Children of Monsters by Kellin D. Andrews

Author:Kellin D. Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kellin Andrews

Cal curls, barely conscious, against the door of the backseat, and I climb in beside her so Jasper can get us home while I make sure she’s alright. She’s still breathing. I take both of our coats and cover her up with them.

“Her clothes are still soaked and freezing underneath,” Jasper says from the front. The defeated tone of his voice sets me on edge, but I comfort myself knowing he won’t do anything behind the wheel or with me here with him.

“I’m not going to be the one to undress an unconscious girl I don’t know in your backseat. Crank the heater.” When I’m confident Cal will continue breathing, I climb over the console into the front seat. Jasper makes a face and moves his arm so I don’t hit him and send us off the road.

“You couldn’t stay back there?”

“There’s only one of me, and you’re not okay either.”

“She could have died.”

“She didn’t.” I buckle myself into the passenger seat. Jasper reaches up to turn off the interior light I forgot I’d turned on and doesn’t respond.

It’s silent. I wish the radio was on, that it was louder outside. But it's after dark on a slow highway through the woods, and Jasper needs quiet. The inside of my head makes up for the silence with its own frenetic energy, a background humming of thoughts and a chorus of worries overlapping into static. That static quickly sounds like an incredulous chant of “holy shit.” I rest against the door and watch the long shadows of trees pass by.

I pull my forehead away from the window and look around the car. In the seat behind me, Cal’s silent, her expression at a midway point between peaceful and pained. She hasn’t moved since I climbed into the front, and she’s still out cold.

Jasper’s crying. He’s obviously trying to fight it with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

“You need to stop.”

“No.” His voice breaks, and he at least gives up trying to hide it.

“You can’t drive like this.”

“I need to get her home.”

“Pull. Over.”

He does. Once he shifts into park on the shoulder, I ask, “have you seen Angie since you came back?”

He glances at Cal, still asleep in the back, then mumbles, “no.”

“Why not?”

There are a few beats of silence. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Jasper.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he repeats. “With her. She’s tried to get me to come in. But if I go in, I have to go through it all again, and I’m trying to…” he trails off, gesturing frustratedly without words at the steering wheel. He’s trying to leave it behind.

“It shouldn’t have been this easy,” he whispers finally.

“It wasn’t easy.”

“He wouldn’t just give up like that. What if we screwed up and don’t know it yet?”

“Jas. We’re on our way home. We’re in the car. Cal’s here, and you’re both in one piece.” I don’t know what kind of war he prepared himself for, but if anything, we’re inside over 3500 pounds of car that could be a weapon if needed in a worst-case scenario.

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