My Precious Nightmare

Chapter 41: Extracting a Heart

When it cleared she had her face once more in the crook of his neck and held onto him like a leech. She popped her fangs loose from his neck.

"Stop it!" she screamed.

"You're the one who jumped me," said the man calmly. His eyes had the same bright glow to them as Lane's now.

She shoved him away all the same, and he let her drop hard to the pebbly beach. Only then did she notice how hard she shook.

"You should have let me die," she said, eyes to her knees. "Why couldn't you just let me die? This isn't living."

"You would have survived on someone else, if not me."

"You know that isn't true. I was suffocating, I was dying. I remember, I couldn't move, let alone go hunting for someone."

Morianton didn't say anything. She reflexively pulled in her shoddily covered legs as he rolled back to his feet. A strange, bubbling sort of whistling was coming from the direction of the fire. She forced herself not to look.

"What a pain," she heard, then another crack of gunfire. The whistling stopped, and the fire's crackling continued beneath the gentle whoosh of the ocean.

Sky forced herself to breathe through her mouth as the aroma of burning sweets and gasoline stung her lungs and throat. She hugged her legs in tighter.

"Is that how we die?" she asked.

"As far as I know." He kick into the stones. "I'm thinking an explosive in the gut would be pretty effective. I bet the plant doctor didn't think of that."

"Could you...could you kill me, then?"

Another crackle of pebbles and sand beneath his shoe. Her shoulder hurt something awful, but at least the part of her arms she gripped had healed up so she didn't dig her fingers into any healing wounds.

"No."

She looked up, snarling. Luckily, she couldn't see much of what was burning past his crouched figure. The sky had gotten brighter on the horizon, though, and her eyes watered against the light.

"And why the hell not?"

"Because it'd be a waste of effort. Be a good puppy and go back. You're distracting me."

"I'm not a dog!"

"Right."

"Just shoot me." She got up, but wobbled. "I'm getting in the fire myself."

He grabbed her arm. "It'll only make you thirstier."

"It's working on him, ain't it?" she yanked her arm free, half surprised she had the strength to do so.

But she only teetered again, knees week, vision blurring red.

He caught her, mouth pinched closed, the rifle butt banging against her hip as it dangled from its strap on his shoulder.

His touch made her swallow air in thirst.

When would her throat ever feel normal again? Or at least not like she had strep.

She pushed him off and grabbed for the rifle, a fancy, deadly looking black thing, just to have him swipe it from her faster than she could see.

"Pardon you, this is my gun. If you want to kill yourself, at least have the decency to do it away from me or my brother so we don't go on a killing spree with you. And preferably without your breasts hanging out."

She did her best to keep face as she tightly wrapped her arms about her chest. It was a sign of just how messed up her life had become that she hadn't even given a thought to how shredded her clothes were. Still, she couldn't help but think he sounded like an irritated parent shutting down a kid who kept whining to go to Disneyland rather than a man talking someone off suicide.