Jessica woke slowly, like the setting of the sun, becoming aware of stillness and silence. She felt dirt covering her face, but it didn't seem to bother her. She realized that dirt covered all of her, and this started to bother her. She tried to sit up, and found she could. The dirt wasn't piled too deeply on her and she pushed through it with ease. There, sitting up out of the ground, her legs still covered in dirt and a black plastic tarp, she realized that she had yet to take a breath. Her eyes widened with surprise, shock, and a creeping sense of horror.

'Good evening,'� said Teresa. She was sitting on the ground next to Jessica, facing Jessica's buried feet.

Jessica's brain slowly registered that Teresa spoke, that Teresa was even there. She turned her head in slow motion to look at Teresa, though she still didn't fully see anything. As her mind focused on what her eyes were showing her, Jessica tried to form questions, but her lips writhed and squirmed, reshaping themselves to fit each unasked question before moving the next.

'You slept all day,'� said Teresa. 'And you will sleep all day for the rest of eternity.'�

Movies flipped through Jessica's brain. Movies that she had seen, and movies that she had heard about. They were all fake, untrue, fiction, but they were the only anchor to reality to which she could tie her suspicions. She stared at Teresa, but she listened to herself. It was like she wasn't there, like she was hiding from herself. The evening was dark and cloudy, but the air was still. Her breath was still. Even her heartbeat eluded her. And Teresa's words started to sink in.

'Some people I know brought clothes,'� said Teresa, sounding normal, saying normal things.

Jessica tried to speak, but there was no air in her lungs. Tugging at what seemed like old memories, she thought about inhaling and her lungs expanded. It wasn't so difficult, just a simple contraction of her diaphragm and air was sucked inside. So, why wasn't she doing it without thinking? Because her body didn't need it. She could feel that, feel the truth of it.

'Come on,'� said Teresa, 'Get out of the dirt. Take your clothes off. I'll hose you down and you can wear something nice.

Jessica scrunched her brow, still staring blankly at Teresa. Get up? Out of the dirt? Her gaze drifted back to her covered legs. Lethargically, Jessica pulled herself out of the dirt, out of the shallow grave that had been dug for her and covered in a black tarp. Soon, she was standing in the dirt behind a roadside diner, being sprayed with cold water. It wasn't blood, evidence of her horrible sin, being washed from her. It was just dirt, as if she had been playing all day down by the stream.

'Blue jeans and t-shirts,'� said Teresa, holding the hose. 'I hope that's to your liking, because that's about as good as it gets.'� Jessica glanced down at her old clothes, stained dark with dried blood and dirt. She could still smell the blood, fresh and enticing.

*****

Jessica inhaled slowly and deeply, gathering the smells from the house, her house. The blood was getting stale, but it was still drawing her to the present. She had taken her fill, so the Hunger wasn't driving her. She pulled her outstretched leg to her chest and leaned forward, exhaling as she stood. It was a reassuring habit. Teresa had told her, 'If you don't practice, you would forget, and that was a sure fire way to be discovered.'� Teresa taught her quite a bit about this new way of living in the past year.

This night was the one year anniversary of the night Jessica ran away. She came back for many reason, none of which were very clear or thought out, but here she was. It hadn't turned out quite the way she wanted it, but this was the way it had to end. She hadn't known what happened to Michael, and she couldn't foresee finding out about her mother.

Jessica found herself staring out the open front door into the yard. Her head was light and the night seemed surreal. The moon was a fading crescent and the night was partly cloudy, but her eyes were well adjusted to the darkness. Jessica's gaze locked onto the tools in the yard beside the old pick-up truck under the sprawling shade tree in the yard.

Jessica had arrived at that tree on foot. When she and Teresa had arrived at the beginning of the dirt driveway, Jessica came forward on her own. They hadn't talked about it, but it was something they didn't need to discuss. They both knew how this should start. It was a quarter of a mile over the small hill and to the front yard. Standing under the dark shadows of the massive shade tree by the dirt driveway, she watched the house for many long moments, staring right through the open front door where she would be standing only an hour later. Jessica remembered the feeling of being watched, like something was spying on her from . . . elsewhere.

Time started to fold over on itself as she lost the barrier between her memory and her present.

