Bloodline

From the other room, I could hear Handsome and his aunt, 1, discussing me. "No, 1, we are just friends," Handsome insisted.

His footsteps faded; the front door sighed shut. I collapsed back into the couch’s synthetic embrace, sleep dragging me under for two stolen hours.

Sunlight, thin and jaundiced, seeped through the curtains. Voices hummed beyond the door—low, liquid. Time to fold. To perform.

1 entered, tendons taut in her neck as she forced a smile, offering coffee and rice milk.

I had met 1 a few times before. "I didn’t hear you arrive last night," she apologized. Then, with a strained smile, she added "Arthritis pills—knocked me out." "Just rice milk, please," I managed. She was a zealot, this one. Poured her pension into some sky-god’s pockets. We traded hollow words—plastic cutlery clattering on porcelain plates. A word hissed in my synapses, too sharp to hold.

The memory struck like a seizure: Grease-smeared concrete. Engines growling in the dark. Curtains fluttering—shrouds in motion. That shriveled figure, blood-matted hair, reaching for me. Small hands. Smaller crib. Gone.

The milk thickened in my mouth—sweet, cloying, chemical. Something in it that didn't belong. I spat the curdled slick into the sink the second 1 turned away.

Poison? Placebo?

The second 1 turned, I spat the curdled slick into the sink.

Soon after, Handsome Man’s mother, 2, joined me, taking a seat on the couch beside me. I lifted my gaze, and her eyes locked onto mine. A broad smile touched both our faces, but beneath it, a tremor of an unbidden, profound recognition ran through me.

Something pulled at my chest—ancient, cellular. But her eyes held nothing. Empty windows.

An aloe plant squatted on the coffee table between us, fleshy spears straining toward the tainted light. "For healing," I whispered, touching one thick leaf. Something in my body knew it needed this plant."

1 tittered. "Oh, no—it’s too pretty to cut."

2 leaned forward, her voice honeyed. "I’ve got baby aloes in the back. Exotic strains. You could take one…" She rose, gliding toward the kitchen. Paused at the sink. Her eyes briefly flickered to the poured-out rice milk, a silent acknowledgment.

"Tonight" 2 murmured to 1 as they gathered purses, keys jingling like shackles. "We’ll leave them alone."

1 whined "And where will we go?" 2's reply was clipped: "Somewhere else."

My body moved before my mind caught up. Primitive. Instinctual. Fled. No words. No sound. Just the silent pivot of prey— —out the door, —into the wet green jaws of the woods.