Alma suddenly felt liberated from the boys. She felt, after almost nine hours at Smart- Mart, and the hour or so she spent with Dwight and then Sam (though Sam was definitely not on the schedule), she had felt like doing a cartwheel down the very short hallway, or screaming to heavy metal music, but she was knackered. Inside, she felt like she could demolish a tank and rip it into its singular parts, but it was her body letting her down, being all tired and lethargic. Alma looked at the sink, it had some stuff in it that needed washing. I’ll leave it until this afternoon, she thought, kicking procrastination into high gear. She justified the procrastination, however, as she had just returned from a long shift a work. The procrastination was absolutely justified.

Alma sat in front of the television and turned it on. Some little fat guy was screaming about selling some stupid steam mop or something. Alma changed the channel. Fairies with excruciatingly annoying voices and horrible animation were being as annoying as their voices. Alma changed the channel. Old Home And Away, nice! Alma changed the channel anyway. She cycled through the entire channel list and then realised why she never really watched television, it was full of nothing but bullshit. She sighed with slight disappointment, and then stood up from the lounge and headed to the master bedroom.

Alma entered the room she shared with Dwight and took her clothes off save for her underwear. She turned on the ceiling fan that jutted from the ceiling and opened the windows. She liked sleeping with a breeze. Alma settled on her side of the bed, before she realised her significant other was at work. She shimmied into the middle of the bed and inelegantly spread-eagled across it. She stretched, heard some pleasant cracking of her bones and/or joints, and yawned in a most un-ladylike manner. She lay there, going over the last twelve or thirteen hours; Molly’s obsession with gay porn, the junkies on the side of the road, Sam, whatever happened in the shower with Dwight, Dwight’s dream...

Dwight’s dream...Alma went over what she was told about it. She had split into two versions of herself and grew fangs? Whatever Dwight’s smoking... she jokingly thought to herself. Of course, neither of them dabbled with illegal drugs, at least, not the hard stuff (fuck that), somewhat out of a moral compass. But the dream had visibly shaken him, and she didn’t know what to do when he got home.

When he got home... Alma’s mind began to shut down as her thoughts began swirling into one another. She thought of Dwight returning in the car, driving past the two junkies, who were actually faceless clones of Alma with fangs, who wanted to go bowling with Sam...who...

And she was out like a light.

*

Miroslava had some semblance of a plan, and excitedly ran up the stairs.

‘Little sister?’ Miroslava called. A door down the hall opened and Agnessa poked her head out. Miroslava quickly ran down to her, and stopped just in front of the bedroom doorway. ‘Little sister, what is it you have always wanted?’

‘You to let me sleep?’ ‘No, ever since your turning.’ Miroslava said, ignoring Agnessa’s sarcastic reply. ‘A lovely man.’ Agnessa said quietly after a short silence. ‘Exactly.’ And with that, Miroslava entered the room, sat on the bed, and began to explain the plan of attack to her little sister, a plan that involved reclamation of the surname Volkov, and a plan that involved a bloodbath most messy. All Agnessa could think of was how excited she would be going through more victim’s belongings and claiming them as her own, adding to her wearable travelling closet. Miroslava had finished explaining the plan, and asked if there was anything not clear. Agnessa sheepishly asked Miroslava to explain it once more, which she did after sighing gently in exasperation. Miroslava expanded on

each important part of the plan, each milestone so as to clarify and emphasise, but Agnessa still wasn’t seeing the bigger picture.

‘Sister, I do not get it.’ Agnessa frustratedly replied, sitting on the bed, cross-legged. Miroslava sighed. She had already gone through the plan twice, now. Would she have to go through it a third time, emphasising every previous emphasis to its inane extent?

‘Did mother drop you on your head as an infant?’ Miroslava said angrily. ‘Sister, to not be mean to me.’ Agnessa cried childishly. Agnessa had never been that mature, and when she was turned, she was barely out of her adolescence. Her immaturity was an unfortunate - eternal - side-effect.

‘How about, little sister,’ Miroslava began, ‘I tell you what to do as we do it?’ Agnessa sheepishly nodded. ‘I wake you when time comes, yes?’

‘Okay, sister.’ ‘Okay. I am sorry for...harsh dig.’ Miroslava offered regretfully. Agnessa simply grabbed Miroslava’s hand and squeezed it tightly. She then let go and settled into the bed. Miroslava went to the doorway and turned around to her little sister.

‘Little sister?’ Miroslava asked. ‘Yes, sister?’ Agnessa replied. ‘Good day.’ ‘Good day, sister.’ ‘Don’t let the wolf-men bite,’ and Miroslava then closed the door. It took a while for Miroslava to find a room that suited her. One room looked like a child’s bedroom, one room was an extravagant bathroom, but the one that suited her was an empty room that only had a fireplace. Miroslava loved the smell in this room, and indistinguishable but pleasant smell; it wasn’t the musty, dirt smell that was all over the rest of the house. This room smelled like life...life taken away violently. She loved it.