Jessica's head buzzed from overfeeding in the present, just as it had buzzed with anxiety and anticipation an hour earlier. Jessica realized that she had sensed her own eyes watching, somehow reaching through eddies in time. She forgot to breathe as her mind grappled with the implications, but the struggle faded as the apparition from her memory stepped towards the house.

Jessica watched as the image from her memory walked across the grass and dirt, stole quietly up the steps and opened the door. Her head spun as she stood face to face with herself in the dark doorway, wondering how much of this was real and how much was just a hallucination. She remembered pausing at the open doorway just as this apparition was doing. Then the apparition stepped through her.

Both Jessica and her apparition shivered.

Jessica turned in time to see the apparition step through Luke's body sprawled on the living room floor, then pause, as if she noticed a cold spot near the floor. She remembered taking notice of two cold spots in the dark before she arrived at the lit kitchen. How was this possible, she thought. Then she was staring at her own silhouette, framed in the kitchen doorway.

'I came for Michael,'� the apparition said as Jessica mouthed the words from memory.

There was a long dramatic pause as her four brothers stared at her frozen in disbelief. Suddenly, Andy and Drew looked at each other and laughed, guffawed, until their father slammed his palm down on the table. It sounded like a gunshot and sent a couple empty beer bottles bouncing to the floor. The look of excitement did not leave the twin's eye, and the open laughing mouths turned to sadistic grins.

Jessica watched as her father's furious eyes dropped from looking at the twins to look at the floor near Jessica's feet. He can't even look at me, thought Jessica. Something was wrong. She could feel it.

'Where is he,'� Jessica said, her voice getting low and dangerous. Her father's eyes met hers then, and he knew something was different. He had lived a dangerous life and could recognize the potential for violence in the slightest cues.

Luke wasn't as observant or wary, or maybe pride just got in his way. He stood and brought his empty beer bottle to the trash on the other side of the kitchen, passing in front of Jessica. There was something in his eyes that just pissed off Jessica, but she restrained herself. Instead, the Jessica from the past glanced over her shoulder, away from Luke, directly at the Jessica of the future. The glance was subtle, almost like she was turning away from Luke in revulsion, but it could have been an unconscious gesture of sisterhood, as if asking herself if she was watching her own back.

'Michael,'� said Luke, speaking slowly, but turning quickly, 'is dead.'�

Jessica's anger flared as she watched Luke's backhand speed towards her apparition's head. The apparition, however, seemed to know it was coming, as if she felt her future anger, and she ducked below the blow, coiling like a snake. Her hand dropped to her belt and she sprang, twisting in the air, blurring. Jessica remembered this, the instinctive duck, the practiced strike, making eye contact before slashing out with the knife that had been hidden in her belt. Now, she realized she had received a silent impossible cue from herself in the future.

She watched as the knife cut and Luke, not really surprised that he missed, became shocked that she struck back. Not only had she struck back, but she went for the kill. He jerked to the side, slamming into the wall near the door frame, too late, too slow. Arterial blood sprayed across the kitchen, across his brothers, and he gurgled as he clutched his throat and stumbled into the living room.

The apparition from the past completed a graceful pirouette and landed in a fighting stance. Nobody moved. Everybody stared. Childlike rage flared in the twins, silent and unexpressed, as they tried to make sense of what just happened. They were thugs. They would be easy, even two on one, even when they outweighed her by a factor of two to one. Her speed and her knife and her training put the odds on her side.

But, her father had a revolver. He was still sitting silent, watching death dance in his kitchen, but the hand that wasn't holding a cigarette was now holding a stubby pistol resting on the table. John, sitting in shock, overwhelmed, with Luke's blood trickling down his face, he saw it. Jessica saw it, also. A shot to the head might not kill her, but it would bring her down, and that would be bad. She didn't know much of a marksman her father was, but firearms were always dangerous, even in the hands of amateurs.

Andy and Drew stood as one, determined to do brutal and horrible things to this creature that was once their sister, but they fell one by one, seconds apart. Jessica hadn't moved. She tensed with each shot, realizing that her father was a dangerous, dangerous man. Without moving his elbow from the table, he put a bullet through the side of Drew's head, then through the front of Andy's head as Andy turned to face his father. They hit the floor hard.

