جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 10

The trick to closing up is pretending you have nothing left to lose.I drag the mop in slow figure eights, letting the battered wooden boards drink in the bleach and whatever spilled beer made it past the towel brigade. The air’s a soup of pine-scented cleaner, spent yeast, and the faint ozone bite of old neon. Even after hours, the sign above the door buzzes like a gnat in my right ear, blue light pooling in a sickle on the scarred bar top. I work by memory and muscle, eyes half-closed, my left hand guiding the mop head like I’m tracing a ritual.The only witnesses are the regulars: Old Man Hendrickson, parked at his usual end seat with the same triple whiskey he’s been sipping for the last two years, and Dana, who works the morning shift at Della’s and claims she can outdrink any man in Pinecrest but only proves it once a month. She’s got the dimpled smile of a retired beauty queen and a voice that could shave paint off the walls, but she’s soft on me—calls me “kid,” though she’s ma

You don’t get used to it, but you get good at pretending. That’s my trick.Another close shifts over. Another two a.m. where the world peels down to the sound of my boots and the scrape of my own voice inside my head. I slam the bar’s side door behind me and stand for a second under the eaves, watching snow drop from the roof in clumps big as raccoon skulls. Pinecrest looks like it always does at this hour: a row of dead eyes, every window blacked out, the only signs of life a cluster of brown-bag empties in the gutter and the sick glow of the ancient streetlamps.I light a cigarette and instantly regret it. The wind kills the flame and tries to steal the whole pack, howling up Timber Road like it owns the place. My scarf’s already wet, plastered to my jaw; my breath comes out foggy and fast, like I’m running even when I’m standing still.The first hundred feet is the easy part—just a parking lot, a frozen playground, the back of Della’s Diner looking like a crime scene waiting for a

I wake up to the smell of my own sweat and the feeling that someone’s poured acid into my arm and then duct-taped it back onto my body. The mattress underneath me is doing its best impression of a sponge, soaking through my shirt and the thermal layer beneath. Every time I try to turn over, I peel myself away from the damp in slow-motion, like I’m molting.First conscious thought: Not dead. Second thought: Could be an improvement.The room is dark, but the kind of dark that just exaggerates how shitty the lighting is during the day. My window’s cracked, letting in the wind that never actually leaves Pinecrest, and the draft needles my skin in a way that makes the sweat freeze to a chill. I don’t remember undressing, but there’s a scattered pile of clothes on the floor that suggests I made at least one good decision before passing out.The next wave of pain crashes through, sharper now that my body’s caught up to reality. The attack comes back in flashes—teeth, fur, the burn of adrenal

I claw my way back to the surface in a tangle of sweat-soaked sheets and the relentless thud of my own heart, which feels too big and too fast for the cage of my ribs. The fever’s not just heat now—it’s kinetic, a storm of muscle spasms and twitches that jerk my limbs in every direction at once. My arm bangs against the wall, a raw bolt of pain reminding me the wounds should be open, bleeding. Should be, but aren’t.I manage to kick free of the blanket, rolling half off the mattress and onto the warped floorboards. The shock of cold against my skin jars me, makes the world snap into focus for a split second—long enough to see that my right arm isn’t dripping blood, but bound up in the same ugly strips of bedsheet I remember. I flex my hand, expecting agony. There’s pain, yeah, but it’s a dull echo, nothing like the bone-deep misery from before.I drag myself upright, teeth chattering with the leftover charge of fever. My body feels hollowed out and refilled with something sharp, elect

The pain doesn’t stop at white. There’s a beat of nothing—no up, no down, just a blank where my body used to be.Then the light turns red, and I hit the floor so hard it feels like I’ve been dropped from orbit. My back arches, every muscle locked in a rictus. I can’t scream. I can only feel. The fever is gone, replaced by a cold so sharp it razors through skin and down to the bone.I open my mouth to scream, but what comes out is wrong—ripped, shredded, half-growl and half-sob. My tongue feels thick and alien. I slam my head back, skull cracking the tile, and for a second all I see are the stars spinning in my vision.The change hits in waves. My hands seize up, fingers bending backward until I’m sure they’ll snap off. Instead, the bones lengthen, metacarpals shivering as they stretch. The ligaments go next, popping like bowstrings drawn too tight. My nails rip away and blacken, then regrow in savage arcs—curved, matte, and lethal.I claw at the floor, desperate for leverage, and the