Our Love Will Devour Us by R. L. Meza

Author:R. L. Meza
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Matter Magazine
Published: 2023-05-17T16:58:52+00:00

chapter 16: emma

Emma floundered through the snow, desperate to touch her daughter—to prove she was more than a grief-conjured specter. The sight of her frozen flesh filled Emma with confusion and despair. She shouted her name, but Lily did not turn. Her gaze remained fixed on the window. She stood naked atop the snow as if she weighed nothing at all, tangled dark hair whipping in the wind.

Claire reached her first. She stretched a hand up to touch Lily’s cheek, but her fingers fell short. Lily loomed over her like a figure plucked from a surrealist painting, elongated limbs drooping from her emaciated torso, skin pulled taut like blood-streaked silk over starkly delineated bones. Her distended stomach pushed out from between the sharp angles of her hips and ribs, laced with stretch marks and pulsing blue-black veins.

“Lily?” Emma pulled on Lily’s wrist, and cold seared her palm.

But Lily did not stir; she did not shiver or speak. She might have been a statue carved from ice, left outside their cabin as the cruelest of jokes. Emma couldn’t even be certain she was breathing. She reached up, up—Christ, she’s so tall—and pressed a hand to Lily’s chest, feeling for signs of life, searching her face as she said, “Honey, it’s Memma. Can you hear me? Where’s your brother? Where’s Silas?”

Claire turned to Emma, wide-eyed and helpless. “What’s wrong with her, Em? Why isn’t she saying anything?”

Emma took a deep breath, felt her mind still in preparation for the challenge at hand. The buzzing hive of questions in her mind quieted. There would be time for questions later, but for now…

“We have to get her inside,” Emma said.

Lily did not resist, yet she was nearly impossible to move.

“What is this, Em?” Claire asked, looking down at Lily’s frostbitten feet, visible on the mound of snow she stood on.

“We need to get her moving.”

Together, pushing and pulling, they managed to tug her into motion. As she walked, her feet broke through the snow layer and sank down to their level. Emma grunted. Claire swore. When Lily was healthy, she had weighed one hundred and twenty pounds. The effort required to support her now suggested she had gained weight in her absence—an observation that was incongruous with her wasted form.

By the time they shuffled through the door with Lily between them, Emma and Claire were gasping for breath. When they ducked out from under her arms, Lily remained frozen in place in front of the couch, back bowed, shoulders hunched, arms extended over the shapes of their absent shoulders. Emma probed Lily’s wrists and throat, saying, “We have to get her to a hospital—now, Claire. I…I can’t find her pulse.”

At the sound of loud scratching, Claire’s head turned toward the hall. Seconds later, Oscar shot into the living room and skidded to a stop at Lily’s feet. He circled her bare legs, whining.

Shooing him away, Claire said, “Where the hell is Evelyn?”

“We don’t have time to wait,” Emma said. “Get the keys, warm up the SUV.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.