Long moments passed slowly. Jessica stood her ground, unmoving, like a statue, nearly inhuman, without breath or pulse, without a hint of doubt or hesitation. Terror gripped John as his whole world twisted and melted and turned itself inside out. Their father continued to smoke his cigarette, barely noticing that his other hand held a pistol.

Suddenly, John cried out. 'Father! What? What have you done?'� John looked at the pool of blood spreading around the twins.

"we have done bad things,'� said Jessica's father. 'Little Jessica is here to make sure we pay for our sins." His voice was dark, remorseful, without a trace of fear. John, trying to think through the hurricane of horror in his brain, started to tremble as he raised his gaze to watch his father in disbelief.

'Your great grandfather used to tell stories,'� said Jessica's father. 'I guess some of those stories were true.'�

'Which stories?'� asked Jessica, straightening to a more comfortable posture. She had never heard any mention of her distant relatives, long gone before she was ever born, gone from her father's self-imposed exile.

'There are some that walk among us that can take our bad luck away,'� the old man told his daughter. He seemed to get older just sitting there. 'But I think that this family is bad luck itself, and we must be taken away from ourselves.'� He put the short stub of his cigarette to his mouth and pulled smoke into his lungs. As he exhaled, he said, 'Please, let John go. Let one of my own live on. He wasn't the worst. There may be hope for him.'� He did not plead. It was a simple request.

'I will not kill him,'� Jessica said. 'John, I think it is time for you to go.'�

John looked from his father to Jessica, not understanding anything, except he was free to leave this nightmare, free to hit the road and never come back. He stood and turned towards the door so fast that he nearly slipped on some blood. The wall held him up with a thud, and he tripped over Luke with a sob, but he was gone in seconds, and there was only father and daughter.

'What happened to Michael?'� Jessica asked, not wanting to know, not wanting to accept. She stepped towards the table, stepped over the twins, and sat down next to her father. Jessica's father looked into the darkness of the living room.

'Luke didn't kill Michael,'� he said. 'The twins did it.'�

Jessica looked down at the bloody knife in her hand. She had been prepared to kill them all if they tried to keep her from Michael. Her father leaned back in his chair, stubbing out the cigarette and reaching for a half empty bottle of beer. He drew the pistol into his lap.

'The story that I beat out of them was that Michael had snuck off to do whatever it was he did on his own and the twins followed.'� Jessica's father tilted his head back and poured beer into his mouth. He swished it around his mouth, then swallowed. 'That little boy had buried his stuffed rabbit, the one with the plastic head. For some reason, he would occasionally dig it up, play with it, then bury it again. I had seen him do that once or twice and didn't see a need to interfere. Those two boys,'� he jutted his chin out in the direction of the two bodies in the kitchen, 'there was something wrong with them.'�

Jessica looked at her father and scrunched her brow. 'Father, there is something wrong with all of us.'�

'No, Jessica,'� said her father, 'There was something very wrong. I am mean. Luke, John, both mean. But the twins, they were wrong. They were killers. When they pushed Michael around and stole his rabbit, the started throwing rocks. They caught him and beat him to death. He looked worse than that damn rabbit of his.'�

Jessica felt cold but content inside. Michael died with rage in his heart, not fear.

'What did you do with his body?'� asked Jessica.

'I gave him a proper burial,'� said her father. 'Next to his mother.'�

There was a long, still silence as this sunk into Jessica's reality. She was afraid to move, fearing that even the slightest hint of momentum would send her ripping into her father's chest, tear and rending, and never finding out where her loved ones were buried.

'I should have killed the twins after they killed her,'� her father continued. 'But, I am not a killer.'� He looked down at the pistol in his hand, then at his two sons he just murdered. 'Or maybe I just have bad timing.'� He finished his beer and put it gently on the table. He leaned forward, putting the pistol on the table and pushing it to the center. He put his elbows on the table and seemed to slump between them.

'That thing wouldn't stop you?'� the old man asked Jessica. She met his eyes and realized she was crying. She looked down at her knife again and tears dripped from her eyes onto the knife. A sad frown tugged at the corners of her mouth as she shook her head to answer him. She slid the knife across the table next to the pistol.

