No Life Kid I
The wall of television screens flickered behind reinforced glass, twenty-four identical news anchors moving their mouths in perfect synchron
The wall of television screens flickered behind reinforced glass, twenty-four identical news anchors moving their mouths in perfect synchronization. The volume bled through the storefront window, each word arriving in staggered waves. “…fourth victim discovered on August 18th 2004, near East Beach… authorities urging residents to travel in groups after dark…the killer media outlets have dubbed the Santa Barbara Slasher remains at large. Chief Martinez stated in this morning’s press conference…”
A woman passed the display case, her reflection multiplying across the screens before vanishing into the next pool of streetlight. Red vinyl jacket caught the sodium glow, hem stopping six inches above her knees. Her heels clicked against concrete in an uneven rhythm, the left shoe’s heel worn down more than the right. Black fishnet stockings showed a run starting at the ankle, climbing toward the knee. She adjusted her purse strap without breaking stride, fingers fumbling with the clasp before giving up.
Half a block behind, a figure maintained the same pace. Greasy blond hair hung past his shoulders, catching grease stains visible even under the dim street lighting. A beige bucket hat sat low on his head, brim shadowing wraparound sunglasses that reflected nothing. His right hand stayed in his jacket pocket, fingers moving against something metallic that clicked softly with each step. The sound barely carried over the distant hum of traffic on State Street.
The woman turned left at the intersection, passing beneath a broken streetlight. The following figure quickened his pace for three steps, then slowed again. His free hand wiped across his mouth, leaving a wet streak on the back of his denim sleeve.
She glanced back, pace slowing for a moment as she fumbled with her purse, pulling out a pink clamshell of a Nokia. The screen’s light illuminated heavy foundation caked over old acne scars as she held the phone to her ear.
“Hey baby, I’m almost there.” Her voice carried back in the still air of the empty street. “Yeah, just passing the old theater. Maybe five minutes?” She laughed out loud, the sound leaving her high and forced. “No, no, I’m good. Just… you know how it is. Yeah. See you soon.”
The man in the bucket hat maintained his distance, pace matching hers exactly.
“Oh my god, is that the Santa Barbara Slasher?”
The voice came from directly ahead, where a teenager stood centered beneath the next working streetlight. Royal blue coat hung to his knees, matching the cowboy hat that threw precise shadows across his face. Black shirt, blue tie knotted perfectly. Blue-tinted round sunglasses despite the hour. Silver cross on a chain caught the light as he shifted his weight, black leather gloves tucked into his coat pockets.
The man in the bucket hat stopped walking. His right hand remained in his pocket, knuckles pressing outward against the fabric as the woman ahead continued walking, her heels clicking faster now until the sound faded around the corner.
“I mean, wow.” The kid’s hands came together in a single clap.
“The actual Santa Barbara Slasher. In the flesh. This is like… well, a celebrity sighting but for murder. Can I have your autograph?” His head tilted as he rocked back on his heels, coat swaying. “Do you have a business card? Wait, that’s stupid. Of course you don’t have a business card. What would it even say? Local stabbing enthusiast? ‘Ask me about my knife collection’?“
The bucket hat tilted down as the man took a step back, right hand shifting to his right pocket again.
“Not much of a talker, huh?” The teenager pulled one hand from his pocket, gesturing lazily at the man in front of him. “That’s cool, that’s cool. Some people express themselves through words, some through interpretive dance, and you…” He tilted his head, sunglasses catching the streetlight. “Well, you’ve got your whole thing going on but see, here’s what I don’t get.”
The kid shifted his hand from side to side, in the ‘iffy’ sort of movement people often made. “The whole serial killer naming convention thing. Like, why ‘Slasher’? Seems kinda limiting, brand-wise. What if you want to branch out? Try some strangulation? Little bit of poison? But no, now you’re locked into the whole slashing thing. It’s like no range at all, man.”
The man’s hand came out of his pocket.
“Oh, we’re doing this now?” The teenager spread his arms wide, coat opening like wings. “Fantastic. Love the initiative. Really shows commitment to the craft.”
The knife emerged in one fluid motion, eight inches of steel catching the light as the man rushed forward, blade angled upward toward the exposed throat. His breathing came in short bursts through his nose, visible in small puffs of condensation.
Then the knife stopped.
Not slowed. Not deflected. Stopped.
The blade met skin with a sound like metal striking stone as it stopped dead against the teenager’s neck, his head tilted back slightly from the impact but nothing more. No blood. No give. Nothing like that.
The teenager lifted his head slowly, smile widening until the streetlight caught on pointed canines. “Okay, okay, I’m gonna stop you right there. That usually works, right?” Neck still pressed against the blade, he leaned into it further. “Like, totally gets the job done? Tell you what, big guy… I’m feeling generous tonight, so… I’m gonna give you a do-over, and this time I want you to really commit to the whole ‘murder’ thing. Really put some oomph behind it this time? Pretend I’m your ex-wife or something.”
The man’s pupils dilated behind his sunglasses. His grip on the knife handle turned his knuckles white. A bead of sweat rolled from beneath the bucket hat, tracing a line through the stubble on his jaw. He pulled the blade back six inches and drove it forward again, full body weight behind the thrust.
The knife shattered.
The sound rang out like a wine glass thrown against concrete. Metal fragments scattered across the asphalt, the largest piece no bigger than a fingernail. The man stumbled backward, still gripping the broken handle with two inches of jagged steel attached.
