Chapter Text
The wind does not whisper tonight. It howls. Long and thin, like the wail of a weak, starving thing, threading meticulously through the bare pines, rattling the bare and brittle ribs of the wilderness. It gnaws at her face, at her fingers, at the shallow hollows beneath her skin where the meat has pulled away, stripped unmercifully by winter’s hands.
The cold does not settle. It is a living thing, a beast pressed against her back, open-mouthed and panting.
She kneels in the snow. The ice beneath her is slick and clear, a frozen mirror. Lottie wonders if she were to press her palm against it if she would feel something pressing back.
She experimentally lowers her hands to the ground. And something shifts.
The bones are clean. Stripped by their hunger that dragged them, open-mouthed and desperate.
She can still see it if she lets herself.
Where the ribs cracked open like the broken gates of Hades, where the flesh was peeled back in offering like the flayed skin of Marsyas—where the first bite was taken with trembling hands, and then another, and another, until the act became something else, until hunger became revelation.
They had taken her into themselves, down to the marrow, and had filled the emptiness with her body, her flesh, her fat, her muscle, and her heart. She had passed through them, piece by piece, swallowed into the hollow places where hunger once writhed, where want had hollowed them out like a temple abandoned by its god.
She had been given to them, gleaming and red against the snow, her body split open in the dark, the taste of her still clinging to their tongues long after the last mouthful had gone down. And with that taste came knowing.
The kind of knowing that burns at the root of the soul.
The kind that closes doors forever.
A feast beneath the night sky, under the blind eye of God, who had turned His face away as He did from Job, who had cast them out as He did Cain, who had washed His hands of their hunger like Pontius before the crowd.
They were not His children anymore.
They had eaten, and the wilderness had remained.
The wilderness had seen them, trembling in the snow, ribs pressing sharp against starved skin, and it had welcomed them inside.
Lottie exhales, her breath thick and visible in the dark, curling like incense smoke, a sacrifice lifted skyward. She reaches forward, reverent, fingers skimming the smooth, pale dome of the skull. The body was gone, but the body was everywhere.
In the trees.
In the roots stretching unseen beneath the frozen soil.
In them.
She never truly left.
The knife glints dully in the moonlight. The handle is warm from the heat of her hands, damp where her fingers have curled too tightly around it. It is an extension of her will, of purpose.
The first cut splits the silence.
It is a small thing. A thin red mouth opened in bone. Vigor where it should have dried ages ago.
The wind stutters, hiccups.
She carves again.
The trees sway, though there is no storm, no wind, nothing to move them.
The blade works steady, patient, peeling away at something deeper than flesh. This is not creation. Lottie understands that this is a revelation. The mark was already there, hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be unearthed.
It emerges, the lines stark and dark against pale bone, drinking in the cold, drinking in the breath from her open mouth.
Lottie presses her lips into the grooves, exhaling softly, willing warmth into the frozen remains. Her breath pools in the carved hollows, sinking into the marrow-deep knowing, into the silent spaces where something waits.
The wind stops.
The trees stand rigid.
The air tightens, thickens, pressing against her chest, filling the hollow places beneath her ribs.
The wilderness knows.
The wilderness accepts.
Lottie breathes deeply. The hunger rises in her throat, curling like a snake.
She presses her hands to the frozen earth, listening.
And beneath her—deep, deep, deep where the ice begins to melt—something listens back.
__________
Shauna runs.
The ground gives beneath her with every step, too soft, too loose. The earth should be solid, but it yields instead, like it wants to swallow her whole. Heat presses close, wrapping around her like a second skin. Sweat traces a path down her spine, clings to the bends of her knees, gathers in the crooks of her elbows, and pools at the nape of her neck.
Mari is ahead of her.
But Mari’s always been slow. Quick to panic, clumsy with it.
She stumbles through the underbrush, feet slipping over loose dirt, breath slicing through the air in erratic bursts. Her arms flail, legs pumping hard but without precision. She’s trying, but it’s never enough. Not really. Shauna knows it. Mari knows it.
Behind them, the others erupt in laughter. Voices scatter through the trees like birds startled from the canopy. It should be harmless. Light. A summer game.
But to Shauna, it’s just noise. Static in the back of her skull.
She blinks.
And Mari is gone.
Not far, just hidden.
Like some cowardly little animal.
Shauna exhales through her teeth and wipes the sweat from her brow. She knows exactly where Mari is curled into the brush, spine pressed to bark, holding her breath, waiting. Always waiting. For Shauna to get bored. To turn her back. To stop looking so she can dart out and make her move for the clearing.
Shauna almost laughs out loud and whispers, low and mocking, ‘Come out, kitty kitty kitty…’
A soft whimper and the sound of feet desperately hitting the forest floor.
There she is.
Shauna lunges.
They crash to the ground, hard and graceless.
Mari screams—sharp, high-pitched, all instinct. She thrashes beneath her like something wild and cornered, fingers clawing through leaves and dirt, legs kicking, and shoulders twisting. Trapped. Like prey.
Shauna’s fingers clamp down.
Her heart is pounding, her breath tearing through her throat, and her thighs locked tight against Mari’s as she holds her down.
Mari thrashes again, her eyes wide and wild, her chest heaving. And then, her face cracks open in a grin.
“Get off me, gaywad!”
Shauna blinks.
The world shudders back into place.
”Just give it to me,” Shauna snarls.
The forest feels too bright. The dirt is too warm. It smells like earth and sap and sunlight—not like dried blood and musk.
Mari’s fingers tighten around the bone.
Shauna sees red.
She lunges again, both hands curling over Mari’s, trying to pry the bone free. Mari shrieks, yanking back, twisting.
“Fucking—let go!” Shauna pants like a desperate animal.
But Mari just won’t let go.
Shauna can almost feel it, the smooth bone, warm from Mari’s grip. Something beneath the surface, something pressing back.
Shauna’s teeth sink into the soft flesh of her hand.
She feels the skin give way, the plush resistance of muscle beneath, and the shocked jerk of Mari’s body, like a rabbit twitching in a snare.
