Christa Carmen [Carmen - Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked

The trees were fire and the sky was panicked birds and the horse was made of bone.

She knew the horse would not walk forever. She also knew that when the horse could go no farther, she would trade her Hell on Earth for one beyond her capacity to conceive.

On the day the water turned to poison, she had done the bad thing again. When her father appeared before her, she was certain it was to scold her for her atrocious, perverted ways. But when her father opened his mouth, a river of red ran out in place of reproach. In a revelation of horror, she remembered her father guzzling the glass of water from the faucet, and she gripped her favorite stuffed creaturea gift that she had not deservedas the gore rushed from between her fathers lips, hiding her face in its fur so she would not have to see.

She heard the muffled thwump when her fathers body hit the floor. By then, her brother had drunk the water too,

( by then, who hadnt? )

and when he saw their father in a frothy sea of unrelenting red, he opened his mouth to scream. His insides came out instead of sound.

She watched as the mundane setting of their living room became an estuary of brackish blood, her brothers red mixing with her fathers. The book that had taught her about brackish water and estuaries and other interesting, scientific things lay open on her desk upstairs. It would remain there now, for an eternity. Unless the water cleared and there was anyone left to drink it.

When the bottled water had been reduced to a wasteland of empty plastic, she braced herself to venture outside. Outside, where the world rained ash and the wind blew pain. It was also where the well ran deep, and if she was lucky, ran clean.

She was desperate for a drink, but recalled the book on her desk, extolling the scientific method and the testing of hypotheses. With her tongue like a shed carapace in her mouth, and her innards like sand in a sieve, she crouched behind the stone wall and settled in to observe .

When to delay another second would be a fate worse than what waited for her in the kitchen tap, a raven fluttered down to perch on the bait: a bucket of water exhumed from the wells depths. The great black bird lowered its head to sip, and splashed water over its wings. She held her breath, waiting for a rivulet of red to spew from its throat, to wrack its fragile, feathered body. The raven opened its beak, but only a song emerged, and she wept with relief. The salty tears made her thirstier than ever.

She filled every container she could find with unspoiled water from the well. An old tomcat mewled and hissed and spat, and though she lamented his misfortune, she could not share such a precious commodity with a cat. She reminded herself that she was wicked and depraved, and this allowed her to stomach her cruelty more easily.

She carried bucket after bucket of crisp, cool water to the barn, delivering the stores to a single stall. Encompassed in the narrow space was her fathers former show horse, the strongest horse on the farm, of the most impressive breeding. The horse that would fare the best when it came time to abandon their home.

Without water, the milk cow and the donkeys and the other horses fell. Their already dehydrated corpses withered and shrunk, their eye sockets widening to gaping, fly-infested chasms. She was not privy to the noises their bodies made when they collapsed, but she imagined they sounded like her father had. Like her brother. All things sounded the same when they fell in death.