Chapter Text
Laughter… Two girls walking ahead, looking back… smiles…
Blood everywhere…
A man and a woman…
Rows upon rows of cribs… a baby crying…
The taste of salt… a stretch of blue, white horses…
Endless droning, wire fencing… She spins, reaching out. Tremors.
The baby. Where’s the baby? A man in a cowboy hat.
Crying from inside the complex. Blood in her eyes.
Where’s the baby?
Laughter, from the man. He’s closer.
Laughter. A family... A campfire…
Flames licking up the building.
Crying.
Blood.
Where’s the baby?
Everything red. Everything burning. Stillness.
Shark eyes. Shark smile.
Intense heat… blistering her on her face… wet and moist against her ear…
What?
I didn’t need to open my eyes to know I was awake. Despite the truth of my dreams, it’s surprisingly easy to distinguish between them and reality.
I could never decide what was worse. The dreams: warped visions, horrifyingly real, but with brief moments of respite. Memories from my life before: beautiful, dizzying, leaving you slightly nauseous. Not to forget the waking up. Waking up and knowing the horrors are still happening, and knowing that my life from Before, is forever out of grasp.
Light danced colours across the canvas of my eyelids. That same wet heat that surfaced me from my uneasy sleep licked across my face again.
“Gerroff,” I mumbled, blindly throwing out an arm.
A mumble was pressed into my stomach. Chastened, I opened my eyes and gently slipped from under the blankets, running my fingers through dark curls before they disappeared under the heap.
Samson pranced, tongue lolling, nails clicking against the old wooden floor. A wet muzzle nudged my hands.
I pull on my boots. “Alright boy, let’s get you your breakfast.”
It was a miracle really, finding this place. A shack, really. But these days you can’t ask for much more than four walls and a roof if that. If we hadn’t found it before winter really set in, I don’t know if we’d’ve made it this long. Snow in the Old World -at least where I came from- was rare, and when it did appear, a happiness, bringing games and joy. In the New World, it’s just another way to kill you.
I shaded my eyes as Samson dug into the can of out of date wet dog food I’d managed to lift on my last run to the nearby town. The trees blocked most of the morning sun but a few stray sunbeams illuminated the clearing. Another miracle. Isolation never used to be something I thought I’d be glad for but now it’s our best defence. Against walkers and other humans.
We’d almost missed it, stumbling blindly through the woods. Samson loping ahead, invariably returning to gently bite my hand and tow me in the right direction. I was little better than a pack animal- dumb with fear, wounded, and carrying precious cargo.
Samson found it. He took down the walker inside and nudged me, whining, until I went through the motions. It took me a week to snap out of it.
I’d have died within the first month without Samson.
I re-entered the shack, leaving Samson to his scouting. The blankets push back and under a mop of dark hair, a freckled forehead and sleepy brown eyes emerge. “Doraaa?”
“Here, Deano.”
I brushed through his hair in silence and decided this must be one of the good days since he let me with a fuss. Normally my shaking fingers try his toddler-sized patience. As a reward for his good behaviour, I hummed his favourite song through the remainder of our morning routine, smiling as he tried to sing the words, making up those he couldn’t remember, which turned out to be the majority. I could almost pretend my fingers were dancing along to the tune like they used to. The quiet serenity of mornings like these almost lets me pretend this was a memory from Before.
Only Before, I didn’t have Deano.
I pulled him to me then, holding him fiercely through my tremors, burying my face in his curls until he starts squirming. I loosened my grip, allowing him to turn in my arms to face me. A small hand reaches up to touch my cheek and I quickly leant into it. Brown eyes stare into brown in startlingly similar frowns. Sometimes he looked so much older than just barely 3 years old.
“Dora?”
When he first said my name, I was so shocked I dropped the water I was boiling at the time. I remember it every time I see the burns that wrap the top of my feet and ankles. I cried, though I don’t know if it was from the pain or from something else. The realisation that in a different world, my name wouldn’t even register in his existence. There’d be a mama…
“Dora?”
“Here, Deano.”
It was later in the day when the lull of ataraxis is broken. I was resetting the animal traps when a low bark signalled Samson’s return. My body went rigid. Ears pressed to his skull, teeth slightly bared, he pawed the ground three times.
Three men.
Within the perimeter.
Deano.
I ran back, barely registering Samson beside me as I scrambled through the underbrush. Thorns whipped red ribbons of blood from my arms. The shack back in sight. No men yet. The door still closed.
Deano started up from the teddy I gave him as I burst through the door. “Hide and seek. 10 seconds. Don’t come out until the word, yeah? No noise. No matter what you hear.”
I shut the door again, blood pumping. My body was still, ready.
You know you're sick with something when you begin to miss that feeling.
“There’s nothing here. What a fucking waste of time.”
“I’m telling you, those traps were fresh.”
“So?”
“So, someone had to fucking set them didn’t they, you cunt.”