The teenager’s jaw worked methodically, the sound of crunching metal clear and loud in the quiet street. His adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Mmmmm-mm, I did need some iron in my diet. You know, if I still had functional insides, I’d probably be shitting blood for a good week after that.”
The man’s chest rose and fell in rapid succession. His left hand came up to his throat, fingers checking for a pulse that hammered visibly in his neck. The broken knife handle trembled in his other hand.
“You ever been to Taco Bell?” The teenager adjusted his tie with one gloved hand, head tilting as his smile returned. Sharp teeth glinted under the streetlight, some still showing metal fragments between them. “Kinda like that.”
The man spun on his heel and ran. His bucket hat flew off after three steps, landing upside down on the sidewalk. Greasy hair whipped behind him as he pumped his arms, broken knife still clutched in his right fist. He cut left down an alley, shoes slapping against wet pavement.
The teenager walked after him, hands returning to his coat pockets. His pace never changed, leather shoes clicking steadily on concrete.
The man glanced over his shoulder. The teenager maintained the same distance, maybe twenty feet back, strolling beneath each alley light like he had nowhere important to be. The man’s breathing came in ragged gasps now, visible in larger clouds. He turned right at the next intersection, nearly slipping on a patch of oil.
Another glance back. Twenty feet. Same leisurely walk. Same slight smile visible beneath the cowboy hat’s brim.
The man’s legs pumped harder. His free hand clutched at a stitch in his side. Sweat soaked through his shirt, visible in dark patches when he passed beneath security lights. Left turn. Right turn. Through a parking lot. Over a low fence that caught his jeans, tearing them at the knee.
Each time he looked back, the teenager remained exactly twenty feet behind, walking like he was window shopping on a Sunday afternoon.
The alley ended in a brick wall topped with razor wire. Dumpsters blocked the left side. A locked gate secured the right. The man spun around, back pressed against the bricks. His mouth opened wide, chest heaving as he tried to draw enough breath to scream.
A blue gloved hand covered his mouth before any sound emerged. The teenager stood directly behind him now, body pressed close enough that the man could feel the complete absence of breathing against his neck. Iron-hard fingers held his jaw shut while the other hand plucked the broken knife from his grip and tossed it aside. It clattered against the dumpster and fell silent.
“Shhhh, shhhh,” breath that carried no warmth whispered past his ear, “you don’t wanna get caught, do you? I mean, you were about to murder that nice lady. Very impolite. Very… disappointing.”
The man’s scream caught behind leather-covered fingers, emerging as a muffled whine. His hands came up to claw at the arm across his face, fingernails scraping uselessly against the blue coat’s fabric. His sunglasses fell to the ground and cracked against the asphalt.
The teenager’s other hand pulled the silver cross away from his neck, chain jingling softly. “You know what your problem is? No sense of style. I mean, look at me. Color coordination. Thematic consistency. You? Bucket hat and murder? That’s not a look, that’s a cry for help.”
Sharp teeth pressed against the junction of neck and shoulder, taking their time to find the right spot. The man’s muffled screaming increased in pitch, legs kicking against nothing. His bladder released, warmth spreading down his leg.
The teenager made a disappointed sound. “See? No class at all.”
The teeth sank in slowly, deliberately, each millimeter of penetration accompanied by the man’s weakening struggles. Blood welled around the puncture wounds, but not a drop fell. The teenager’s throat worked steadily, swallowing in measured and pleased-sounding pulls. The man’s kicks grew weake as his hands fell from the arm holding him.
Frantic eyes rolled back, showing only whites.
Yep, that’s me. No, not the guy getting his veins cleaned out. Me, the guy doing the cleaning.
You might be wondering how I got in this situation.
Well, it started a couple years back, when I got shot in the face in one life and woke up in another about one year back.
Yeah. You heard that right.
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The ceiling fan hung dead from the ceiling, four blades coated in thick dust and with a motor that burned out back when Clinton was still getting blowjobs from his wife.
Honestly, just another broken thing in this sweaty-ass excuse for a counselor’s office.
The air conditioning wheezed worse than the way he used to in the first go-round on this big blue marble, back when he was sucking on an inhaler harder than Maria in third period chemistry. Miami in September was already a special kind of hell, but it was like being inside Miami Jackson Senior High did something that was the opposite of magical.
Whatever it was, it made the heat into something you could taste on the back of your tongue, the worst sort of morning breath at two in the afternoon.
Zander Cray slouched even deeper into the cracked vinyl of the uncomfortable office chair letting his legs sprawl wide because fuck it.
His Walkman dug into his hip where the clip was bent wrong from that fight with Marcus last week behind the gym that the school never found out about, the foam padding of his headphones peeling away at the edges where the cheap glue gave up fighting the humidity years ago.
Man, I was born too early.
The thought tapped the side of his dead over and over and over on repeat like it was Woody Woodpecker, the same set of words popping into his head when he caught himself missing shit that didn’t exist yet. No Spotify to drown out McLaskey’s voice. No group chats to roast people in real time. No, it was just this analog nightmare of rewinding cassettes with a pencil and hoping the ribbon didn’t snap.
His foster brothers thought he was weird for complaining about technology that worked fine, but they didn’t have memories of smartphones rattling around in their heads like ghosts from a future that might not even happen the same way twice.
Wire-rimmed glasses slid down his nose from the sweat, belly pushing against a shirt that probably fit a little better two years and twenty pounds ago. There was a faded coffee stain on his tie shaped like Florida, but then again… that might just be the pattern, though.
“Mr. Cray, my pleasure to welcome you back to the land of the living.”