And for a second—for a breathless, perfect second—Shauna revels in it.
The heat of it. The taste. The sensation of flesh yielding beneath her mouth. How easy it would be to bite harder.
Mari’s scream rises—shrill, broken.
Hands clamp down on Shauna’s shoulders, arms, and wrists—yanking her back. The world tilts, her spine hitting the dirt, her head snapping sideways from the force of it.
Mari’s still screaming, cradling her hand, her eyes blown wide with disbelief. With rage. Her fingers curl around the bloody crescents embedded in her skin.
“Shauna, what the fuck?!” Van’s voice cuts through, sharp but distant, muffled beneath the buzzing in Shauna’s ears.
Tai is saying something else. Nat’s voice cuts through the noise, sharp and angry.
Mari stumbles back, her breath coming fast and ragged. She cradles her bleeding hand against her chest, lips curled in something not quite a snarl, but also not quite a grin.
Shauna’s jaw aches. Her teeth sting with the ghost of it—the warmth, the pressure, the way flesh gave way like fruit too ripe. The marks are deep. Shauna can see where her teeth had sunk in, half-moon indents filling with red.
Mari stares at her hand for a long second, chest still heaving.
Then she laughs.
A breathless, disbelieving sound, shoulders shaking.
“Holy shit,” she gasps. “Shauna, you psycho. You guys all saw that, right?”
Van grins, and Tai wipes sweat from her brow, shaking her head like she doesn’t quite know what to do with this.
“You know the rules, Mari.” Nat says, looking somewhere between annoyed and concerned. “You get tagged, you give it up.”
Mari shakes out her bitten hand, cradling it before smirking. Looking at everyone before opening her hands, empty, she said, “I don’t have it.”
A series of shits and exasperated groans surface around Shauna, and then she sees her in her peripheral vision, the blonde poodle bitch.
A scream tears through Shauna's throat “Fucking Quigley!”
__________
Grief should be a constant thing.
It should sit in their throats, thick as bile, settle into their bones, and curl under their skin like rot. It should not be fleeting. It should not be something they can laugh through.
And yet—they do.
They laugh. They hunt. They eat. They press their bodies into each other in the dark, whispering, panting, living.
As if Jackie’s body wasn’t left in the snow.
As if Shauna’s baby wasn’t ripped from her before it could even open its eyes.
She wants to shake them. To scream. To dig her nails into their arms, into their ribs, and make them feel it.
Because she does. Every second. Every breath.
Jackie is gone.
And yet she isn’t.
She’s everywhere. She’s everything.
Shauna sees her in the flickering firelight, in the way it catches on golden strands of hair that aren’t there. She hears her in the wind slipping through the trees, in the hushed murmur of the river swelling with meltwater, and in the whisper of something moving just beyond her vision.
The world is waking up, shaking off the weight of winter, stretching toward the sun.
And Shauna can’t stand it.
Because Jackie should be here.
Jackie, with her stupid floral perfume, the one Shauna pretended to gag at but secretly buried her face in every time she borrowed a sweater. Jackie, whose laugh rang sharp and bright, could turn her head just so and make Shauna feel like she was the only person in the world. Jackie’s laugh had a rhythm, a sharpness, and a bite that curled in the air like the snap of an apple between her teeth.
Now the earth just smells like thawing leaves, damp and rich and wrong. The wind doesn’t sound like Jackie’s laugh—it’s too wild, too free, slipping through the trees without shape, without weight.
And the growing underbrush of the forest lacks the complexity of Jackie's eyes.
Jackie’s eyes were alive.
They burned—hazel, restless, always shifting. There was never just one color, never just one thought behind them. A shade of bright summer grass when she was pleased with herself, light jade when she was scheming, and deep, moss-dark when she was angry and pretending she wasn’t.
Shauna had spent years chasing those changes.
Watching them, memorizing them, mapping them out in her head, desperate to understand.
Because Jackie’s mind was a locked door, a window with the curtains drawn, a book Shauna could hold but never quite open.
And God, she wanted in.
She wanted to pry Jackie’s thoughts apart, to peel them back layer by layer, to press her fingers into the soft, pulsing place where Jackie kept her secrets.
She wanted to unravel her.
To dig inside her head, pull out every flickering thought, every unsaid word, every quiet feeling Jackie swallowed down and pretended wasn’t there.
Shauna wanted to crawl into her.
To slip beneath Jackie’s ribs, curl up inside the warmth of her, bury herself so deep she would never have to leave.
Because Jackie was in a world that didn’t belong to her, but Shauna wanted to own it anyway.
And Jackie never let her.
She would let Shauna in just enough—enough to keep her close, enough to keep her needing more, enough to make Shauna feel like maybe, one day, Jackie would just let go and give her everything.
But she never did.
And now she never will.
And no matter how hard Shauna tries, no matter how deep she digs, no matter how much of Jackie she’s taken into herself, she will never know what Jackie was truly thinking in the end.
Spring has come without her.
The flowers push through the damp soil, stretching delicate petals toward the sun, but Jackie’s bones are buried deep within the ground.
The trees bloom with new leaves, bright and full of life, but Jackie’s fingers had curled stiff and blue against the snow.
The rivers swell, rushing forward, full of momentum, full of purpose, but Jackie is still.
Even though she left her in the cold, even though they devoured her like starving dogs, even though Jackie shouldn’t be here anymore,
She is inside Shauna, filling her, consuming her in return.
They all let her go, but Shauna never will.
Jackie belongs to her.
And maybe that’s why the air feels different now, thick and wrong, curling against her skin in a way that makes her stomach twist.
Shauna’s baby should also be a memory.
But memories don’t leave behind a hollow space inside you that feels like it’s always waiting to be filled.
She closes her eyes, and for a moment, she lets herself have it. This semblance of comfort.
There’s a kitchen. Soft light. Warm air. The scent of something familiar curling through the room—cinnamon, butter, vanilla. Jackie’s baking, or trying to. She was never really good at it, but that never stopped her from bossing Shauna around, acting like she knew exactly what she was doing.
