Bitter Blood (BBi)

Chapter 9: Lovely Elise

 

Chapter Nine
Lovely Elise

Something's tickling my nose.

I wiggle my head from side to side, brushing away whatever it was.

I sink back against my mattress and take in a deep breath. I can smell pine needles and damp earth, with an underlying scent of recently washed clothing. All right beneath my nose.

I spring up, my eyes flying open as I do.

I'm not lying in my bed. I'm lying on the forest floor.

I look around me and spot my abandoned shovel tossed beside a lump of uneven ground. Sunlight reflects off the few remaining patches of metal not consumed by rust.

Oh crap.

Yes, we were still in summer and the days still grew to an almost hell hot temperature, but out here in the forest the night's are cold no matter what season it is.

I remember in the early days of December when even a sheet as cover could make me sweat, I'd leave my window open to give the heat in my room some release and myself some fresh air.

And most of the time I'd fall asleep with it like that. But as the night went on and the temperature dropped, I would awake to find myself shivering from head to toe.

There was no doubt in my mind that it was ten times worse out here. Surely I couldn't have slept through the full body shivers and the skin piercing frost?

Some thing shifts beside my thigh and I only now realize that Blue is lying beside me.

Or more like what I've come to recognize as Lion-Blue.

His entire broad male form is stretched out beside me, ribcage rising and falling with his sleepy breaths. He must have changed and used his body heat to keep me warm. No wonder I hadn't woken up.

I decide against patting him awake just in case he springs into attack mode. Being mauled by a lion isn't on today's to-do list. Or any of my future to-do lists.

Instead I stand up and tug my disheveled hair into a bun atop my head. I slowly make my way back to the house.

Once inside, I smell it almost immediately.

It's like stale bread and rotten meat wafting through the air. It hit's me like a brick wall and I recoil back onto the deck. How on earth have I been moving around the house without even noticing that hideous scent?

It's either the effect of a messy house or the corpse that has been slowly decomposing in my backyard for the last three days.

I'm pretty sure the second one is to blame, but either way the house still need's to be cleaned.

So I go to work picking up clothes and dumping rubbish in a bin bag. At first it start's off simple; just a quick go over the room to make it as tidy as possible, but soon turns into an all out mission to make the entire house smell and look good.

I scrub windows and benches, table tops and bar stools. I wipe the cupboards and mirrors in each room before passing on to the next and vacuuming it completely clean of dust. I put a load of laundry in the washing machine and a load of dishes in the dish washer. I make my bed and stack my reading books in a neat pile atop my bedside table.

By the end of my sudden cleaning explosion, every room is sparkly clean, every surface free of clutter and the air smelling of yellow daises. It's a wonderful feeling to have fresh air filtering in through the open windows and the tidy lounge room brightly lit by the twinkling sun.

But the entire marathon has also made my limbs ache and my nose itch with the smell of bleach.

I'm not much of a cleaner and these kind of things don't happen often, but when they do, I'm usually absolutely exhausted afterwards.

After a long shower I slump down on the lounge and sip at a cold cup of ice tea. Blue's returned to my side as a familiar black cat and with him - it seems - my problems.

The whole avoidance tactic Avery has grown so fond of is starting to really annoy me. How long can one person avoid a question before the answer inevitably comes out?

But what if that answer is something terrible? A voice whispers inside my head. What if, once you've heard it, you wish you never did?

Glancing at the lounge room clock, I realize I have half an hour until I'm due to be at work. Leaping up from my seat, I run upstairs to get changed.