The words filtered through the fog in Zander’s head, pulling him out of that weird space between sleep and memory where D.C. streets kept bleeding through, where gunshots echoed under go-go beats and faces he used to know looked down at him with expressions he couldn’t read. His chest phantom-ached where the bullets went in, three neat holes that ended one life and started this old-timey bullshit he was stuck in now.
“We good?” Zander’s voice came out rough, throat dry as usual. Man, I’m thirsty. He rolled his shoulders, and fought the urge to frown as he felt the shirt stick to his back where sweat glued cotton to skin.
McLaskey’s face did that thing where it wanted to turn red but couldn’t commit fully, just going blotchy around the edges instead. “You were asleep, Mr. Cray. Again.”
Again. Like Zander gave a single solitary fuck about staying awake for Career Planning. He let out a loud sigh that said how much he cared as he shifted in the chair, springs squeaking. His dreads fell forward into his face and he pushed them back with one hand, not even bothered as crusty fingernails touched his face.
“My bad. Didn’t sleep last night. Still running with that, y’feel me?”
McLaskey’s jaw worked like he was chewing on his words before spitting them out. “This isn’t a joke. You’ve been in my office barely five minutes and you’re already asleep.”
The folder on his desk might as well have had “LOST CAUSE” stamped across it in red ink as McLaskey tapped it with one finger. Zander knew it was probably full of Cs, Ds, and that one F in Chemistry but who the hell needed to know about covalent bonds when you already knew cryptocurrency was going to be a thing?
“I said, my bad. Mr. M.”
McLaskey’s eyes twitched at the unbothered blandness he apologized with and the man leaned forward, chair groaning under the shift in weight. “It is your bad, son.” Another tap on the folder, harder this time. “Your grades are circling the drain, barely passing three classes, and on disciplinary probation for three different fights this past week.”
“You mean, three different wins?” The words slipped out anyway because his mouth had never met a thought it didn’t want to share immediately. McLaskey’s face went full tomato this time, no hesitation.
“Mr. Cray!”
Zander’s attention scattered across the room like he was mapping escape routes. The door with its frosted glass window that showed shadows moving in the hallway. The window behind McLaskey’s desk, painted shut since the Reagan administration probably, overlooking the teacher’s parking lot where someone’s Honda Civic was getting a ticket for expired tags. Even the drop ceiling tiles looked like they might give way if you pushed hard enough, though where the fuck would you go after that? Into the ventilation system like some bootleg Bruce Willis?
“Look, I ain’t tryna be class prez or whatever. Gimme a badge, a gun, and somebody that needs to be caught. Bet I don’t miss.”
It was the kind of thing that sounded tough until you remembered he was saying it in a room that smelled like mildew and broken dreams, wearing a shirt with a hole near the hem from catching it on a chain-link fence running from mall security last month. But the core of it was true. He didn’t want to sit through four more years of this educational purgatory just to end up in a cubicle somewhere, pretending PowerPoint presentations mattered while the world burned in HD.
McLaskey sighed like someone had let all the air out of him at once. He picked up a pen, one of those cheap Bics that leaked ink if you looked at it wrong, and scratched something on a paper Zander couldn’t see. “Listen, kid. You’re still seventeen. You have time. You’ve tested well, but you don’t apply yourself. You need a future.”
Already had one. Died in it.
That future involved a comp-sci degree he never got to start at Cornell, three bullets from a rando who thought he had fucked his girl, and the taste of blood filling his mouth. This future smelled like industrial disinfectant, testosterone, and whatever his foster mom felt like cooking.
If she felt like cooking.
Eight boys crammed into a foster house meant for six people at the most, all of them watched over the Kowalskis as they collected government checks and pretended not to notice when kids spent a couple days missing.
“So I punch too much and read too little. You try being this pretty in gym class and not getting jumped.” With all this time on his hands and no internet to distract him and barely any books good enough to be worth his time, he had jumped on the fitness kick at ten years old, years earlier than he would ever have gotten obsessed with it without asthma holding him back at all.
After over a full decade of running, eating as healthy as he could manage and swinging his fists, he was good-looking and he knew it, even with the scar on his eyebrow from a bottle that got too friendly at a house party. In a school where standing out meant becoming a target, being smart and pretty and mouthy was like painting a bullseye on your back and handing out ammunition.
McLaskey’s jaw clenched tight enough to crack molars. “What do you want, Zander? In life?”
What do I want? To not die at eighteen again? To not waste time on shit that wouldn’t matter? To fast-forward through this analog purgatory to the part where he could actually live life?
But those weren’t answers you could give to a guidance counselor who thought a stable shit-job was the American Dream.
“Something with guns. Bounty hunter. Marine. Cop if I’m bored.” He paused, words settling like packed down parking lot gravel. “Long as I’m not sitting behind some desk, losing my mind tryna pay a mortgage.”
The truth was a lil more complicated.
Just a lil.
He knew which tech companies would explode, what stocks to buy and what trends to jump on before they even got close to taking off. But right now he was seventeen with no capital, no connections, and no way to explain why he needed ten grand to invest in Amazon. So yeah, something with guns sounded about right.
At least it would keep him moving.
“Bounty hunter? Marine? Cop? All of those require discipline, which you refuse to show.”
McLaskey’s voice had that quality teachers got when they’d given up but hadn’t admitted it to themselves yet, just reading a script at this point.
“Yeah, yeah.” He just had to survive long enough to get there, which meant playing this game of pretending to be a regular fuck-up teenager instead of a fuck-up teenager with a cheat sheet for the next forteen years.