Shauna stands at the counter, her hands dusted with flour, rolling dough between her palms. It sticks to her fingers, tacky and warm, but she doesn’t care. She just watches Jackie bouncing the baby in her arms, cradling him like he belongs there.
Like this baby isn’t a parasite.
Like it isn’t the result of Shauna betraying her.
Like it’s hers.
Jackie hums under her breath, swaying slightly, adjusting her grip so she can brush a kiss against the baby’s forehead.
She looks at Shauna like she forgives her. Like she never needed to.
“Looks like he likes me better than you,” Jackie teases, a smirk tugging at her lips.
Shauna rolls her eyes, but her heart aches.
Jackie meets her eyes over the baby’s head. And Shauna wants it. Wants to sink into this moment, wants to press herself into Jackie’s side, tuck her face into her neck, and stay.
But she can’t.
The kitchen isn’t real. The warmth, the light, the scent of cinnamon, none of it is real.
And Jackie isn’t holding her baby.
Because Jackie is dead.
Because Shauna’s baby is dead.
Because Jackie never forgave her, she never even had the chance to.
The warmth vanishes. The kitchen fades. Jackie is gone. The baby is gone. But the hollow space inside her remains.
She wants Jackie here. He wants to hear her voice, wants to see her roll her eyes, and wants to touch her just to prove she’s real.
She wants to hold her baby. She wants to hear him cry, to feel the weight of him in her arms, to press her lips to his forehead and tell him everything will be okay, even if it isn’t.
She wants them both back.
And it’s selfish. It’s horrible. But she doesn’t care.
Because why should she be the only one who still hurts like this?
Why does everyone else get to move on?
Why does the world keep spinning, shifting, and breathing when Jackie isn’t here to see it?
Why does Shauna have to keep waking up every day, carrying this, while the others forget?
They shouldn’t forget.
They should be grieving forever.
They should be on their knees in the dirt, mourning. They should be dragging their nails through the earth, clawing at the place where Jackie was buried, pressing their foreheads into the ground until the mud cakes their skin, until the same cold that took Jackie seeps into their pores, until the worms that wiggle their way past Jackie's bones crawl beneath their nails.
They should be wailing, tearing at their hair, and biting into their own skin just to feel something, anything, to fill the hollowness she left behind. They should be leaving offerings, carving her name into trees—their own flesh—slicing their palms open and letting the blood soak into the soil, letting the earth take its due, letting it know she is owed something in return.
They should never have let her go.
And neither should Shauna.
Why do they get to move on, to clean their hands, to press forward into spring like it means something, like it’s a rebirth and not just another way for their frayed sanity to drag them deeper into hell?
__________
Lottie hums as she walks, her boots pressing into the soft, damp earth, leaving faint impressions in the soil that disappear too quickly.
The song she hums isn’t one she remembers learning. But it’s hers now. A tune that spills from her lips as easily as breath, as naturally as the rustling leaves, as the distant gurgle of the river pushing through melting ice.
She can hear it beneath her feet.
The ground is breathing.
Not the way the wind dances through the grass. Not a surface thing. This is deeper—slower. A drag of air through unseen lungs, a pulse that moves like molasses, thick and ancient. An inhale. A sigh. A shift in the bones of the world.
Lottie smiles.
She approaches the grave Jackie’s new grave.
It looks different now, less like a place of rest, more like a mouth forced shut before it could scream. The edges are soft, still raw with upheaval. Something about it feels temporary. Wrong.
She hums again, softly, like a lullaby.
There is no silence here.
The wilderness never stops speaking.
Behind her, footsteps crunch through the softened underbrush. She doesn’t turn. She doesn’t need to.
It’s Travis.
He comes to a halt beside her. His breathing is unsteady, catching in his throat, escaping in uneven bursts. His hands hang clenched at his sides, trembling. Lottie keeps humming, her eyes fixed on the grave. She rocks back slightly on her heels, feeling the earth shift beneath her weight like something unsettled just under the surface.
After a moment, she tilts her head, not looking at him. “Do you want to keep going?”
Travis doesn’t answer. Not at first.
He’s staring.
His gaze is locked on the grave, as if he’s afraid it might move if he looks away.
The wind changes direction. A single leaf spirals down from above, twirling like a feather, landing without a sound on the disturbed soil.
Then his voice breaks into the space between them, low and hoarse, barely more than a breath.
“I can hear a thumping.”
Lottie exhales through her nose, a small, breathy laugh.
She hums again, swaying gently where she stands, rocking with the rhythm beneath her feet. The earth gives slightly, like lungs rising to meet her weight.
“Let’s leave.”
She turns, ready to walk back, but Travis doesn’t move.
His shoulders stiffen. His breath catches.
Lottie stops.
Slowly, she glances at him.
His face is pale, eyes wide and glassy. There’s something raw stretched thin behind them—not quite tears, not quite terror. His lips tremble. His throat bobs with a hard swallow, the motion jerky and forced.
And then, his voice cracks, his hands shaking at his sides.
“Why is the ground screaming?”
Lottie moves before she thinks; her hands rise and frame his face, palms pressing to either side of his skull, anchoring him. Forcing him to look at her.
His breath stutters. His pupils are blown wide, wild.
She leans in, nose almost touching his, voice low and coaxing.
“It isn’t screaming,” she says, certain as gospel.
Her thumbs brush against his temples, gentle despite the force of her grip.
Her smile widens.
“It’s laughing.”
Lottie strokes his hair, fingers combing through sweat-damp strands, slow and deliberate, the way one soothes a spooked animal.
“Joyous,” she breathes, “joyous laughing.”
Travis shudders beneath her hands, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts. His lips tremble, but no words come out, just a thin, rasping sound, a half-formed sob caught somewhere between his ribs.
Then he screams.
A raw, guttural thing that tears its way up from deep inside. He folds forward, as if the sound alone breaks him open. His hands fly to his ears, pressing hard, trying to block it out, to shut it out, to deny it.
