sleep in my ashes — r&v / d4, day 5

The bed shifts down into the linoleum. The room moves to compensate, the ceiling curving to meet the stretch of the wall. Roe glances away and then back when he feels Vin move, distanced from that little spot of the corner. It's harder to focus, closer.

They laugh. Roe feels the shake of it. Dead already, he tries not to look at them too incredulously. Tries not to frown.

Somehow, there's still a line of soot against the edge of his nail.

You're asking, they say.

He's telling.

A scoff.

“I don't care about that."

Obviously not. Too hypocritical, even for them. There's death in Twelve too. There's dying. There's murder. Bentley, Antigone, Mateo. A name and a name and a name. Vin. Another. Roe.

The list ends.

“I just thought," A lot of things. Too many things. The bed swims out against the ocean, the tide pools make him dizzy, he can't swim.

"I wanted to be prepared if I was going to up barbecue for-" He points up. "Whoever's upstairs."

And then a sudden worse thought.

There's a tightness between his eyes. Barbecue. Yes, yes, there's that aftertaste of summer. The room smells like a coal fire. Charcoal. It catches at some latch in his chest. They'd found the bodies in the house, too charred to identify, easier that way. No open caskets, too expensive.

It's not so much as an I'd let you than an I've been thinking about it.

Might be worse.

His hands still shake from holding the needle. From taking the bottle from Vin and holding it between his teeth, pouring half of it on the wound and half of it down his front.

That finger moves down from the roof to point at Vin.

"You're not allowed to eat me."

I've been thinking about it.

Five days in, the roof collapses.

There's a one-room back in Twelve that still has smoke damage in along the ceiling joints. It always will. It's not worth it to knock the entire building down just because of one little fire. The bones were all put in the same bag as the blankets. The bedframe was mostly in tact, so it stayed. The clothes were all left on the corner for people to sort through, the rug was cleaned, all the tin was pawned off as silver-plated nickel. Every meagre possession was moved out in time for the next tenants, even the little back molars that they found under the remnants of the sofa.

What if I get hungry. Vin asks.

Roe looks at them.

They're laughing. Fingers touching his fingers, sliding, everything moving so slow. Joking. They're laughing.

They laugh. The seriousness drips languid. They're joking. They laugh.

Take the bad bits first, Roe still thinks, still looking at them, leave something good.

And then they're pulling him, and then he goes willingly, leave something good - that's what the fire's for, it's supposed to be cleansing. Yes, the arm drapes, yes, closer, warmer, yes put all the leftover bits in the same bag, put them together, evil of my evil, don't let them be separated.

They should be allowed to rot in the same grave, at least. That is a kindness, at least.

"Maybe Mateo was more-"

There is the teeth. There is the glance upwards, the light, streaking. There is the hand, one and then the other, reaching to touch the sudden strange warmth of his face. Smudge of soot still on their cheek.

The indent on the wrist fades quickly, the fine points of the canines turn pink, and then white, and then disappear.

And there is something frightening in that. In the leaving of it. The suddenness.

Put it back.

Leave something good, he needs the proof. Put it back and bite down harder, take something with you. He's never known what to pair with brandy, but there's enough here to last, he won't even miss it. The warmest part of the body is the stomach.

He blinks. The room seems to blink back. He is moving without moving, stuck on the little bed, adrift in the water.

"You really are crazy."

There's a kind of awe in there. A little fear, too.

The company that misery keeps; that's something close to insanity. Cult kid. There is something religious in the burning. The consummation. The consuming. A pyre is nothing without a God.