Chapter Text
It was quiet, exactly how she’d preferred it.
In the mornings, the golden retriever that was once nearly the size of a tic-tac nipping at her heels, was fully grown and would share the bed when she got cold. Her dog was there for when the loneliness settled around her in the life she so desperately dreamed and fought for, and she fought like hell. This. This was her second chance.
The air was still, there was no electricity or any smell of sulfur. She could breathe clearly, and not just to pretend. Her lungs expanded and deflated in a gradual rhythm. The wooden floor was cold beneath her feet. The blanket was fuzzy and soft beneath her fingers. In the mornings, she liked to sit and listen to the world. She liked to feel everything before getting up to greet the day. There was a time she never thought she would feel alive again. She feared her life would have been truly immortal, and that was the worst thing of all.
Her black hair that was once black and white with chunky highlights had grown longer, she liked it longer. She liked not having the fear of a creature grabbing it. Carding her fingers through the hair on her scalp, she sighed in content. Soft mornings like these were worth so much. There was nothing she wanted more than this for so long.
Winny, her golden retriever, jumped on the bed and nudged her with his cold black nose. He made a soft sort of noise and then licked up the side of her face, his flat tongue felt like sandpaper.
“Okay, okay. I’m up, I’m up.” She laughed and pushed herself to stand from the bed, stretching her hands to the sky and making a noise akin to a yawn mixed with a groan. Her body stretched and leaned back in a wonky sort of way, like her body was trying to mimic a letter in the alphabet.
Alexandra made a life for herself in this quaint little town. She established a bakery, having never thought her hobby could ever turn into a career option. A shop at the corner of the main drag frequented by locals and tourists alike. The local favorite dish of hers was warm apple pie drizzled with both caramel and chocolate, and served with two generous scoops of French vanilla ice-cream. The Winchester Special wasn’t exactly a name she shared with anyone. Instead, it was a well-kept secret that she held close. Not that she needed to.
In a way, it was almost surreal. Walking through her house, feeling the heat through the floorboards or coming through the vents. She was very rarely cold anymore, and actively kept it out. The cold was an awful reminder that numbed her to her core. Not only did it slice through her as though she were a ghost, but there was this hunger, this emptiness that still clung to the back of her mind. An awful stinging reminder of the bile in her throat, or that horrid taste of blood she couldn’t chase away on the bad days.
It was honestly a little strange, to have trauma from it. From how it happened, and everything leading up to the cure. She felt like she'd been out of her body when she thought about it, like she was tugged along by the gentle nudge of the narrative until something broke. She'd ripped right out of her confinement within the artificial pages of whoever was watching like a cruel God. For this second chance at life, she wasn't going to waste it. And she could have gone to college but that door was closed and shut.
In the kitchen, Winny circled her legs excitedly. With the food bowl in her hand, the white plastic almost frozen, she shuffled over to the bag of dog food in the corner. He was so excited and warm, his paws battering around on the tile. This was like a picture in a movie that she'd dreamed about. Living in a nice house feeding her dog in the morning, not some stuffy motel room that kept her prisoner. The smell of dry kibble hit her like a puff of smoke when she knelt down to open the bag, Winny trying to nip at her. The solid clink of the food into the bowl was rhythmic. Nothing could be better than this moment, than the rest of her life spent at the bakery, in this town.
Her stomach rumbled and then she turned to the fridge, her mind switching to feeding herself now that the dog was taking care of. She could actually eat food. Not throw it up after a few minutes. And the food was filling, it could be rich and delicious. The taste and flavor was what she missed so much. That happy feeling, it's why she decided to make something of her baking hobby. Breathe knew life to her mother's recipes that she memorized as a child.
There's something missing, a shape in her very soul, that she chose to ignore. In the mornings it was a sharp sting, but then settled in a dull ache. And when she thought about it too much, her face would grow warm, and her throat would constrict to hold back the dam. The quiet was the loudest when she was alone, and it was always this ringing in her ears that made her tingle. She had to ignore it, to stifle the urge to turn and talk to the person missing in her very being. Because that would break her perfect life. That would shatter what she built for herself to keep her from going, to keep her from leaving. She'd grown roots here, it would hurt her too much to go back.