“Stop, stop, stop—”
But the sound doesn’t stop.
The earth hums beneath their feet, rolling, shifting, waking.
The breath of something vast and unseen stirs beneath them, deep in the damp soil, threading through the roots, through the bones, through everything that has ever been buried.
Lottie holds him tighter.
Her arms curl around his shoulders, pulling him into her chest, cradling him. His body jerks, twisting, struggling, but she only hums softer, sweeter, and more soothingly.
Her fingers slide through his hair, stroking his scalp, pressing her cheek to the top of his head.
His body is burning. His skin shakes beneath her touch.
“Shhh,” she murmurs, rocking him gently, like a mother quieting a frightened child.
“It’s alright. It’s alright.”
Travis sobs.
He curls into himself, presses his face against her, hands still clutching at his ears, as if he can block it out, as if he can pretend he doesn’t hear.
But he does.
Lottie can feel it in him.
It’s there. Low and rippling, pressed into the belly of the world, reverberating like distant thunder, like drumming from within the womb of the earth.
He just doesn’t understand.
Not yet.
Not like she does.
Not like her.
Lottie’s lips brush against his temple, her voice soft and lilting.
“You’re safe,” she whispers. “The earth is just happy.”
Travis lets out a guttural, broken sob.
His fingers dig into her arms, hard enough to bruise, but Lottie only hums again, rocking him, rocking them both.
The ground beneath them quivers, exhales.
Travis screams again.
__________
Jackie’s room is bathed in gold.
Not just lit—drenched in it. The sun bleeds through gauzy curtains in syrupy beams, thick and warm and slow-moving. It spills over the comforter, over the half-crumpled magazines like drying leaves, over the soft clutter of Jackie’s life—lip gloss tubes with fingerprints, a necklace tangled in her bedsheets, a pair of shoes kicked half-under the dresser. Everything smells like her. Like vanilla lotion, like powdery floral perfume, like clean cotton and cherry chapstick, and like something soft and sugary that always made Shauna ache.
The scent clings to her skin.
Shauna lies curled on her side, hands tucked beneath her cheek, watching Jackie move.
Jackie sits cross-legged in the golden haze, a well-worn notebook in her lap, her fingers stained with old ink, calloused slightly at the knuckles. Her nails are short, bitten down neatly. Her face is thoughtful, lips parted just enough to show the edges of her teeth.
This Jackie is softer than the one the world knew, weaker. Not the captain. Not the performer. Not the golden girl who always knew the right thing to say. This Jackie doesn’t need an audience. She doesn’t even seem to notice Shauna watching.
Shauna’s chest aches. Like something inside her is trying to crawl closer.
Jackie glances up, eyes catching hers, and the corners of her mouth twitch into that familiar smirk—the one that always felt like an inside joke.
“Do you think we’d still be friends when we’re old?” she asks, cocking her head slightly.
Shauna blinks. “Old?”
“Yeah,” Jackie shrugs, flipping a page. “Like—grandmas. Wrinkly, gray-haired, yelling at kids from our porch, kind of ol”d
Shauna lets out a laugh. It sticks in her throat. “Of course,” she says softly. “Always.”
Jackie grins and tosses the notebook aside. It hits the floor with a gentle thump. “Good. Because I’d be an annoying old person alone.”
Shauna rolls her eyes. “You’re annoying now.”
Jackie gasps, mock-scandalized, shoving her lightly. “Excuse you.” Jackie then leans closer. Her voice dropped an octave. “Okay, another question.”
Shauna lifts an eyebrow. “Go on.”
Jackie doesn’t move away. She doesn’t smirk like she’s teasing, like she’s waiting for Shauna to squirm under her gaze. She just watches her, steady, expectant, searching.
“Do you love me?”
The words slip into the space between them, curling in the air like smoke, like something delicate and dangerous all at once.
Shauna’s breath catches. She wants to say yes. Wants to say I always have. She wants to say it so badly it roars in her chest like a second heartbeat. But her mouth stays shut. Her tongue is heavy. Her throat is thick. Her pulse thuds in her ears.
She can’t move.
She can’t speak.
Jackie is so close. Close enough that Shauna can see the tiny freckles across her nose, the sheen of warmth in her green eyes, and the way her lips part like she’s waiting.
The light refracts.
Shauna blinks.
A sound—low, wet. Rhythmic.
Her fingers twitch against the blankets. Her brow furrows.
She turns her head.
And sees herself.
Bent forward, bare knees sinking into a mattress, back arched, skin flushed and gleaming with sweat. Her own face, twisted and slack-jawed. Her eyes unfocused. Her mouth opens, releasing a sound she can’t believe belongs to her.
Jeff is behind her. Close. Gripping her like something he owns.
The bed groans with every motion. The air around them is thick—humid and sour with breath and musk, the stink of heat and friction and skin. That animal scent, raw and meaty, hangs in the air like steam. It clings to the walls. To her hair. To her mouth.
Shauna watches, frozen.
She watches the way her body moves. Every shift of muscle and grind of bone and tension in her thighs betrays it.
She’s feeling it.
And she hates that she remembers.
Her hands grip the sheets like she’s bracing against drowning. Her mouth opens again. Another moan—guttural, breathy, unwilling. It shudders out of her like a confession, and she can’t take it back.
Shame prickles up her spine.
She wants to look away. She tries to.
But she can’t.
Her gaze is locked. Her body keeps moving. She watches herself writhe, caught between revulsion and the sick, warm curl of pleasure that still lingers under her skin. The ghost of it. The memory of want.
It’s too loud.
Too slick.
Too much.
And then.
A breath.
Soft. Close.
Shauna turns back.
Where Jackie was
Her skin is thin and wrong, papery and leached of all warmth, stretched taut over bones that jut like broken branches, like scaffolding beneath a rotted tarp. Her cheeks are hollow, cavernous, carved out by cold and time.
