Page 75 of Hunted By Fae
The stark white beam of the dropped and forgotten torch on the rug arches up the drawn curtains like spidery fingers.
Emily has stolen most of the blankets. I’m left with a single fleece throw, too small to even wrap around my shoulders. I drape it over my lap and pick at the threads.
Bee leaves the box of food on the floorboards, a chore to attend to later, then drags out a pillow and some sheets from the bedroom.
She joins me on the two-seater couch. It’s a tight fit, snug, and her thigh grazes mine.
Still, words evade me.
My mind has turned to static, like on the old brown television when I was little, and I would turn the dial over and over, searching for a channel, but it was grey, white and black fuzz that came with a hissing sound.
That’s what it feels like inside my head.
There are no words that I can string together, nothing coherent at least, not while my brain is being squished by all the wild shit Bee told me, stories and lore that I would’ve dismissed as nonsense—before the blackout… before I sawthem.
Now, I sit in it, a truth too ugly to take.
Fae exist.
Fae are a species from another world.
I try not to think about Bee using a button to represent that other world, like it’s flat against the sphere of earth’s shape. That’s a whole other thing for another day. But through all she told me—that she is fae, but looks human, that she is considered an abomination, rejected by her own kind, and that the darkness comes from a whole other world, and that the warriors we saw are here to end us—I can only focus on one thing.
The bridges.
Even in all the fog wisping around the mush of my brain, my focus latches onto the most meaningful thread of information.
Bridges are a possible way out of all this.
I sit with it for so long that, by the time I’m lifting my gaze from the fleece throw, Emily is sound asleep on the armchair.
Her face pinches every other moment, eyebrows furrowing before faint murmurs come from her reddish mouth, then a whimper—and I suspect she’s deep in dreams about those warriors… or maybe Ramona’s death haunts her.
Emily was closer to Ramona than she is to us.
I mean, we only met Emily at quarantine. Not like she came with the group on the trip. But she and Ramona bonded—and stuck together over the months.
I would pity her if I wasn’t so consumed by my own shit. It’s one of my many faults. If I’m suffering, I just can’t extend the little energy I have to others.
I just… can’t.
I don’t know how others do it.
But I’ve always been a little off that way. Something Bee never seemed to care about, never judged me for.
I wonder now if that’s because she’s the same, or there are more like me in herrealm, those who are a bit more self-absorbed than what’s really acceptable in this world.
I don’t play the part or wear the mask I’m expected to. I never fake laugh for a bad joke, I’ll shout my opinion in any man’s face, I throw snide looks at anyone who bothers me, who annoys me.
It’s not a choice to be this way. I can’t do it the way everyone else does. I tried so many times, over and over—and the best I could manage was a day of falsities, of pretence and tolerance. All these things I don’t have in me.
Obviously I don’t have many friends. Never did. I always struggled with that.
But this one right here, next to me on the couch, is my ride or die. Literally, I will die for her if I need to.
I just hope that doesn’t happen.
Speak of the fae, Bee shifts out of the blankets draped over us—and the lift of the edge lets in a cold bite of air.