The bitter smell of coffee filled the kitchen as she opened the fridge. She really wanted eggs lately. Nice scrambled eggs, made without milk or water, with some toast and maybe some bacon. The amount of things she made up for the fun of it, letting people taste it was all she could ask for. Locals and tourists alike loved her bakery, it earned a mention of the Phantom Gourmet which funneled in more people who wanted to try her special. Thousands of people shared photos from her bakery on social media.
The taste of coffee wasn't something she could get behind, but it would wake her up. Even with ungodly amounts of creamer and sugar, the taste was always such an obstacle to get past, but there had been a time she couldn't taste it. There had been a time where she couldn't taste anything, and the food only served to make her gag. Now, that she was years past that, she would look back and it was just so traumatizing. On the bad days, she'd have nightmares or uncomfortable day-dreams about if she hadn't been cured. If she'd hadn't stayed so pure for the cure, if she'd divulged and given into the hunger the wrecked her to her core.
Sometimes it was like her brain had been submerged under water, everything felt like static. Or like she was living a distant memory with the looming fear of waking up only to find out she was dreaming in a motel room again. Not that she ever really slept, at one point she hadn’t needed too but still pretended to give her some semblance of normalcy. Like how she pretended to breathe, moving her shoulders as her lungs expanded. Now, she could feel every part of the way her lungs expanded or the drowsiness before going to sleep. It was the small part she missed the most. The way things felt now that she was no longer occupied by the overwhelming cold that rocked her to her core.
The kitchen came to life as she cooked, grabbing a few things and turning on the stove. At this point, her life was a mundane routine but she couldn’t ever take it for granted when about nine years ago she’d wanted nothing more. When about nine years ago she was just about ready to give up on wishing for a normal life, for a human life. Everything paled in comparison when her humanity was taken from her so violently eleven years ago, but it was nine years ago when her life got flipped upside down all because of these brothers.
The night she left after getting better, she remembered how she screamed at them. She remembered the fight. The way they both looked at her like she was crazy to want to go on her own. The way he wanted her to stay but couldn’t seem to say anything to get her to listen. They left her in that town. She took buses, and walked as far as she could until she was sure they hadn’t set foot in someplace. Because if they had, they’d just want to come back again. Pushing a hand through her black hair, she sighed and closed her eyes. If circumstances were different, maybe they would be around to share this with her. Or maybe he would be around to share this with her. But she would never be able to pull him away, not when he loved it so much. Not when it consumed him how it did. No, the quiet and peaceful was more of his brother's style even though he’d never admit it. Giving him something like this, even in her head, felt too cheap. It felt like a mischaracterization. Something he thought he wanted, but realized he didn’t need. The quiet life would only get him killed, make him complacent in running away from himself.
And for a while, she was running away from herself too. She was trying to get away from what she had become without ever realizing that she hadn’t become anything else. That was still her. Just a part of her that was more like an embodiment of her trauma. For a long time now, a lot of her morning was spent self reflecting. She would replay everything up until this moment like a movie and remind herself of just how hard she worked to get here. To remind herself that even if the routine was boring, that she kicked and screamed the entire way to get here, that she stopped at nothing to save herself before anyone else could. But even if it got boring, she truly could never take it for granted, because in the blink of an eye this could be all over. Someone new could roll into town. Someone with guns, and holy water, talking about some type of monster that only existed in storybooks.
But the monsters were real. They didn’t hide under beds, or in closets.
They’re trying to survive just like humans are, only, their methods of survival seem much less conventional. This doesn’t mean her opinion on monsters has changed, only proved to humanize them for a moment. She can understand their struggles, and in a way, she almost thinks of them as animals instead of monsters. Creatures that only know how to survive, not to thrive.
She sucked a heavy breath in, shaking her head quickly to rid the thoughts blooming in her brain like glowing flowers in the middle of the night. Yeah, the nighttime is still her favorite after everything. It’s a perfect ambience. The crickets chirped, and the glow flies buzzed around. Sometimes the wind would ruffle her hair if she was leaning out the window. And when it rained the damp night would be around to comfort her, wrapping her soul in a cozy, fuzzy blanket. She was never religious, and she still isn’t religious much but wouldn’t turn down the idea of God granting her a reprieve. That he no longer tugged her by the pull of the narrative and let her guide her own way, holding the lantern at the end of her staff and trekking down the dark, unknown hallway. It was tiresome, the kind of exhaustion that seeps deep into the soul like oil in the carpet.
