Bloodwalker

Chapter 28: Ascent

Trigger Warning/s: descriptions of blood (human and animal)

Pre-chapter notes: none

Art: Besnikmeti on DeviantArt. He does digital art which is extremely beautiful, and I am really surprised that his account does not even exceed 100 followers! I hope you will enjoy his art as much as I do.

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The sky looks quite dark for an early Saturday afternoon in spring, but it's something you don't concern yourself with as you shuffle across shopfronts, following the footpath like a dutiful soldier to the only grocery store you know.

There are only a few things you've discovered so far that can elevate your mood by a far margin. Food is a given - to others, it may be a necessity, but to you, it is a privilege. To have your stomach feel marginally full, even with the simplest of foods, is something you are grateful to be able to just barely afford. Dreamless sleeps are a close second. With almost every night plagued with visual horrors, it's a blessing for you to even experience a moment of reprieve in your slumber.

Finally, there's rain. A cooling mantle that washes over your skin like settling dust, carving rivulets into your skin and bones. Rain. Said to be Mother Nature's tears, each droplet a puppet controlled by a god you don't really believe in.

Rain.

You can smell it.

The sky looks quite dark for an early Saturday afternoon in spring, you think again.

Inside the grocery store appears dull and lifeless, you think, despite the jewel-coloured fruits that gleam with eagerness, with freshness, with artifice. The rain makes everything colder, more muted, quieter. It casts a grey through the windows that implores silence. Listen to the sound I make, it says, as I wash away the stains on your car and erode rocks and make potholes in the tar on your roads.

There is only a hint of mindless robotic chatter in the aisles as you browse for your three necessities: bandages, iron supplements, rice. Though things are on sale today, the store is quiet. That is another thing you like about the rain outside; it wards off people.

At the counter, the man behind it greets you with an obligatory nod. You are quite the sight - the largest sack of half-off rice slung across your shoulders, and a bag of whatever you can afford hanging from your arm like a bauble. "She looks like a pack mule," you hear a customer behind you mutter, and you agree.

The man states your total. You pay with what you have; a measly 50 yen returns to your pockets as change.

"Please come again," he says.

Plexiglass doors part for you and the scent of petrichor envelops you, stronger than ever. The Adjudicator had taught you to be polite, but the rain had taught you to be tranquil, so much that you do not feel the need to turn around and thank the young man who had just scanned your items and printed your receipt. "Only look at me," the rain insists, "look at how freely I dance. Look at how I water your flowers."

Then comes the beginning of your walk home. First you must pass through quiet streets of near-empty shops, before you reach the tenements. Then, you must go beyond these, before you find your own dilapidated building, a blemish to the urban planning and subsequently hidden away from the town centre.

But only a few metres through the shopping zone, you are abruptly met with the beating footsteps of what sounds like a stampede of animals, headed your way. It seems the rain does not ward off people as well as you had thought. In the gap between two shops you retreat.