'They thought they were doing me a favor,'� her father told her. 'They thought I hated her for standing up to me. I loved her though. I loved her for it. And she knew that.'� He paused, then said in a quiet voice, 'They are under the back porch.'�

They both cried silent tears for a while.

'Thank you for letting John go, for giving him a chance,'� the old man said in a cracked voice. 'I'm sorry I can't give you Michael.'� He sighed deep. 'What can I give you instead?'�

'You,'� said Jessica. She felt the anger fade. All that rage subsided like the end of a storm, rumbling in the distance. All that remained was sympathy for an old bad man that should have left his family when he had the chance. Then the hunger came.

Jessica reached out and grabbed her father's hand, pulling it towards her. The look in his eyes told her that he had given up, that nothing mattered, and nothing would surprise him. He didn't flinch or cringe when she showed her fangs and sunk them into his arm. He watched her drink until he no longer had the strength to hold his head up. When she was done, his head rested on the table, facing her, eyes open, but unseeing.

*****

Jessica had slumped down in the door way as she watched the final moments of the apparition play out. Everything faded, except for the kitchen, the bodies, the head rush. Had she seen an apparition, or was that all just vivid memories, living dreams overlapping her waking world? She felt frightened by her new perceptions. She knew that a sign of insanity was not being able to determine what was in the head and what was real. Maybe her new state of being was a form of insanity with some very real manifestations.

It didn't matter any more.

Jessica stood, getting a grip of herself, of the woman she had become in the past year. She stepped over the two bodies on the floor and picked her knife off the floor. She hesitated for a moment, then grabbed the revolver and stuffed it into her belt.

She walked through the back door onto the porch. The house was on a slight slope, so the back porch was a few feet over the ground. She went down the steps and pulled aside the wood paneling underneath the porch. She crawled into the deep darkness and smelled old death. There was a cross made from a long two-by-four and a short one. It was about five feet long.

Jessica put her hand on the center of the cross and felt very sad. This was where her mother's bones lay. She missed her mother, missed the forgotten smell of her hair, the vague touch of her arms wrapped around in a hug. She was doomed from the start.

Jessica looked around and found a rotten stuffed rabbit with a plastic head. The poor, ragged thing marked where Michael was buried. Jessica grabbed the plastic head and dragged it towards her, but the body fell off. She clutched the head in her hands and held it to her chest.

'I'm so, so sorry, Michael,'� Jessica said softly, sweetly. 'Would you be alive, if I stayed?'�

In the silent moments that Jessica gave Michael's memory, she noticed a small piece of paper stuffed inside the little plastic head. She held them carefully and crawled out. In the moonlight, she drew out the paper and flattened it. At the top, the words, 'I miss you, rabbit'� were scrawled in black ink in a little boys hand writing. It was crossed out with red ink, though. Below those four words, three more were written: 'I hate you'�.

Jessica started to sob. A pain so deep that it ripped through the numbness she lived with. It hurt so much, she curled into a ball, trying to hold herself together as she stared at the paper. Even the red letters were crossed out with a couple lines of blue. At the bottom of the little piece of paper, were the words, 'I forgive you.'�

Jessica cried out into the night, cried long and hard, like the world was only an illusion and pain was the true reality. She cried until her throat was sore and her eyes were dry. She cried until the numbness returned, and she forgot to breathe, forgot to care.

The moon was gone when she heard boots on the back porch.

'There were only a few hours left before sunrise,'� said Teresa, her voice neutral, gentle. 'You ready to go?'�

'we can stay here today,'� said Jessica. 'No one will come here for a while. We can stay beneath the porch.'� Jessica stuffed the paper back into the plastic rabbit head and stood up, shoving the head into her pants pocket.

'I'll get the body bags,'� said Teresa. She turned and started to walk back through the house.

'What about John?'� asked Jessica.

Teresa stopped and half turned. 'You mean the one that got away?'�

'Yeah,'� said Jessica, 'He was a present from me to you.'�

'That's sweet,'� said Teresa. 'Yeah, I got him. I left him in the front room.'�

'I said I wouldn't kill him,'� said Jessica.

'You didn't,'� said Teresa.

'Aren't I a good girl?'� said Jessica, smiling.

'You are a darling,'� said Teresa, smiling back. Then, she turned to get two body bags from her bike.

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