I’m gonna live it up this time around.
The meeting dragged on for another ten minutes of McLaskey trying different angles to reach him and Zander deflecting like he was made of Teflon. By the time he finally got cut loose, the sun outside felt like opening an oven door directly into his face.
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Three stories of peeling paint and architectural regret, surrounded by a chain-link fence that had given up trying to keep anything in or out made the Kowalski foster home the second bane of his existence. The grass was more dirt than green, beaten down by too many feet and not enough water. Someone’s pit bull barked from the house next door, probably at its own shadow given how hot it was.
Zander’s room was on the second floor, last door on the right, which meant he got all the heat rising from below plus whatever the sun felt like blasting through his east window. The bed creaked when he dropped onto it, springs protesting through a mattress thin enough to feel every coil. His feet hung off the end because he’d hit his growth spurt two years ago and the Kowalskis weren’t about to spring for a new bed frame just because one of their meal tickets got tall.
An old Miami Dolphins poster covered a fist-sized hole near the closet, Dan Marino’s smile staring right back at him. The pull-up bar over the door was the only thing he’d installed himself, stolen from a gym that was going under renovation and mounted with screws he’d lifted from a hardware store. You did what you had to do.
And what he had to do wasn’t pretty. I should read more comics. I miss reading those.
Wolverine aside, his collection of cassette tapes lived in a busted Foot Locker shoebox under the bed, everything from Wu-Tang to Nirvana to Miami bass that made the walls shake when the Kowalskis weren’t home. Growing up in the nineties was fucking hell, especially with flashes of memory from another life hitting him every now and again.
Everything was just so fucking analog.
He closed his eyes and let the fan wobble overhead, whirring hard but whirring strong. No Wi-Fi meant no instant access to information. No Reddit meant no anonymous venting about how fucked up it was to remember dying. No Spotify meant rewinding tapes until the ribbon stretched and the music warbled like it was drowning. Having to get used to VHS felt like trying to write with cave paintings.
But it was real.
He knew it was real. It had taken him the longest to be sure he wasn’t going crazy as his memories seemed to return just a little ahead of real-time (about a year really) as he grew up but after what happened in New York two years ago, he had no doubt about it.
The future was coming for him and all he had to do was hold on tight to what little he did remember.
The door slammed open hard enough to bounce off the wall, because privacy was a concept that didn’t exist in foster care, making Zander blink. Julius filled the doorframe first, all six-foot-two of him trying to look casual while blocking Rico’s shorter frame from getting through. They moved like a two-man comedy routine that had practiced being annoying, which they basically were.
“Ayo, Cray. You comin’ tonight?”
Julius had that way of talking where everything sounded like a threat and an invitation at the same time. His voice rolled out slow and lazy, but there was always something underneath it, like a knife wrapped in velvet. The ponytail made him look like a yoga instructor who sold weed on the side, which wasn’t far from the truth except for the yoga part.
Zander opened one eye, didn’t bother sitting up yet. The mattress springs would just scream again and he was comfortable in his misery. “What’s tonight?”
“A thing.”
Of course it was a thing. Everything was a thing with these two. Last week’s thing had involved sneaking into a country club pool at two in the morning. The thing before that had been Rico convincing them to help him steal a street sign because it had his ex-girlfriend’s name on it. Their things had a tendency to end with running, usually from security guards or cops or someone’s angry cousin.
“What kinda ‘thing’?”
Rico pushed past Julius, finally, holding a neon green flyer like it was the Declaration of Independence. “Basement rave. DJ Virus. The kind with bass, girls, and nobody cardin’ you.”
The flyer looked like someone had thrown up energy drink and glow sticks onto paper. DJ Virus was apparently spinning at some warehouse in Wynwood, which meant it was either going to be the party of the month or a great way to get robbed. Probably both. The address was written in marker at the bottom, which meant it was one of those deals where you had to know someone who knew someone just to find out where to go.
Miami nightlife always felt like a dare.
Too young to enjoy the nightlife for real, too old to be satisfied with house parties where someone’s mom might come home. Never got to grow up…
He swung his legs off the bed, bare feet hitting the wood as Zander stood in one smooth motion, all that time on the pull-up bar paying off. “Say less, bro.”
That was all the encouragement his little brothers needed. They started talking over each other immediately, Rico’s Spanglish mixing with Julius’s half-bayou drawl until it sounded like someone changing radio stations.
“You drivin’? I don’t trust Rico’s license. Shit’s handwritten.”
Julius said it deadpan but Rico still threw a halfhearted punch at his arm, missing by a mile because he was already laughing. The license thing was only half a joke. Rico had bought it off some dude in Hialeah who swore it would pass inspection, but the photo looked like it was taken with a potato and the lamination was already peeling at the corners.
“You trust me behind the wheel more?” Zander asked, already knowing the answer.
“Not really. But at least you look cool crashing.”
Rico had a point. Zander drove like someone who’d learned from Grand Theft Auto and never bothered to unlearn it. Speed limits were suggestions, turn signals were for people with time to waste, and parallel parking was just controlled collision with extra steps. He’d only been pulled over once and that was because Rico had been hanging out the passenger window trying to holler at some girls on Ocean Drive.
“Fuck that. You know I hate driving.”
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The bass hit like someone trying to punch through his chest from the inside, each thump rattling against his ribs as he danced on girls and girls danced on him. The warehouse basement had turned into its own circle of hell, bodies on bodies, sticky with sweat and spilled liquor and beer and whatever else. Neon wristbands caught the strobe lights flashing and spinning, green and pink and blue blending together like a giant glitchy video game.
