( ☄. *. ⋆ bloodscent , for @ofstowontarn )
“Come on, come– shit, fuck!”
The back gate leading from the alley separating their street from the next swings on its hinges and knocks to the beat of a relentless wind against the latch. It squeaks, then knocks, squeaks, then knocks, the only interval in the steady swishing of the back garden’s whipping grass. Were it not for that gate, the scene would be peaceful, the wind a passerby in a sleeping town with little to report aside from the odd toss and turn of a restless dreamer.
Up the back garden path, past the back door left ajar, its handle smeared with blood, the crooked, cracking house of one sleep-deprived lifeguard tells a different story.
“Come on!”
When he’d set foot on the street after closing up the pool, Milo had expected the comforting routine of kissing his beloved hello, then sliding into the car’s passenger seat to let Will drive them both home. What he’d found had shot his heart straight into his throat, perhaps even past it, so that it sat heavy on his tongue as he grappled with the grizzly sight.
Will was leaning against the vehicle, but there’d been something else there with him. Membrane and teeth as lethal as a piano string, with bottomless eyes swallowed up by a darkness like the night such creatures belonged to. And that tongue. A long, gluttonous thing that was smearing over two identical little puncture wounds spurting blood from Will’s neck. Milo had seen red, and then he’d seen red.
He doesn’t remember how he’d gotten that thing off, only recalls dragging Will round the car and speeding them home. He’d tried talking to Will to keep him conscious, but then the spasms had grabbed at Will’s arms, legs, hands, fingers, even his fucking soul, and he’d screamed. Milo can still hear the bloody gargle in the depths of that sound.
For now, the twitching’s stopped. He has Will in his lap, in the bathroom upstairs, towels pressing hard into the wound on Will’s neck. He’s still breathing, Milo can see his chest rising and falling, albeit shakily. There’s still a pulse, albeit slow. Slowing. “Will?” he dares to whisper, “love?”