Miroslava went into the children’s bedroom and broke a rocking chair that was in it for firewood, and took the pieces into the empty room. She loaded the pieces into the fireplace, and with a quick movement, lit them. The fireplace slowly crackled into being and pulsed a warmth out into the room. It was a while since Miroslava had felt warm, true warmth...everything was ice cold for her, even though she liked the cold.

She put her rag quilt onto the floor and settled on it a short distance from the fire, and soon fell asleep as the flames licked up and down the chimney space above the fireplace, the crackling of the fire drowning out the world outside, ushering forward an act of destruction and violence that gave Miroslava very sweet dreams indeed.

*

Alma walked through a lush, green landscape, the grass glowing a bright, almost luminescent green. A wind circled around her, a cool, fresh smell being carried by the wind (it smelled like a mixture between newly mown grass and air-dried laundry). She danced as if she was Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. Alma ran uphill and did a cartwheel, and then collapsed into the grass, laughing to herself. As she slowly finished laughing, she took in the clouds, but noticed one cloud hovering above her, casting a dark, dark shadow over the land. The cloud was in the shape of an arrow, and it was pointing to where she had just come from. With curiosity, she sat up in the grass and followed the arrow as it floated towards a forest entrance that hadn’t been there before; a flat wall of trees, each a clone of the tree next to it, each equidistant from the other, the trees spreading into each horizon on either side of Alma. She stood up and began walking towards this wall of trees cautiously, but intrigued. Birds called to each other, kookaburras laughed, leaves shook as birds flapped from one tree to another, and then all the sound stopped. The birds stopped calling each other, the kookaburras stopped laughing, the leaves sat eerily still, and the wind stopped blowing. Alma heard a crunch behind her.

She turned around and saw a blonde woman standing, her hair covering her face. Her hands were twitching, making her wince. Her hair was dirty, and muddy, but dripped with mud, that turned red as it hit the grass. Alma slowly moved towards the woman through the still grass.

‘Hello?’ No answer came the cry. A rabbit started bouncing a short distance from Alma, it passed her and headed towards this woman. A faint ray of light followed the rabbit through the darkness of the clouds, until the rabbit and the light stopped short of the blonde woman. The rabbit took a sniff of the woman, and in almost a split second, its eyes bulged and it turned away, and as it did, this woman jumped menacingly and grabbed it with one hand, and held the captive rabbit up for Alma to see.

‘The blood is the life,’ the woman said, but the voice didn’t match her - it was a dark, demonic, almost male voice. She then, with one hand, snapped the rabbit’s spine and ribcage, and the rabbit’s legs fell, dangling around this woman’s hand, the eyes still open and lifeless. The faint ray of light that followed the rabbit faded away. Alma inhaled fearfully and began stepping backward, towards the wall of trees, as the woman’s hair darkened to brunette, and the woman revealed her face - it was the junkie who watched Alma drive home that morning, but this time, she was looking vicious, her eyes full of fear and arousal, not a sexual arousal, but something dark and anticipatory.

‘Alma!’ a voice rang behind her. She turned around and saw Dwight, held captive between two trees by dried vines that encircled his wrists and ankles, holding him up off the ground. ‘Help me!’ Alma began running towards him but then stopped against her will, almost like she had hit an invisible wall.

‘Rats,’ the woman behind her said. Alma turned around fearfully. ‘Rats,’ the woman continued. ‘Millions and millions of rats, their eyes glowing red...’ The junkie woman raised both her hands, and the ground shook aggressively. The grass behind the junkie woman started to flatten, as a tsunami of rats ran towards Alma, their eyes glowing a dim, blood- red glow. The rats were running over each other, the blanket of stampeding rats pulsating as this happened, and the sound of a million rats charging towards her filled the silence. But they weren’t running towards her, they ran around her...and towards Dwight!

The rats scarpered up the trees and climbed onto Dwight, who tried, in vain, to move out of his wood bondage. The rats climbed up his neck, and two rats looked like they held his mouth open as the others began piling into his mouth. Dwight screamed a muffled scream as the rats began to cover him and enter him one after the other. A snap of wood added to the thundering of the rats, and the shape of Dwight fell to the floor. Alma stood, unable to do anything for him. He emerged, throwing rats off himself in various directions, and began walking towards Alma. He was walking through the rats, like the rats were incoming water at a beach, tumbling with each foot forward. He was clawing at his face, and his nails locked onto something as he tore his face in two, revealing blood-red fur and eyes as violent and angry as Alma had seen. The monster that was once Dwight roared, but he roared a word...

‘ALMA!’ The monster moved towards her as knocking permeated the landscape, and bit by bit the dream fell away and Alma woke up, sweating. The knocking continued, and she threw on one of Dwight’s shirts, put on some pants as fast as she could as she heard the voice of the one who was knocking.

‘Alma...? Something’s happened...’ It was Dwight. And there was something wrong with his voice.