Run Me to Earth by Paul Yoon

Author:Paul Yoon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2020-01-27T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

When he turned around, a girl appeared from behind a lamppost and approached him. She was smoking a cigarette and clicked her tongue. Before Prany could speak or flee, the girl slipped her arm under his, and they were leaving the road together, following the river again but heading farther away from the town.

“You Prany?” she said, in a whisper.

“I know five people by that name,” Prany said. “Two boys and three girls.”

This made her smile. The closeness of her in the dark startled him. She smelled of the river. Her breath was sour. He felt the movement of her arm against his pocket and he stopped, gripped her wrist, and found some of his money in her grasp. She stayed where she was, close to him, smoking her cigarette and staring at him until he backed away.

“Where’s Auntie?” he said.

“Ask her,” she said, and pointed at an open shed up ahead.

It was an old fishermen’s shed with a thatched roof. As he approached, he noticed a younger girl, around thirteen, sitting on the wooden counter in the back that had been used to clean fish. She was wearing a pair of men’s trousers, the cuffs rolled up, the waist cinched with a thick rope.

“Careful where you step,” the younger girl said as he ducked under the roof.

For a moment, he thought she was talking about a bomb. But she was simply looking down at a path of moonlight on the ground. So Prany joined her on the counter and looked down, unsure of what she was focusing on until he spotted a caterpillar slowly making its way along its border.

“If you wait long enough, it’ll go into the light,” she said, and swung her legs in the air.

“Long time to wait,” Prany said.

She shrugged, held the edge of the counter, and stared at him. They didn’t know each other. In the sudden stillness in the shed, he began to feel his own exhaustion again. It was like his own skeleton was trembling inside of him. His hunger returned, also, but the thought of food nauseated him. He took out another bill and asked where Auntie was.

When she didn’t respond, he asked what her name was.

“What’s yours?”

“Me? I’m a vampire.”

“That’s not funny,” the girl said. “What happened to your hand?”

“What happened to your face?” Prany said.

There was a thick shrapnel scar running across the girl’s cheek.

“Bah,” she said. “The boys think it’s pretty. It’s pretty, no?” She angled her face at him as though she were posing for a camera. She was whispering, too.

“Khit,” she said. “My name. Khit.”

He did not yet recognize the name.

The other girl, who had been standing guard outside the shed, clicked her tongue. The two soldiers he had seen in the square earlier walked down the street. Before he was aware of his own body stiffening, he felt Khit’s growing smaller as she folded herself behind him like a cat.

“Someone looking for you?” he said, sliding her behind him on the counter.

“Touch me again and I’ll kill you,” she said.

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.