“If we don’t come back with anything again , Negan’s gonna be fucking pissed…”
Samson was gone again. Disappeared into the bush. I waited, pressed to the side of the shack, bowie knife gripped tight. Sam Cooke singing in my head on repeat from my song for Deano.
“Wait, I see something.”
If you ever change your mind…
Footsteps entered the clearing. Loud. Invasive.
...about leaving, leaving me behind…
“That’s something alright.”
“Guns up boys.” Guns. Fuck.
Baby bring it to me, bring your sweet loving…
I moved from my hiding spot. Three men. All armed.
They stared at me for a moment, perhaps shocked at my silence.
Bring it on home to me
The shortest recovered first. His bushy moustache twitched into what I assumed was a smirk. “We got ourselves a girly.”
I didn’t gratify him with a reply, hands relaxed by sides. Looking at the now, it was easy to see the squat one’s authority over the other two. One, tall and a lard-arse. He had a fucking cigar hanging from fat lips like he was fucking Winston Churchill or something. His eyes gleamed with undisguised lust. The other could only be described as weedy, so skinny he could break under a strong wind. He couldn’t be much older than sixteen. He twitched nervously under my blank stare.
“You alone here girly? Sure lookit dontcha, aye Mickey?”
‘Mickey’ throws down his cigar like it’s not the rare luxury item it has become in this world. “I reckon so, Jimmy.”
“You got any of the good stuff in there girly? We’ve been walking all afternoon and we’re mighty thirsty.” Squat Jimmy spread his palms, his gun back in its holster, a slimy grin splitting his red face in half. Mickey licked his lips.
Before they could come closer, I lunged. The weedy one dropped his gun, falling on his arse as Jimmy failed to dodge my slash, cutting across his cheek before he fell. Clearing the way for the fat fucker.
He was so dumbstruck by Samson jumping on his from behind, my knife was in and out of his skull in a matter of seconds. But his weight fell forwards. I rolled and turned. I started to charge towards Weedy before a hand buried itself in my hair, jerking me backwards. Nails scratched unforgiving at my scalp and I snarled, hands clawing backwards, knife stabbing blindly.
“That’s it bitch.” Jimmy spat, yowling as the knife caught his forearm. He tore it from my fingers, flinging it to the side and began dragging me backwards by my hair. I could feel clothes and skin tear against the rocks and branches underneath me. I thrashed wildly. Samson jumped and caught his arm in his teeth but was thrown against the wall of the shack. He struggled to rise. “Shaun! Keep watch for walkers. I’m teaching this cunt a lesson.”
He managed to slam the door to the shack open and I was pulled over the threshold, thrown onto the same mattress I had shared with Deano and Samson just that morning.
Deano.
A baby crying…
Blood dripped into my eyes. Jimmy loomed over me, sitting on my stomach.
Can’t breathe.
He ground down, face pulling into an ugly, bloody grimace. “Im’ma fucking tear you in two, bitch. You’re gonna pay for killing Mickey.”
I tried to spit in his face and it hit, before dripping back onto mine, mixed with blood. He laughed in my face, blood and spittle flying, breath hot and putrid. One meaty hand brutally squeezed my breast and the other punched my face with such force my ears rang. Amidst it all, I felt my nose begin to bleed. Iron tasted tangy on my swollen tongue.
A baby crying… heat… Shark eyes, shark smile…
I stared ahead, blinking away blood and darkness. A bulge pressed into my stomach. Vomit rose up to the back of my mouth. Shark smile…
He was taking off his belt. Tying it around my wrists.
Do something.
He wasn’t paying attention. Chin up. Fat cheek, fleshy in a slack drooling smirk.
Shark…
I lunged. Teeth clamped down. Warm, sweaty. Pulled. Screaming. Blood. He fell on top of me, grabbing at his face. I reached back with both hands and pulled the knife from my pillow. I shoved it through his eye.
I sobbed silently into the chest smothering me. Eventually, I managed to shove him off me. His pants fell down. I remembered my old biology lessons. Men can stay erect and even ejaculate in death. Semen covered his groin. I did vomit then. I tried to wipe my mouth only to remember his belt, weighing heavy and tight around my wrists. I looked down. Some of his gunk had gotten on my stomach. I vomited again.
I managed to release my hands eventually and wiped my face of a mixture of bodily fluids. I scrubbed at my stomach to no avail but I couldn’t bear having the weight of that on me for another second so I stripped to my bra. I pulled his dead weight outside. Samson sat, a bit bloody, but intact on top of what remained of Shaun. I dealt with the bodies.
We went back to the shack and I used my shirt to mop up what I could of the mess before that outside as well.
I stood there, swaying, in the middle of the ramshackle little house we’d made a home. I leaned on Samson as he licked the blood from my fingers.
“Deano. Bring it on home, baby.”
A second beat out before scrambling could be heard and the small figure of the only precious thing left in this world crawls out from under two loose floorboards and runs into my arms.
You know I’ll always be your slave, till I’m buried in my grave.
“I’m here, baby.”
Oh honey, bring it to me.
Bring your sweet loving.
“I’m here.”
Bring it on home to me.