claire and the unknown

"You have the most fascinating eyes, little sprout. I think I'll take them with me."

Claire wakes with a start into an emptiness more profound than any darkness she has ever known, a void utterly unlike her bedroom's greyscale night.

For a moment she thinks that she's tangled her blankets around her head—that the silver-eyed darkness has forced its way into her parents' house—that she's fallen under the bed. But she feels nothing against her cheeks, nothing but clean air on her face and blankets on her body.

The forest floor is cool against Claire's cheek, sun-warmed ground no match for the fearful heat radiating from every inch of her body. Her wounds burn, sharp and dripping; her eyes brim with tears and her unwise fingers still clutch the flower.

Yellow and gold rise around her like a buzzing tide, each little bee-body blazing like a jewel in the sun's bright light—a mob nerving itself for the first strike, eagerly awaiting the violence that will follow as soon as some brave soul gives the rest permission—

That was a mistake.

What was she thinking?

She hasn't yet brought herself to drop the flower—could she even if she wanted to? Its broken stem oozes with something that's not honey, sticky and warm against her sweaty fingers, gripping tight—

Breakfast is icy.

There's something wrong with the house, something beyond the crushed lawn and torn siding outside. Claire struggles to swallow half-frozen scrambled eggs and too-chunky orange juice; her parents don't fair much better.

Finally, finally, she reaches the end of her mandatory presence (denoted by her father getting up to do the dishes, and her mother receding into her morning emails). Neither of them notice when she leaves. They never do.

She tells herself that she prefers it this way.

Bonk.

Claire pulls her blankets tighter, burrows a bit deeper into her bed's comforting warmth.

Bonk.

She pointedly turns her back on the window.

Bonk.

Her patience breaks.

"Will you stop already?! I'm trying to sleep here!"