Her lips are cracked and peeling, shriveled into something that barely resembles a mouth. Her hair hangs in stiff, brittle clumps, streaked with frost, stuck to her forehead in damp, matted tangles. One strand coils like a vein across her cheek.
Her jaw is slack.
Her mouth was open—just slightly—as if she had been about to say something when death silenced her mid-sentence. The shape of the word still lingers on her tongue, frozen, unfinished.
Oh God.
Her eyes.
Colorless. Murky. Glassy. The gray of snow rot and meltwater, of sky before a blizzard. Dull and sunken and endless.
They don’t move.
Don’t blink.
Don’t glimmer.
They just stare.
Directly into Shauna.
Not through her.
Into her.
Shauna freezes.
Her stomach seizes. Her mouth floods with spit, then bile. It rises so fast she nearly chokes on it.
But she can’t look away.
Jackie’s gaze is a hook in her ribs, reeling her in closer and closer.
And still—beneath it all—the room pulses with sound.
That wet, obscene cadence. The gasping. The grunting. The slap of flesh. Her own voice—ragged, breathless, unfamiliar. Animal. Echoing like it’s coming from somewhere far away, like a broadcast from a version of her she doesn’t recognize.
Jackie doesn’t blink.
Doesn’t move.
Just watch.
Watches her fuck her boyfriend.
The shame is unbearable. It floods every inch of her—hot and acidic, thrumming beneath her skin. It’s not the act itself that ruins her. It’s that Jackie sees it. That Jackie knows. She’s never felt so small, so exposed, so grotesquely alive.
And still—Jackie stares.
Shauna’s breath catches, sharp and broken, and she stumbles forward before she understands what she’s doing.
She drops to her knees.
Her hands shake as they reach out, hovering just above Jackie’s ruined face. Her fingers curl slightly, wanting to touch, to stroke, to apologize, but afraid of what she’ll feel. The cold. The stiffness. The death of it.
She presses her forehead to Jackie’s.
A whimper slips from her throat.
“I’m sorry,” she breathes. “I’m so sorry.”
Tears blur her vision, hot and thick, and one slips down and lands on Jackie’s temple.
Shauna kisses her.
Soft.
Gentle.
Like a prayer she’s never allowed herself to say out loud.
Jackie’s skin is cold. Dry. Cracked. The texture of it scrapes against her lips, and the taste is dust, faint rot, something old and long since gone. But Shauna doesn’t pull back. She kisses her again—longer this time. Her mouth opens slightly, trembling, and her tears drip down between them, mixing with the smell of earth and death and loss.
Hands fisted in Jackie’s coat. She presses closer, trying to sink into her, to disappear inside the corpse of the girl she loved.
“I didn’t mean to,” she whispers. “I didn’t want to leave you.”
She kisses her once more.
Jackie kisses her back.
Shauna startles and pulls back.
Jackie is looking at her.
Eyes open. Green. Blinking.
Alive.
Jackie reaches out without hesitation, and the back of her fingers grazes the curve of Shauna’s cheek. Her touch is featherlight, tender, and achingly familiar. Then her thumb moves, slow and careful, wiping away the tear that’s begun to slip down. Her hand lingers, cupping Shauna’s jaw like she’s holding something fragile. Something precious.
“Shauna,” she whispers, her voice like honey.
Shauna can’t move. Can’t speak. Her chest rises and falls in shallow stutters, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and want. Her lips part, but no sound comes out. Jackie tilts her head, just a little, like she’s trying to understand something delicate.
“Why are you crying?” She asks, soft as falling snow.
And Shauna breaks.
It starts as a broken inhale, then splinters into something ugly. Her whole body trembles, shoulders caving inward, as if she could fold herself out of existence. The sound that leaves her mouth is wet and hiccuping and small.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
It doesn’t feel like enough. It barely even feels like a word.
“I’m sorry,” she repeats, louder now, slurred and shaking. “I’m so sorry—I’m so, so, so sorry—Jackie, please—”
The words tangle. And collapses in on itself like a dying star. She can’t say them fast enough. She says them again and again, like maybe if she stacks them on top of each other, they’ll build something strong enough to hold the weight of what she did and couldn’t do. The tears stream without pause, soaking her lips and her chin, dripping down onto Jackie’s shirt.
She’s not sure what she’s begging for. Forgiveness? Punishment? Just to be heard?
And then—Jackie laughs.
A soft, sudden chuckle that bursts from her like she’s just remembered something mildly amusing.
Shauna freezes.
The apology catches in her throat, sharp and dry.
Jackie is smiling. Laughing. Her eyes crinkle at the corners.
Like it’s a joke.
Like, Shauna is a joke.
Shauna’s face twists. Her stomach flips. The grief boils over into something sharper, meaner, and molten.
“Why are you laughing?” she snaps. Her voice cracks mid-sentence.
Jackie doesn’t stop.
“Why are you laughing?” she screams.
Shauna’s hands lash out before she can stop them. Her fist connects with Jackie’s jaw—flesh, bone, the shock of it vibrating up her arm. Jackie’s head jerks sideways.
And then Shauna’s sobbing again, mouth open and gasping.
“I’m sorry—oh God—I didn’t mean—”
She grabs at Jackie’s shoulders, but Jackie’s face stays turned away, laughter still bubbling low in her chest.
Shauna recoils like she’s touched a flame.
Her hands fly to her scalp.
She digs her fingers into her hair—hard—clenching fistfuls, pulling.
She wants it to stop. The laughing. The noise. The knowing.
She yanks.
A scream tears up her throat.
She pulls again, harder, until she feels strands snap free. The sharp sting blooms across her scalp. Her fingers claw in deeper, dragging, ripping, and scraping the skin raw. She can feel the hair tearing loose—patches of it—and she wants it. She needs it.
Punishment. Payment.
“Shut up,” she rasps, through sobs and spit and pain. “Shut up—shut up—shut up—”
The laughter grows.
It fills the room, the walls, and her head. Jackie’s mouth is moving, but the sound isn’t hers anymore. It’s them—the girls—Van, Mari, Misty—all of them, laughing like they did in the afternoon by the fire. The dream warps, slants sideways. The walls peel back. The light refracts again.