The concrete floor was even stickier than his body, which was great because without that, he’d have slipped and fallen on his ass every single minute he was on the dance floor.
Zander kept his red Solo cup clutched in one hand, the Sprite and whatever Rico had poured in into it already flat. Just the way I like it.
His shirt hung open halfway down his chest, the fabric so soaked it might as well have been painted on. The blacklights made everyone’s teeth glow, turned white clothes into blazing beacons, and showed every single drop of sweat rolling down exposed skin.
As much as he hated the lows of his new life, being poor, living like a caveman, and having no family, it definitely beat the highest highs of his past. The flavor and weight of living, doing hood shit, running from cops, messing with girls, it all beat what he used to know by a mile. Why the fuck would he have given a shit about working hard, studying, extracurriculars, being a good kid… if he had known it would all end with him getting capped in the chest by a fuckin’ idiot thug who confused him for someone else?
His body moved on autopilot, shoulders rolling with the beat; his mind somewhere between here and somewhere else, between eighteen and dead, between giving a fuck and wanting to burn it all down. Some girl with glitter on her cheekbones tried to dance up on him and he shifted in on instinct, the movement so smooth it looked accidental even as his hand cupped her ass.
Her tongue flicked out, trailing up his neck until it met air and he dove in, his own tongue tasting her mouth full of his sweat. She moaned against him and he dove deeper, halfway to picking her up on the dance floor as she grinded against him lik-
“HEY! THAT’S MY G-”
He spun as a hand gripped his shoulder and one hard elbow met an unprotected face.
“F-fuck!”
“Anton!”
He glared down as the girl he’d been making out with rushed to check on her downed boyfriend, Solo cup already on the floor.
People kept dancing.
He walked over to the bar to get something else, eye twitching, and as soon as the bartender slipped something new into his hand, Julius materialized at his shoulder like a sweaty ghost, having to lean in close enough that Zander could smell the mix of cologne and weed smoke clinging to his ponytail. His taller brother’s voice fought against the music, coming out in bursts between bass drops. “Bro, you see that chick? Red top, big hoops?”
Zander’s eyes tracked across the crowd and ound the girl in question grinding against some dude who he knew sold fake IDs out of his mom’s minivan. He took a sip of his drink just to have something to do with his mouth before answering. “She built like Sesame Street.”
Rico materialized on his other side, already half-drunk and fully confused. “What?”
“Brought to you by the number 1 and the letter I.”
Sprite and cheap vodka came shooting out of Rico’s nose and his little brother doubled over coughing and laughing at the same time, one hand clutching his stomach while the other tried to wipe his face with a shirt that was already too wet to help. “You’re going to hell, man.”
“I’ll save you a spot, bro.”
Julius’s laugh rumbled through the bass, tongue half-out of his mouth. “Man, Zan’s just mad none of these girls like dudes who drink cranberry Sprite and stare at walls.”
Zander shifted his weight. “That’s crazy. I’m contemplative.”
“Nah, you antisocial.”
“Same thing if you pretty.”
More people pushed onto the dance floor, the temperature jumping another five degrees just from body heat as someone’s glow stick necklace snapped, spilling fluorescent green down their white shirt. DJ Virus, some white dude with dread, threw his hands up and the crowd screamed back at the top of their lungs.
Julius threw his head back and yelled over the bass, arms spread wide like he was trying to embrace the whole sweaty mess. “This what heaven feels like, huh?”
Zander couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up from somewhere deep, the kind that had edges sharp enough to cut. “Holy fuck, no. Anywhere but here.”
The scream that cut through the mix didn’t belong to the music. It sliced through the bass like broken glass through skin, high and sharp and wrong in every way that mattered. The kind of sound that made primitive parts of your brain light up with warnings older than language.
Rico laughed, still riding his buzz and not catching the change in temperature that had nothing to do with the heat. “Someone’s havin’ fun!”
Zander’s body knew before his brain caught up, muscles tensing and weight shifting to the balls of his feet. That wasn’t a party scream. Real fear had a sound all its own, sharp and ragged, the kind that came from throats that had forgotten they were supposed to be having fun. It cut through his buzz like cold water, leaving him stone sober and aware of every body between him and safety, every second ticking by as ianother scream joined the first, then another, each one building on the last until the whole place was ripping their lungs at top volume.
The crowd figured it out in waves.
First the people closest to whatever was happening, their bodies going rigid before they turned to run. Then the people behind them, confusion turning to panic as they got shoved backward. Then everyone else, the whole mass of bodies suddenly trying to move in every direction at once. Someone went down hard, their face meeting the floor with a wet crack. A girl in platform heels tried to jump over them and went down too, her ankle bending in a way ankles weren’t supposed to bend.
Blood sprayed across the speaker stack in an arc that had Zander’s eyes going wide.
“The fuck—”
Zander spun toward the source of the chaos, instincts from both lives screaming at him to move, to run, to fight, to do something other than stand there like a target. His eyes locked onto motion that didn’t fit, two figures moving through the crowd like they were dancing to completely different music. They carved through bodies like butter, leaving red trails in their wake.
One of them laughed, the sound carrying over the music. A thin, tall man in a brown trenchcoat held a girl by her throat, one high heel missing as she dangled six inches off the ground. Her neck was bent at an angle that meant she wasn’t going to be complaining about it. “Oh, the taste…how it clings to the air. Terror always does. Reminds me of Bombay, ‘57… the way the smoke wove through the banyan trees like silk on fire. Have you ever watched a city burn, my sweet?”
