Blood & Juniper

******

There's an irritating mewling, the noise is making me nauseous, causing physical pain. It escalates to an incessant whimpering.

Something impossible obstructs my view. A giant hornet hovering in my face, at least ten times the size it should be. It's abominable wings thrum the air in a searing gust. A massive stinger is drilling above my navel and into my guts, wedged between ribs. It struggles to be free but only lodges itself deeper with every tilt. My skin is splitting, bones scraping and bowing out.

An exhale weaves through the cracks and cleaves marring each lip. Buzzing wings become my own m.o.a.ning.The phantasm dissipates in a suck and pop of air, the cold atmosphere roars in my ears. All this racket seems to amplify the hurt. I come to, the pain flares like a wild pulse from a subtle rocking.

I have a disorienting moment of clarity trying to sort the sham from reality. My eyes aren't even open.

I struggle, squinting through slits to a sea of long grass, it's a stomach-turning display of moving earth. No nightmarish insect but tarnished silver protruding from my c.h.e.s.t, glinting wickedly in the starlight. My throat is hot, rough like rock salt and sandpaper.

My head flops back to the swimming stars speckling and smearing across the clear night sky, they stab down like needles in every pore. I feel every horrid step as I'm carried like luggage slung over someone's back.

"Put me down," I beg but it's garbled by agony.

There's no response and we continue on the unbearable journey onward. It's a listless nighttime hell ride on loop, I start to believe we'll be doing this forever. My own personal purgatory. I can't hold a thought other than, 'Let it end.'

We come to a stop, for all I know it could have been an hour or only minute. I don't have enough of a break to sing praises for the alleviation, the carrier hoists my body high and the pain is more intense.

I hiss from the pang the rough movement causes. The metal rubs against my insides, butting against bones. I make the perfunctory action grasping the lowest blade. Trying to lift myself up for a brief release from the pressure, the sharpened edge sinks into the creases of my fingers. I grunt, hands falling as I make unintelligible sounds through my teeth. A thousand points prickle, pushing their way in and forcing back out.

It's what my visions warned, but intolerably worse. I glimpse my neighbor, the scarecrow. This time I know who it is and why their face is a messed up blur. It's June's corpse hanging by impalement.

The terse executioner secures me to a pole of my own. The knives dig and pull at my nerves endings, it shoots out and up causing an unwillful bout of hyperventilation in gasps. I'm unable to see straight from the shock of it.

Then all is still but the stillness brings a new discomfort. The fuzzy figure stares at Juniper for a long time, perhaps admiring his handy work. Then he reluctantly strides away, leaving us to fate.

I take a slow breath to override the uneven huffs and regret it.

"Help," I mouth.

I try to hold my breath, remembering it's not vital but it doesn't help. Though it throbs when I use my lungs, the silver begins to burn up like a hot iron when I achieve perfect stillness, there is nothing to ease this misery.

The cold wind scratches at my skin, blowing loose hair in my face and sticking to my wet cheeks. The pole creaks and I swear I feel the shift of it as the blades burrow in.

The hurt never goes away, it ranges from unbearable to beyond. It feels like that bottom knife is inching its way up, slicing me in half. Realistically, an illusion of it's design, the blade hasn't moved at all. Whoever made this torture device is a sick bastard!

"So it comes to this," I mutter, though it's painful to talk it's somehow better than enduring in silence. The distraction is a blessing.

"Why'd you have to do it, June?" hot tears sting and I welcome the flare of anger, "You die and I get to suffer for your mistakes.

"Answer me, damn it!" my yell is papery rather than forceful. I throw her a spiteful glare.

"You're going to-"

I stop mid sentence, gawking as the agony in my c.h.e.s.t turns to ice. Blue rings hover in the dark, two electric coils gone haywire.

I'd rub my eyes if I had the strength. I can't be seeing what it is I'm *seeing*.'Her face got ripped off! How are her eyes still there?'

I reach out with our connection and graze something manic and feral. I recoil, startled. A beast, nothing remotely tame. It's like swimming in bottomless water when a terrifying unknown comes along, brushing up against your leg.

"June," I breathe.

I reel back my focus, prying away from her eerie blues and go even colder. I'm floored, she's the scariest thing I've ever seen, basically unrecognizable.

The eyes are floating in the sockets of a meaty skull. Barely any flesh is covering the bone, a deep sinewy red of exposed muscle. Her lips and nose are non-existent. Just a ridged triangle and two fully visible rows of massive teeth. Jagged, elongated fangs all the way down to the developing gums. No cheeks to hide her sharp back molars, like the majority of her skin was seamlessly stripped away.

Tufts of black hair twirl like loose raven feathers, dangling down in patches as if trying to hide the crimson monstrosity. I can hear the subtle cracking of cartilage rebuilding, the squelching of fresh muscle knitting over. She's regrowing the missing parts of her head!

I exhale and a sharp pain reminds me I'm pinned to this board. My brain is obviously trying to cope with the fact that I'm dying and now I'm losing my mind.

"What is it with *you* and bugs," I wheeze. Her imaginary face is freaking me out but like a train wreck I find myself unable to look away.

She's very still, just staring at me, not even breathing. There's not enough flesh covering the face to make a remotely human expression, she's a soulless, heart stopping terror. This isn't normal on so many levels. Sure, June often had this look of consideration, as if wondering what I'd taste like. Now it doesn't appear to be up for debate.

"Juniper?"

My hallucination is responsive, those eyes flare with a trace of recognition, I half expect them to float away with my lucidity. Hostility and confusion writhe around me, emotions that feel plausibly detached from myself. This illusion is convincing, fact and fiction are meddling together. The veil between life and death must be thinning.

"You're not real," I announce and start to laugh or cry. It hurts but now that's started it can't be stopped, "I'm hallucinating, I'm dying."

She doesn't say anything, not a sound. No expression of anger, agony or panic. I wait for her image to disperse but the ice blue irises glimmer brighter than ever.

"If you're in my head you may as well say something."

No reaction at all. Why is my mind tormenting me, she may as well be a corpse.

Seconds of minutes of hours of silent suffering tick by, there is no real concept of time, only misery. After a coughing fit that almost destroys me, I think I'm ready to die. I'm ready for that merciless sun to come up and swallow me. I want it to be over.

I think about my family, about Sam and that cruel speck of hope that I'd get out of this. How pointless it's all become.

Another dry sob enters my throat and I cling to my mute illusion of June because it's all I have left. If I pretend hard enough then maybe I won't be alone.

Then the hallucination does something unexpected, it reaches out. Those familiar metaphysical tendrils embrace me in a blanket of comfort, it strangles the despair and numbs the pain.

I wince at an involuntary shiver as the corpse makes a very real sound, it slithers through those menacing ivory teeth.

A whispery growl, "Kindred…"