curled her fingers in his hair, one leg over his bare, blank back.
Her toes wriggled as he continued to pretend he knew what he was doing, despite the fact that he didn’t know why and never considered he should know why. Her foot tickled his chest, and he continued, delving deeper and playing more happily.
She screamed. Her hips bucked and he gave one last lick to the tiny nub buried in slick flesh.
His head stayed, turning to experiment with her smooth pale thigh.
She grabbed two handfuls of hair and pulled him up to meet her eyes.
She let go and his hair fell like a curtain about them, pooling on the covers and her. She smiled, her eyes glittering and she rubbed her pelvis against his erection.
He shook his head and sat up, pulling her up with him, putting her on his lap, easing up inside.
Hugging each other, holding each other for balance, taking turns nibbling on each other’s lips, watching the lascivious fall of their hair, they forgot about time, they forgot about grief, about complications, about the world itself.
They kissed one last time before their bodies drove them beyond words, beyond control. Leaning in on her chest, on her firm breasts, breathing heavily on a nipple, D held her as she leaned back, curving her back elegantly and he was struck with sensation, washing white in her, getting in on the covers, all over himself.
She panted and gasped and moaned this time, out of sync pleasure pouring over her like honey.
She relaxed and slid off, falling on the bed.
He lay on the bed, placing his hand over hers, dreamily staring at the tattoo with it’s ugly line through it.
She kissed him goodbye as he fell asleep.
* * * * *
D woke up angrily to the alarm clock. He reached over and tried to shove it off the nightstand only to find that there was no alarm clock. It was his hand.
"What?" he asked, getting up, finding himself naked and alone.
"I said ‘You never tried anything like that before.’ Well, not much. You did do it back when you were a teenager, and hey, you’re male after all, not like I’d go around talking about that in front of people.
"What’s this?" D asked himself rather than his hand noticing a black feather, the same green shine, on the nightstand.
"Beats me. Are we going to eat?"
"Shut up," D mumbled and found his pants. In the middle of putting them on he noticed there were two letters shoved under the door.
He zipped the fly and went to the door to find out what the letters were about. On was simply ‘Paid for the room, make sure you get yourself some breakfast Dee,’ the other said ‘The funeral is tonight. The murderer is here. Redeem yourself why don’t you D?—Mikel’
"She spelled your name wrong.
"I said shut up," D muttered, trying to remember where he’d thrown his pants. Last night seemed too much like a daze, a dream, a drug trip, a high from the cigarette smoke.
* * * * *
One flower. One single flower.
That was all he took with him to mourn his father. Somehow, in all his hate, in all his denial, D couldn’t walk away from burial rites.
It was half past noon. The sky was overcast again. All the clouds would bring this time was chill and wind.
There was a fresh grave, open and bare like a sore in the earth’s side. Ready for tonight, ready for mourners, ready for him, ready for his father.
It looked so gruesome, his father’s grave, that he expected it to bleed.
He tied his horse to the same tree and wandered through the same mud, not yet dry from a day ago. It had hardened only enough to make a slippery, rubbery cake.
D saw Mikel already there, and Vitiate. They were talking.
They were arguing.
"He was your son, too. You know that. He may have killed them, but do you know how many lives he spared in doing so? How many of my friends fell to their feud?" He set something small and metallic on the plaque. A gun. "You choice. Your honor. Your child."
D stopped. Vitiate looked different now that she was far away, and it wasn’t the mud on her dress.
"I mourn," she said.
"You murder."
Neither said anything. Vitiate stared at the gun.
"D, you’re no match for bullets, stay out of this," the parasite said.
"I intend to. She’s a vampire." He suddenly felt sick.
Vitiate’s hand went to the gun. Mikel fell to his knees, crying behind his dark glasses.
Vitiate turned her back on D, and Two giant wings of blackness spread from under her shoulder blades.
The blast resounded through the graveyard like a single ominous bell tolling that she had died. D ran up to the mess, her beautiful head burst open and inside-out, all over his mother’s angel. An angel on an angel. Death on death.
"Damn you," Mikel whispered to her.
D turned to him.
He was still on his knees in the mud by the open sore grave, still talking like a pan in the sink.
D’s hand went to his sword. Death was death. Killing was killing. He told her to die.
"Our two brothers were feuding. They had been feuding for centuries, since before you were born. You’re father put an end to it, by putting an end to them." Tears dripped down from behind his glasses, down his square cheeks, and into the open grave. "They were her favorites. She couldn’t stand them murdered. She killed my brother. She killed your father, D. Those, our brothers murdered thousands. It was because of them that your father sent you away. He feared for your safety. I thought you’d died with the humans all these long years."
"You killed her."
"The family needs what honor it can get."
"You drove her to her death."
"She killed your father."
"And your murder isn’t a sin?"
"It is," Mikel said, standing. "Give me your sword"
"No." D said, his hand leaving the hilt.
"I drove my mother to death, I chased my child and wife to die. Why not let me have the same fate?"
"Live with your destiny."
"And you yours!" Mikel yelled, rushing D.
"Look out!" the parasite yelled instinctively.
Mikel crashed into D before he could fully turn around, and they both tumbled over a gravestone. D was on his stomach, in the mud, on top of rotting flowers, his feet over the gravestone. He couldn’t get up.
Mikel was straddling him. He tried to twist around, but Mikel put a knee on his back, pinning him down.
Mikel tore the strap from D’s back and the knee left.
"No." D rolled over, but his heel was caught on the gravestone.
Mikel threw the sheath away, hitting D in the face with it. Holding the blade, he jammed it through his chest, piercing his own heart.
He let go. The blade clattered on the ground, taking blood and a shard of bone with it.
Mikel stumbled forward a step, he managed one more before falling, his hand on Vitiate, his mouth next to half a cheek.
"Mother…" he coughed, spraying blood on the half cheek.
A dead kiss of filial passion.
D studied the black wings lying crumpled on the ground; they seemed to glow with an eerie green sheen.
Vultures circled above in the blank sky.
D looked at the slit snaking it’s way around her back. He touched the line through the rose. Old, dead skin.