Blood ran down his chin, messy and red as it stained the white shirt he wore under the old-looking coat.
The woman with him moved like a blur, her hair the color of fresh blood under the strobes. She glanced toward the main exit where people were crushing each other trying to get out, her smile soft enough to belong on a kindergarten teacher. “Door’s blocked off, I’m sorry children. Nowhere to run?”
She said it like she was apologizing for running out of juice boxes at snack time. Her hands were red up to the elbows, blood dripping like water.
“Mmm. So many heartbeats. Little hearts thudding like mice in a jar. Scaring them, Taliesin, dear?”
The man dropped the dead girl like she was an empty wrapper, turning to his companion with a smile that showed too many teeth. “Ah, my Samantha, it’s the only way to ensure their blood is as sweet as you.”
One of the dying strobe lights hit them at just the right angle and Zander saw their skin glitter, actually fucking sparkle like someone had dusted them with craft store bullshit.
Glitter-skin. The hell? What kinda cracked-out rave act—
Then the woman reached out with one delicate hand and twisted someone’s head off their shoulders like she was opening a bottle of wine. The body dropped and the head rolled, still blinking, before the lights in its eyes went out.
“Oh fuck.”
The pieces clicked together in his brain with the horrible clarity of someone who’d seen too many movies in both lifetimes. The sparkle wasn’t craft-store anything. It was the way light hit their skin, diamond-hard and perfect. The speed wasn’t human. The strength wasn’t possible.
The complete lack of giving a fuck wasn’t confidence.
It was certainty that they were apex predators in a room full of Happy Meals.
I’m in Twilight.
The thought hit him like another bullet to the chest, this time wrapped in absolute bullshit instead of lead. Of all the ways to die twice, of all the fucked-up cosmic jokes the universe could play, he was about to get murdered by Edward Cullen in a Miami warehouse.
Oh god, this is fucking Twilight.
“Vampires.”
The word came out of his mouth before he could stop it, barely a whisper but somehow the woman heard it over the music and the screaming and the sound of bodies hitting concrete. Her head snapped toward him like a bird spotting a worm, red eyes locking onto his with the kind of focus that made his bladder consider early retirement.
Zander turned to run but it felt like he was running in a dream. She crossed the space between them in less time than it took to blink, her face suddenly inches from his nose. F-fuck! Up close, the female was undeniably beautiful and that only made it worse, beautiful in the way a coral snake was beautiful, all bright colors and promises of danger.
“Look, an intelligent one. I like that.”
She smiled like she’d found a prize in her cereal box. He didn’t smile back because his face had forgotten how to do anything. Her mouth opened wider, showing teeth that looked human, and suddenly she was already moving. His throat opened before he could think to scream, her teeth sinking in like his skin was tissue paper and his blood was the only thing that mattered.
His legs went out from under him as she held him up one-handed, drinking deep as he heard his own heartbeat slowing, felt the blood leaving his body in deep pulls. N-no! His hands came up to push her away but he might as well have been trying to lift a car off his body.
Seconds later, she dropped his body like he was a half-empty soda can, Zander hitting the dance floor with a wet thud as he splattered into a pool of blood.
Said blood caught the strobes, all that red turning purple then green then red then black. The whole rave kept spinning as he stared with one eye not face-down, bass distorted into something that sounded like whale songs. People lay dead around him, their bodies creating a garden of wrong angles and spreading puddles. He could feel them somehow, like each death had weight that pressed against his consciousness.
His mouth opened, trying to form words or screams or anything that would make this make sense. All that came out was a single syllable, weak and final and absolutely certain.
“…n-no.”
The concrete pressed against his cheek, sticky with blood that wasn’t all his as one of his eyes went blind as all of the red poured into his socket. His throat was exposed to open air with a chunk missing from his neck, each breath bubbling up through holes that weren’t supposed to be there.
Dying.
The thought came with that special kind of clarity you only got when you were about to die. His fingers twitched against the floor, the only part of himself he could move.
Again.
Get a second shot at life, spend it sweating through foster care and pre-digital hell, then get taken out by bargain-bin vampires who bathed in glitter. The universe had a sense of humor but it had to be the shittiest one ever.
His eyes wouldn’t focus right but he could see shapes around him, bodies twisted into positions that yoga instructors would call advanced and doctors would call dead. The music had cut out at some point, leaving just the buzz of dying electronics.
Two faces stared at him from the pile, eyes open and seeing nothing, both of them familiar in the way that made his chest hurt worse than the holes in his throat.
Julius.
Julius with his slow drawl and slower smile, who could make a threat sound like poetry and never raised his voice because he never needed to. Julius who he’d taught to throw a proper punch freshman year, who always had weed to share, who’d cover for him no matter what, even if he had to take the blame.
Rico.
Rico who talked fast enough to make you dizzy, who could turn any situation into a hustle and any hustle into a party. Rico with his fake ID business and his real loyalty, who always made sure to wake Zander up everyday. Rico who was supposed to be too stubborn to die, too loud to go quiet, too much of everything to just stop.
His mouth moved, trying to form their names or an apology or just some sound that would make this real or not real or anything other than what it was. Nothing came out but blood, thick and metallic and carrying the taste of failure. His throat worked uselessly, pushing out more red instead of words.
Not like this. Fuck. Not like this. I don’t… I don’t want to die.