The haze of sleep, of memory, of Jackie dissipates like breath on a mirror. She sits up, movements stiff and angry, and throws the blanket off with a violent jerk.
Shauna presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth, trying to keep it there. The taste of Jackie.
But the laughter—real, shrill, alive—cuts through whatever dream-space still clings to her.
She’s not ready to be awake.
But reality doesn’t care.
Shauna shoves to her feet, her legs unsteady. She steps outside; the morning light is too harsh, the air too light, and the sound of their joy scrapes against her skin like sandpaper.
There they are.
All of them.
Gathered near the fire pit—still unlit—laughing. Teasing. Shoving each other playfully like kids on summer break. Like there’s nothing wrong.
Shauna stands still, watching them, heat crawling up the back of her neck. Her jaw clenches, throat tight with something she can’t swallow down.
They shouldn’t be happy.
They of all people shouldn’t get to laugh like that. Not after everything they did. Not after what they took from Shauna.
Mari turns first. She spots Shauna in the doorway and grins like she’s been waiting for this.
“Oh look,” she calls. “Sleeping Beauty’s awake.”
She snickers. The others glance over.
“Have a nice nap?”
Shauna’s expression doesn’t shift. Her eyes narrow. Her hand rises slowly, and she flips Mari off without a word.
Mari cackles. Her laugh sharpens, shoulders shaking. Van bumps her elbow and smirks. Nat snorts into her tin mug. Misty’s laughter bursts out too loud, too eager, bouncing between sides like she’s trying to be everyone’s favorite.
She walks past them like they’re ghosts, background noise, irrelevant. Her shoes strike the dirt with a dull, steady rhythm.
The butchering station waits for her like a confession. Blood dried into the wood, meat hung in limp strips from the beams like discarded clothing, and skin curled and stiff at the edges. The carcass is nameless now, faceless—just parts. Shauna reaches for the knife without thinking. Her fingers close around the handle like it’s a lifeline.
She begins to cut. Slow, clean strokes, peeling back flesh with practiced precision. The blade glides through muscle like it’s meant to. Like it’s meant for her. Something to tether her to the ground while everything inside her pulls toward the dark.
Something she can tear apart while everything else inside her keeps falling to pieces.
__________
The fire isn’t as necessary as it used to be. It still crackles, still smokes, still sends glowing embers floating into the dusk, but it isn’t the center of them anymore. It’s smaller now, not the only thing keeping them alive, not something they have to huddle around just to make it through the night.
Everything feels softer now. The ground beneath them has lost its frozen resistance, turning damp, pliant, and alive again. The wind doesn’t cut like it used to; the air carries the scent of mud instead of blood, fresh leaves instead of rot.
Gen stretches her legs out in front of her, pushing her boot through the loose dirt. “This is going to be way easier now,” she says, watching the dust kick up. “No more frozen traps, no more animals starving to death before we can even catch them. We even have an animal pen; we’re set.”
Van leans into Nat, pressing their shoulders together. It’s casual, thoughtless, but lingers just a little too long. Maybe that’s a leftover instinct from the winter. Maybe that’s just who they are now.
Nat doesn’t answer right away. She wants to agree. She wants to believe it—the worst is over, they survived, they won.
But she doesn’t trust warmth anymore.
Winter lied to them.
It made them think hunger was the worst thing they would face. That if they could just fill their stomachs, everything would be fine.
But that wasn’t true.
Hunger was just the beginning.
“I don’t want another winter like that,” Van murmurs, quieter this time. It isn’t a confession, not really. It’s a reminder.
Tai flips the knife in her hands, catching it by the hilt. Her fingers are steady. “We’ll be better prepared next time.”
Next time. The reality of it is worse than the hunger ever was.
Tai looks up, meeting Nat’s eyes across the fire. “We survived,” she says, as if that means something.
Nat swallows. She doesn’t know how to explain that surviving isn’t the same thing as living.
There’s a pause, then Gen shifts, brushing dirt off her pants. “Hey—do you think Coach is still alive?”
Mari snorts. “What, like he just wandered off into the woods and found a better camp? Come on, he's a cripple.”
“I mean… We never found a body,” Gen offers, not quite hopeful, more curious than anything else. “The cabin burned down. If he was still around, wouldn’t he have come back?”
“Or maybe he’s hiding because he burned the cabin down and tried to kill us,” Mari says with a dramatic sigh, tossing a twig into the fire. “Fucking self-righteous dickweed.”
They laugh. It’s not cruel—just numb.
Nat stares into the flames.
She knows the truth.
They think he’s dead.
But Nat knows better.
She’s seen the snares—tied the way he used to show them, with blue cord none of the girls ever used. Taut, precise, tucked away in corners of the woods no one bothers to check anymore.
Maybe he was the one who burned the cabin down. Maybe he watched from the trees as it collapsed in on itself, black smoke curling into the sky like a final offering.
But what’s the point in saying any of that out loud?
What would it change?
Even if Coach Ben is alive and did light the match, even if he meant to do it, what would vengeance bring them now? What would finding him—dragging his broken body back into the open—do, other than offer a few seconds of bitter satisfaction before the horror of it settled in?
Would they kill him?
Would they let him go?
Nat doesn’t need the answer. She’s already lived too long in the space where right and wrong collapsed in on each other. Where survival blurred every line that used to matter.
So she lets them talk.
Let them believe he’s gone.
Because maybe it’s better that way.
Because she doesn’t want justice.
She just wants it all to be over.
Mari stirred, stretching her legs out with a dramatic groan. “God, I would kill someone for a 7-Eleven cherry Slurpee right now.”
Van groans. “Why would you even say that?”
“I can taste it,” Mari said, eyes closed, hand over her heart. “Right past all the pine tea and deer jerky. Just syrup and crushed ice and freedom.”
“Don’t start,” Tai muttered, half-laughing.
“No, she’s right,” Gen added, poking at the dirt with a stick. “I’d wreck all of you for a blue raspberry.”
