Flesh and Blood by E A Copen

Author:E A Copen [Copen, E A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781642025750
Publisher: LMBPN Publishing
Published: 2019-11-05T22:00:00+00:00

I sat up in the bed with a gasp and peered into the darkness. Sweat rolled down my back and beaded on my forehead. I let out a shaky breath and rested my head in my hands. I nearly jumped out of my skin when Josiah’s hand touched my back.

“Stefan?” His voice was groggy. For once, my nightmares had woken him and not the other way around.

“It’s nothing. Just a nightmare.” I pushed away the thin blanket and put my feet on the cold floor.

A large window on the other side of the room tilted toward the sky. Fat raindrops smashed into it and flowed down, joining to form rivers. Thunder shook the glass, and lightning raked at the sky. I went to the window to watch the fury of the storm against the skyscrapers in the distance. It was like staring into the end of the world—horrible, unsettling, and beautiful all at once.

I hugged myself and shivered at the memory of ghosts. Not just my ghosts, but his too. People I had never even met. Nameless faces of the dead staring back at me.

Josiah sighed and got out of bed, plodding noisily across the floor to the other side of the window where he crossed his arms. “Never was a storm in New York like the ones they get out here. Not as many storms here, of course, but the ones they get? It feels like the wrath of God every fucking time.”

“Imagine being Noah, crammed in that stinking boat with all those animals. Must’ve smelled awful.”

He grunted. “Not just the animals, mate. He had his whole fucking extended family in there too. Wife, kids, their spouses… Makes you wonder if the sinners who drowned weren’t the lucky ones.”

I smiled despite myself. He always knew what to say to make light of a situation.

“What was it?” Josiah asked. “The nightmare, I mean.” He lit a cigarette and passed it to me.

Thunder growled at the lightning scraping against the sky like fingernails on a lover’s back.

I traced the path of the rain on the other side of the window with a finger, watching the red reflection of the cigarette fade to black. “It didn’t start out as a nightmare. We were on a beach, somewhere I’d never been. You were wearing this white vest.”

“White? Me?”

“I know. I should’ve known then it was a dream. You’d never wear white. But I think we were getting married.”

He stopped halfway through lighting his own cigarette, frozen in time for a moment before he finished. “Is that what you want?”

I smiled. “I don’t know. It’d be nice, wouldn’t it? To be happy. To be allowed to be like a normal couple, even if it’s just for a day.” I glanced over at him, deep in thought, watching the rain. “Maybe it was a beach in Australia. It was beautiful. Married in Australia, honeymoon in Greece. No monsters, no demons, no ghosts. Don’t you think?”

“Don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it if I'm honest.”

“About getting married?”

He shrugged.

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