The thought crashed through him with the force of revelation, which was stupid because who the fuck wanted to die? But it was different this time, sharper, edged with the knowledge of what came after nothing. He’d done the death thing already, checked it off his bucket list, left a one-star Yelp review. The idea of doing it again, of going back to that nothing, made something in his chest seize up worse than the physical damage.
He gasped, pulling in air that went places it shouldn’t, bubbling through holes and pooling in spaces that used to be sealed. The blood in his mouth tasted like copper pennies and broken promises, familiar in the worst way. His body convulsed, trying to cough and breathe and scream all at once, managing none of them.
I DON’T WANT TO DIE AGAIN.
The thought exploded through him with enough force to make his eyes fly wide, staring at the ceiling where industrial pipes ran like veins through concrete flesh. Something shifted in the air, a pressure change that made his ears pop despite the blood loss. The puddles around him, under him, spreading from the cooling bodies of everyone who’d come here for a good time and found eternity instead, started doing something puddles weren’t supposed to do.
Blood moved.
Not flowing like gravity wanted, but crawling with purpose like it had somewhere to be. His blood, their blood, everyone’s blood, all of it suddenly deciding to creep its way across cracked concrete, streams joining rivers joining floods, all of it aimed at him like he was the drain at the bottom of the world’s weirdest bathtub.
It slithered up his arms where they lay useless at his sides, painted itself across his skin in patterns that burned cold. His left hand twitched, the pool of blood near him feeling like his blond brother. He could feel Julius’s last moments, surprise and pain and anger all mixed into liquid memory. Rico’s contribution came from the right, carrying the echo of his laugh and his huge grin on his small face, his blood metallic and sweet and wrong in ways that made Zander’s teeth ache.
Crawling… crawling up my throat.
He could feel Julius in the blood now, not just his death but his life, the tomato-juice drinking habit that drove him and Rico crazy, the way he cracked his knuckles before a fight, the exact tone of his voice when he said “man” like it was punctuation.
His organs started rearranging themselves like furniture in a room that had suddenly changed purpose. His heart stuttered, each beat pushing the foreign blood deeper, spread it through veins that shouldn’t be working anymore.
In my lungs. My mouth. My veins. He could feel it moving, spreading into every single part of him. I can feel them. Fuck… I didn’t want this. I can’t… I don’t want to die!
His spine arced and cracked, body twisting upwards as his bones reworked themselves into place in ways he couldn’t imagine.
Gravity forgot his name.
The floor fell away or maybe he rose, the distinction meaningless when physics had apparently decided to take a smoke break. He floated six inches off the gore-slicked concrete, blood still crawling up his skin like it was racing to reach his heart first. His hair lifted around his head in a halo of dreads that moved in currents that didn’t exist. Something cracked inside him, outside him, the sound everywhere and nowhere, and his ribs expanded like they were making room for organs that hadn’t been part of the original blueprints.
His eyes opened properly for the first time since dying, and the basement lit up like someone had installed new bulbs in his retinas. Blue light, bright enough to cast shadows, bright enough to read the fear on faces that shouldn’t still be moving. The Welsh vampire in his stupid fucking trenchcoat stared at him like he’d just watched a law of nature file for divorce.
“…What in the hell?”
The words came out strained, accent slipping into something older and more afraid than the theatrical bullshit from before. Taliesin, because of course the sparkly murder machine had a name like he’d stepped out of a bad fantasy novel, took an actual step backward.
Zander’s feet found the floor again, landing among the bodies with a wet sound that should have bothered him more than it did. He looked down at his hands, watching fingernails extend into points that could open letters or jugular veins with equal efficiency. His left hand rose to his throat, fingers finding smooth skin where holes used to be, the healing complete and wrong and perfect all at once. His gaze traveled to Julius and Rico again, their bodies drained so thoroughly they looked like props from a horror movie nobody would believe.
Brothers.
The giggle started somewhere in his chest and bubbled up through his new throat like champagne through a shaken bottle. He didn’t know why he was laughing, couldn’t explain the hysteria that gripped him and shook him like a terrier with a rat, but it poured out anyway. The sound bounced off the walls, too high, too sharp, too much like breaking glass to be real laughter.
Movement registered in his peripheral vision, vampire girl coming at him fast enough to blur even to his new eyes. She moved like violence given form, like every martial arts movie’s wet dream, aimed at him with the kind of precision that usually meant game over.
He didn’t dodge because dodging required thinking and he was too busy laughing to think. His arm moved without consulting his brain, hand closing into a fist that met her face with the sound of a wrecking ball hitting a wedding cake. Her skin, harder than stone and prettier than marble, shattered under his knuckles like safety glass. His own hand exploded in a spray of blood that painted the wall behind her, bones grinding into powder from the impact.
She flew backward like someone had tied her to a rocket, face caved in where his fist had made contact as the basement wall behind her head became a cloud of dust and regret. The whole thing took maybe a fraction of a second, barely long enough for his brain to register that hey, maybe punching diamond wasn’t smart.
He stared at his ruined hand with detached interest as his bones started knitting themselves back together immediately, skin flowing over exposed muscle. Within a second, his hand looked normal again, if normal included fingernails that could double as knives.
Wanted to live past eighteen, didn’t make it past seventeen.
The thought sent his head thrown back with wild laughter, whole body shaking with the force of it. The sound climbed higher, louder, rattling the surviving light fixtures and making the murderer flinch.