After feeding herself and the dog, she retreated back upstairs to change. Sure, on a day off she would be more than content staying in her pajamas all day but this wasn’t her day off and she didn’t really want to stay in her pajamas all day either. There were no photos that lined her walls, the decoration in her house was surprisingly minimal. The only real decorations were the decorative pillows in the living room or the wallpaper in the small guest room. She felt she hadn’t lived a full enough life to amass much of a personality in the interior of her home. It was a blank canvas just as she was. She walked past a dark room and curiously leaned in, turning up the switch right next to the door. The small guest room was quaint, and technically in the current state it looked like a motel room. And for a split second, she almost wondered if they even had a home to return to. If they had something other than countless motel rooms and fake IDs.
Turning the light off before closing the door to the room, the floorboards creaked and her hair stood on end. So far, life has been routine. Life had been normal. Nothing went bump in the night, and there certainly weren’t monsters terrorizing the town or unexplained deaths. Everything was… normal. Not that it was boring, it would never be boring. This was the life she fought for, even if it wasn’t as eventful as the life she left. But second chances were never as exciting as the first go-around. Nibbling on the skin of her bottom lip as she dug through her dresser drawers for something decent, something that didn’t stick out too much. Most of her clothes blended in relatively well, making her seem well-adjusted, but the odd piece of clothing would pull her back to the thick taste of copper hanging in the back of her throat. It would take her back with even the smallest hint of broiled caramel and vanilla.
Then she found the sweatshirt she buried at the bottom of her shirt drawer. Hastily, like she was running from herself all over again, she buried it like nothing happened. Buried it like it didn’t exist. It shouldn’t exist. She didn’t know why she still had it, but she couldn’t throw it away whenever she tried. It smelled like him and as much as she wanted to deny it, she missed him most of all. His eyes, his laugh, the warmth that spread from his palms through his arms. How when he’d hold her, she felt she was in the safest place in the world. But thinking about him. It reignited this loneliness that ate away at her like the bitter cold in the winter. She sighed and shut the drawer, moving to her closet to find something on one of the hangers instead. Much less memories were stored in the closet. She didn’t have skeletons to hide, only bodies to bury.
Looking for something to wear was always such a routine, but she never smartened up and laid out her clothes the night before, too accustomed to not knowing what she had with her or wearing the same clothes for days or even months with no end. Rolling her sleeves up, her eyes stopped at her wrists. The same wrists that had been bound, the same wrists that had gone raw against metal. A chill ran down her spine and she tugged her sleeves down. It’s gotten colder in the morning, so she opted for layering up. Nothing could get any better than layers to keep out the cold.
Then, she’d take Winny for a walk. Like clockwork each morning. The routine kept her in check, it kept her mind from wandering. Keeping such a schedule didn’t allow for any of the messy trauma to slip through and ruin her day. With her coat buttoned up to her neck over an earthy-toned sweater and a grey turtleneck, she was covered head to toe. Her hair was bunched into a knit hat secured with earmuffs. How desperately she tried to keep the cold out was a little odd to the people around her, but eventually they got used to it. Eventually, this was just another common occurrence.
No matter what, Winny was always happy for a walk. His tail would wag, and even if he’d seen the neighbors a million times he'd always bark happily at them, greet them like an excited puppy and give them lots of kisses even when she’d try to reign him in. But Winny was beloved, the neighborhood didn’t feel the same without him. And if there was a time he was never on a walk, someone would be at their door to make sure everything was okay. That was how strictly she stuck to her schedule.
But not even a schedule could keep away this tug in her soul. She watched a black Chevy Impala roll past, and her heart panged in her ears. The man and woman inside, with their finely pressed suits and the man’s clean-shaven face. It was so familiar, the two of them. It was like she’d been pierced in the heart, and without a word she turned on her heel gently pulling the leash in the opposite direction the car was going. The sides of her face were warm, and there was this ringing in her ears.
After her walk with Winny, she’d stop in at the bakery. Her pride and joy. She might not have built it from the ground up, but the owner had bestowed it to her after a few years of hard work, dedication and loyalty. She knew each baker by name, and knew what was going on in their lives. She was diligent about allergies, and was always accommodating no matter what needed to be changed. This bakery was the love of her life. It was everything she could ever ask for, and then some.
But the hair on the back of her neck stood up again, and yet she’d known she couldn’t outrun them again. She could pretend as much as she wanted, but she could never forget their faces, she could never forget those four years.
Four years of torture.