“Grape,” Misty whispered. “Grape was the best.”
“Ew, Misty.” They groaned in unison, a chorus of longing and mock betrayal. The conversation, like everything else, straddled the edge between real grief and absurdity.
“I miss conditioner,” Van said suddenly, rubbing a hand over her hair. “I feel like I have a bird’s nest growing back here.”
Tai snorted. “I miss fries. Greasy-ass drive-thru fries that come in a paper bag and soak through the bottom. The kind that burns your mouth, but you still keep eating them like a dumbass.”
Van pointed at her, eyes lighting up. “McDonald’s.”
Tai gave a short laugh, nodding. “Exactly.”
“I miss Blockbuster,” Akilah grins. “Going in on a Friday night and spending, like, forty minutes picking a movie you’ve already seen.”
Van’s head snapped up. “The Sandlot. Oh my God.” Her face lit up, eyes wide like she could still see the VHS cover in her hands. “I rented that, like, twenty times. “You’re killing me, Smalls’!”
Melissa leaned forward, her smile crooked. “I was obsessed with Speed. Like, obsessed. I watched it with my mom and legit thought Sandra Bullock was the coolest woman alive.”
“I mean,” Mari said, “Keanu Reeves in that movie could run me over with the bus, and I’d say thank you.”
That cracked the group open. Laughter rippled around the fire, easy and warm.
Then Shauna spoke. “I miss the sound of chewing,”
The group quieted.
Shauna sat a little apart from them, her voice low and oddly flat. “Not normal chewing. I mean when it’s quiet. And someone’s right next to you. That wet, slurpy noise. Like, you can hear their jaw moving. Their tongue.” She looked at the fire, not them. “It used to gross me out. Now I miss it. I think about it a lot.”
The silence stretched. It was noticeably awkward.
Akilah blinked like maybe she’d misheard. Van shifted, arms tightening across her chest. Mari’s mouth twisted into a half-grimace, but—for once—she didn’t say anything. Tai opened her mouth, then closed it again. Even Misty, always ready to fill dead air with something, stayed still.
Nat cringed, and she knew—knew in the pit of her stomach—that this wasn’t really about chewing.
It had Jackie's fingerprints all over it.
Nat glanced around the circle before clearing her throat suddenly, “I miss weed.”
The shift was instant—like a pebble thrown into still water, breaking the surface tension just enough to let them breathe again.
Van snorted, grateful. “You and your priorities.”
“Don’t mock her,” Gen said, feigning solemnity.
Mari leaned back, eyes closed, grinning. “I still have dreams where I’m just lying in my bed with my little purple pipe and a bag of Funyuns.”
Melissa made a face. “Of all the chips, you choose Funyuns? That’s your weed snack of choice?”
Mari opened one eye, smug. “Funyuns are amazing. If you disagree, you just have garbage taste.”
“Funyuns taste like onion armpits,” Van muttered.
“At least I don’t smell like onion armpits,” Mari shot back.
Van blinked, all faux innocence. “What? Sure you do.”
Mari immediately grabbed a small chunk of bark and chucked it at her.
Van yelped and ducked, laughing. “Violent and wrong. Classic Mari.”
The laughter bloomed fast, high, and grateful. They latched onto it like warmth—like they’d all been clenching something at the base of their throats and finally let it go.
But Nat didn’t laugh.
She just watched Shauna.
Still curled tight around herself. Still staring into the flames like they were whispering something only she could hear.
And Nat felt it settle in her gut.
Dread.
__________
There is no beginning.
Only pressure—immense and total—closing in from all sides like a mouth too full of teeth. The world is a clenched fist around her body, and she is somewhere in the center of it, folded in on herself, formless, thoughtless, undone.
She doesn’t know if she’s buried or submerged or simply suspended, but everything is wet. Not water. Something thicker. Denser. The press of cold mud against her lips, packed into her ears, slick beneath her fingernails. Her mouth is full of grit, of grit and root and rot, and when she tries to breathe, the earth pushes deeper.
She chokes.
The first breath she takes isn’t breath at all—it’s soil, worms, ash, and the ghosts of dead leaves. Her lungs clench around it, heaving violently, gagging against the intrusion. Something writhes against the roof of her mouth. Something alive.
Her limbs jerk without direction, without recognition. They are not hers. They are meat—stiff and half-rotted, barely responsive. Her fingers scrabble at the soft walls around her, bone grinding against stone, knuckles tearing open on splinters of wood, of tree root.
The letters scatter like bugs across the back of her skull. She sees them, but they don’t hold meaning. They burst into her mind like sparks—too bright, too fast, too loud. They don’t explain. They invade.
Her name might be among them, but it’s buried, swallowed, and forgotten.
Her skin is screaming.
It doesn’t fit right. It sags, then stretches, then burns. Her nerves light up in waves, a slow, searing spread of sensation from the base of her spine to the crown of her skull. Her muscles tighten around phantom memories—of cold, of hunger, of stillness—but those memories are bloodless, skeletal things. They do not help her now.
The darkness breaks.
Above her, the soil loosens. The surface opens.
And light pours in.
Agony.
It floods her senses all at once—bright, blinding, infinite. Her eyes slam shut, but even behind the lids there’s color—white, gold, and red, pulsing and flashing. Shapes swim. Shadows dart. The sun isn’t a circle—it’s a chaos, a pressure, a presence.
The sun pulses behind her eyelids, a blinding strobe. Her brain doesn’t interpret it as light. It interprets it as panic. As violence. As wrong.
She doubles over, curling into herself.
The colors behind her eyes move too fast. Words rush into her skull, thousands of them, colliding with each other like birds against glass. Language she recognizes but can’t hold. Letters that twist into shapes and fall apart before they mean anything.
B-r-e-a-t-h
L-i-g-h-t
B-o-n-e
B-i-r-t-h
J-a—
She reels.
