All Chapters of Beneath Blood and Water: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The familiar feeling of being submerged in a memory washed over me.The air was heavy….thick with the dark feeling of despair.I felt as if the very life around me was being siphoned away, the moisture in my skin vanishing as if pulled by an unseen force. My vision blurred, the world dissolving into nothingness until all that remained was me and a child.I stood in the middle of the memory, but this time I wasn’t seeing the memory through the eyes of a participant; this time I was an observer. I was watching, feeling.I sat next to a childThe child’s dark hair fell over his eyes, but I instinctively knew who it was.-Alex- curled against a wall, knees pulled to his chest. His clothes were thin, dirty, torn at the edges.I knew because I could feel mine aching, too, a sharp, excruciating pain. I wanted to keel over and vomit the water in my stomach, but this child that was no older than nine kept silent, his arms littered with bruises.I sat beside him and looked for any pain in his ey

I finished off the last bite of the sweet cake, licking icing off the fork with more enthusiasm than was probably necessary, and let the quiet settle again — the good kind, still holding.Then my hands clenched, nails biting into my palms hard enough to draw blood before I even noticed I'd done it.Alex's brow furrowed. He could smell it too, probably, the way he noticed everything.He took my hand, gentle, unfurling my fingers one by one. "You're hurt. How?"I gave no answer. My smile never left my face.This isn't a dream.I'm not alone.He came back.He washed the blood off in the stream, watching the cuts knit themselves shut almost instantly, and nodded, satisfied, once the skin had closed over.I just watched him. He was so beautiful it made something in my chest ache in the good way, the way it always did lately."We're leaving," Alex said, with finality.Just like that, I was dragged back down out of whatever soft place I'd floated up to.My mouth opened. Nothing came out.I co

"So that's two ways out of this?" I tried to lighten it, even though looking into that light after being warned not to had clearly been a mistake. The voice sat in the back of my skull now like an itch I couldn't scratch — and that alone was strange, because remembering had never once been hard for me. I thought of something, it surfaced. That was how it worked. But this time, no matter how I reached for it, I couldn't pull up more than fragments.Caius rubbed a hand down his face. "Depends on the fairy. Could be slow. Could be fast. A dream-leech, a soul-eater — some of them want your body, some just want your mind." He paused. "Once you're marked, though, you start unraveling. Piece by piece."Alex's arms tightened around me, pulling me closer against his chest. I looked up, but he was staring straight ahead at Caius, unblinking, like looking away for even a second might cost him something important."It starts small," Caius went on. "Forgetting things. Hearing that voice when you're

Something in the air has changed.It could be because we were getting closer to the colder side of the country, the leaves have changed colors, the trees have given way to more ornamental plants, plants I know but have never noticed before.I rarely drove, I did not like having to concentrate on one thing it leaves straining to make sure everything around me was as it should, no one following me, no tracking device and no accident that could occur out of nowhere.Usually I had someone drive me to where I was supposed to go, but…I took a deep breath and let it fill my lungs, the feeling of my blood vessels receiving oxygenated blood and taking it where its meant to be filled me with peace.I blinked against the light slanting through the RV’s window. My back ached. My mind itched.Everything had changed, and now I think I am too.My knuckles whitened on the wheel when the wind shifted suddenly I was aware of the engine’s tremor, the pulse at my throat., the empty chasm in my chest that

The RV whizzed past the landscape at a steady pace, the background blurring together bleeding into each other like a mural of green, blues and reds.i glanced at it for a minute, the shock of not feeling the oush of air and the forces of nature as we fought against it in this machine would never not be a shock to me, I breathed out and went back to positioning my camera properly for my newest adventure.I positioned my phone -Barry, as I liked to call it- on a chair following the instructions from countless myriad users. I’d gotten better over the past few days, doing my best to mimic their style.Set the timer- position yourself in the middle of the grid-lines- make sure the picture is bright enough….Big smile- Peace sign-Crossed legs... okay, maybe not that last part.I practiced smiling on the camera a small smile, then a smirk, then I widened my lips as far as I could the sides of my mouth opening to show the sharper sections of my teeth.Maybe not that one…."Are you threateni