“Oh, oh, ooooookaaaaaaaaaay.“
The words stretched out like taffy, his new vocal cords playing with pitch and tone like a kid with a new toy. Everything felt different, felt more, like someone had turned his senses up to eleven and broken off the knob.
Samantha tried to speak through a jaw that hung at angles it wasn’t supposed to, bone fragments grinding against each other as she attempted to force things back into place. “Eeezz a theewborn.”
Clear fluid that smelled like honey and antifreeze leaked from where her face used to be symmetrical. She spat, jaw clicking as pieces found each other and started fusing. “But ee.. eezz… wrong.”
Taliesin stood frozen like someone had paused him, composure cracking worse than Samantha’s face. When he finally spoke, it came out as a whisper that carried all the way across the basement and into Zander’s ears. “That’s not possible. Newborns don’t… they can’t…”
His voice died as he made eye contact with Zander, bright red eyes going wide with something that looked deliciously like fear. “What… are you?”
The grin that stretched across his face had too many teeth as his eyes stayed wide and unblinking, the blue glow casting shadows that moved wrong.
Zander felt his fangs extend from his gums, switchblades of bone long and prominent and absolutely not what he knew as his. He ran his tongue over them, tasting his own blood mixed with everyone else’s. His hand came up to wipe the rest of it from his lips, the gesture almost casual if you ignored the way his fingers trembled with barely contained violence.
“What’s it look like, bitch?”
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
Bella Swan’s first day at Forks was as interesting as she’d expected Forks to be, honestly.
Meaning not at all.
The rain hadn’t stopped once since she got there, thick clouds muting the sun into a vague smear behind the treeline. Everything looked damp.
Even the people.
Especially the people.
After half of a long and boring day, she sat at the lunch table picking at limp pizza crust when she finally asked with a voice as casual as she could make it, “Who are they?”
Jessica, the girl from Spanish, looked up, already knowing who she meant.
Across the cafeteria, five students sat with untouched trays. One of them, the lean one, the youngest-looking, glanced at Jessica for a second. Then his eyes flicked to Bella.
He looked away first. She dropped her gaze an instant later, cheeks going warm.
In that blink of a glance, his face had been flat, impassive. Not disinterested—dismissive. Like someone being spoken to by name and deciding not to answer.
Jessica giggled, awkwardly.
“That’s Edward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. Alice is the one who just left. They live with Dr. Cullen and his wife.”
Bella glanced back sideways. Edward, the one who’d looked at her, was breaking a bagel into tiny pieces, fingers pale against the beige. His mouth moved, fast. Too fast. No one else at the table was eating.
“They’re… very nice-looking,” Bella said carefully.
“Yeah!” Jessica nodded, quick to agree. “They’re all together, though. I mean, Emmett and Rosalie, Jasper and Alice. They live together.”
Bella blinked. “Like… dating?”
“Yeah.” Jessica’s tone carried all the small-town scandal it could muster. “And adopted. Except Jasper and Rosalie. They’re twins. Kind of. Their aunt’s Mrs. Cullen.”
“They look older than that. For foster kids, I mean.”
“They are now. Eighteen, I think. But they’ve been with the Cullens since they were little.”
“That’s… kind of nice, actually. Taking in all those kids so young.”
Jessica hesitated. “I guess. I don’t think Mrs. Cullen can have her own.”
Bella’s eyes kept drifting, watching as none of the Cullens touched their food. Their posture was perfect as they spoke to each other, eyes scanning around them slowly.
“Have they always lived here?” Bella asked.
“No. They moved from Alaska a couple years ago.”
Bella nodded at that, still glad not to be the one of only two new faces.
As she watched, Edward glanced up again. Their eyes met. This time there was something in his look. Not interest. Not confusion. More like recognition.
A puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit.
Bella looked away quickly.
“Which one is the boy with the reddish-brown hair?” she asked, quieter.
“Edward. Don’t bother. He doesn’t date.”
Bella peeked again. His expression was unreadable.
“Apparently, none of the girls here are good enough for him,” Jessica added.
Bella bit her lip to hide the smile. “So… I… uh, I heard about another new kid today?” Her voice pitched up, trying to deflect from Jessica’s obvious embarrassment and irritation.
Jessica blinked, surprised by the shift. “Oh. Yeah. Him,” she said, one finger pointed toward the far end of the cafeteria.
A tall Black boy with long dreadlocks and a blue t-shirt stepped through the back doors, a matte black lunchbox in one hand. He didn’t look around or pause or even hitch slightly in the way you’d expect someone to in a new environment. No, he just walked straight to an empty table by the vending machines and sat down.
With a slight smile on his face, he opened the box.
Inside was sushi, neatly wrapped rolls of rice and fish with a selection of other vegetables and other things. Beside it, he placed down a ceramic cup filled with dark red liquid.
Mike leaned over, voice a half-whisper. “That’s Zander Cray. He’s from Miami. It’s his first day too.”
Bella pulled a face. She had known it was his first day but Miami? “Why’s he in Forks, then? I mean… n-no offense…”
“No idea,” Mike answered with a shrug. “Supposedly some old rich dude was his granddad down in Miami. The guy apparently left him everything. Bought a place on his own up here. He was offered a student to show him around but he turned it down and the school really doesn’t wanna get on the bad side of someone that rich.”
Bella turned again.
Across the room, Edward Cullen and Alice Cullen were staring. Both of them. At Zander.
Their expressions were blank but off somehow. Shock, maybe. Or something colder.
Zander didn’t look back.
Lauren leaned in. “Wonder what that’s about?”