She tries to breathe, but the air is loud. Every inhale is thick with scent—dirt, sap, moss, things she can’t name. It clogs her throat. Her nostrils burn with the green of it, the sharp living sweetness of leaves and bark and open sky.
It smells like too much life.
It makes her nauseous.
Sound crashes next—birds screeching above, wind hissing through trees, insects clicking beneath her, her own ragged breath like a dying thing in her ears. Every noise is sharp. Every shift is deafening. There is no quiet in the world anymore. Even silence hums, buzzes, and claws at the edge of her thoughts.
Her muscle crawls from the foreign sensation of feeling. Everything touches her. The breeze on her exposed form. The sensation is raw, unfamiliar, unbearably out of place. The grass against her ankles. The cold, wet mud seeping up through her knees. It all feels wrong. She can feel every cell, every inch, every thread of being—and it’s unbearable.
Her head throbs.
Her teeth ache.
She’s closing.
Right there. In front of her.
Tissue threads together. Fibers curl inward. Muscle tightens. Skin drags itself across sinew like a curtain being pulled shut. Veins snake beneath it, sealing. Stretching. Mending.
And it’s not fast—it’s agonizing.
Every inch that heals screams. A thousand needles driving through her nerves. Each stitch of skin that reforms sings with fire and cold and feeling. Her jaw clenches. She hisses through her teeth. But the process doesn’t stop. The body does not ask for her consent.
Her chest convulses as the same thing happens beneath her ribs. Something shifts. Realigns. Bone settling. A vertebra cracks back into place. Cartilage squeals as it bends into form. Her abdomen ripples, the sensation of things knitting together—of being rewoven—making her stomach lurch.
And through it all, the dirt remains.
It clings to her.
Even as her skin seals itself over rawness, even as blood stops leaking from beneath her nails, the filth stays. It’s buried in the cracks of her fingers, caked in her scalp, packed beneath her torn fingernails, and embedded in the soft, wet corners of her eyes.
She tries to wipe it away, but her hands leave more behind. Smearing mud into half-healed cuts. Rubbing soil into closing pores.
It’s inside her now. She knows it. She can feel it in her mouth. Between her teeth. In the soft pink flesh at the back of her throat. Her tongue tastes like iron and soil and something older.
No matter how much her body repairs itself, the dirt remains.
She tries to stand.
The instinct comes before the motion—an ancient command wired into muscle and bone.
Rise.
But her limbs don’t obey. Her legs twitch beneath her, useless scaffolding wrapped in meat that doesn’t know its shape.
She shifts forward, and her knees buckle. Her hands sink into the mud. Her shoulder strikes the earth hard enough to jar her spine. Pain flares—hot, white, immediate. Her body folds again, pulled back into the dirt like it belongs there.
She groans.
Low. Animal.
She tries again.
Her arms push. Elbows tremble. One knee lifts—then slips. Her heel skids against wet leaves. She falls again, weightless for a heartbeat, then slams back into the ground with a thud that cracks through her ribs.
She stays there a moment.
Chest heaving. Fingers clawing at the forest floor like it might give her leverage, or answers, or air. Her palms leave streaks of blood and soil behind. Her breath comes in short bursts, each inhale too loud, each exhale too hot.
Crawling feels safer.
So she crawls.
Slow and broken and wrong—shoulders too stiff, legs dragging behind her, one hand always failing to find its mark. Her body lurches like a newborn deer.
Still, she drags herself forward.
One hand. Then the other. She slithers through the dirt, shoulders hitching, hips trailing, her face inches from the ground. Mud cakes her chin. Something sharp grazes her thigh. Pebbles are embedded in her knees. Her body lurches and sags and jerks like something unfinished.
Her back arches. Her weight shifts.
She rises to her knees again, trembling, swaying like a sapling in the wind.
And slowly—slowly—she lifts herself upright.
Half-crouched. Bent. Shaking.
Then—sound.
Thin at first. Distant. High and strange, threading its way through the trees like something spun from air and memory. It doesn’t belong to the wilderness—not the hush of wind, not the rustle of leaves, not the shrill cry of birds.
She freezes.
Her head lifts, crooked and slow, like it’s too heavy for her neck. Her eyes flicker toward the sound, wide and unfocused, pupils still trembling from the strain of light.
A rise. A fall. A burst. A pause.
It comes in fits, like waves breaking on an unseen shore. A sudden burst, then a lull. A ripple of breath, then something sharper—a crack, a pitch, a rhythm. It’s not language, not music, but it follows some internal pattern that pulls at her. A vibration that tugs at the meat of her memory. Something warm.
She doesn’t know the word for it. Doesn’t have language anymore, not really. Words come in flashes, broken and wrong, the syllables scattered.
But the sound pulls at her ribs. At the deep ache under her sternum. At the blood that still remembers things her mind cannot.
It tugs her forward.
She stumbles after it, knees nearly giving with every step. Her hands reach without reason, fingers splayed, trembling. She follows the sound like it’s the only real thing left in a world.
Branches catch her skin. Roots drag at her ankles. Her foot lands wrong, and she falls—again—but this time she claws herself up faster. Dirt streaked down her arms, blood seeping through the half-sealed cracks in her palms.
Still, she goes on.
The sound grows louder.
Light.
Not the sun. Not that blinding pain. This is softer. It flickers through the trees, golden and orange and alive, fluttering like a pulse just beneath the skin of the world. It dances against the trunks, casting shadows that twist and stretch in rhythm. It hums with something ancient. Life
Figures. Glimpsed between trees. Moving. Shifting.
A cluster of things gathered around the source. Long limbs. Wild hair. Pale hands. They shimmer at the edges—ghostlike, but vivid.
She crouches behind a tree, watching them.
A circle of apparitions. Each one half-sketched in shadow, skin smeared in soot and light. They gesture. They tilt their heads. They make the sound.
That strange, broken music—rising and falling. Fast and sharp. Harsh at the edges but filled with some strange warmth. It cuts through her like the memory of a glass of water, ice-filled to the brim.
She stares at them.
These shimmering things.
She licks her chapped lips. She needs to be closer.