Keep a steady hand.
In the most intense sexual experience I'd ever had, I came as she did, all while keeping eye contact with Kansas, spilling his seed inside her at the exact same time. I'd almost feel poetic if it wasn't so scary.
In the ten years since I'd let her go, telling her to run and not look back, I'd never been scared like this.
As we pulled our cocks out of her limp, quickly dying body, Kansas helped me lay her flat on the table. I'd removed the knife, so that she'd bleed out quicker, her blood mixing with that of her friend’s. The Reanimator would love this sacrifice. Her orgasm had been powerful. He would feed on that.
"I hate this. I don't want to watch.”
"You think I want to?" I leaned down and pressed my ear to her chest still spilling blood. Her heart had stopped. She was officially gone. “Look away if you need to, but I need to get this done.” Bracing myself, I gripped the knife and ran it along her chest, being careful to miss her fresh tattoos. I made the Y and then peeled back her skin.
Kansas had long since turned away.
“Count,” I commanded, and closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her insides any longer as I began shouting the prayers I’d memorized so long ago. Repeatedly, I said them until Kansas called it.
“Done.”
Two minutes and thirty-seven seconds.
Everything was 237.
I pushed her skin back in place and reached for the sutures. I had less than eight minutes before she woke up, if she was the same as Kansas. I’d done his in that time; I could do hers too. I worked quickly but carefully, sewing her skin back together. The scar was inevitable, but that was the curse given to us by the Reanimator. She’d look beautiful with it.
While I sewed her together, my life began to play before my eyes. What had I done? For so long, my entire life's goal was to bring us all back together. I knew even as I was a teenager, just a few towns over from her, that eventually I would do everything I had to do to get her back, even kill, and I did.
I killed before returning to Shelley Vale. Men, mostly. Rich men. I'd apply to their businesses. They would ask for a second meeting, where we'd have dinner, and then afterward, I'd cut them in the alley and watch them bleed out.
And then I read that Kansas was going across the country for college. That pissed me off. I told him to watch over her, and he left her. I hopped on a plane and rented a high-rise apartment, intending to get to know the man I'd spent so much time with as kids. What had he become?
It was a nice surprise to find he hadn't changed much. He was still the same old Kansas, with the same goal I had. We wanted Eisley, and we knew she wouldn't choose between us, so we wouldn’t make her.
I finished and stepped back. Kansas and I shared a look. Had we widowed ourselves? Was she not coming back? And then, she let out a sharp breath and bolted straight up. She began to cough and furiously claw at her chest, looking for the wound that was no longer there, but feeling the crudely done stitches that were. Kansas and I settled on either side of the table.
"How do you feel?" he asked.
"Are you okay?" I asked.
"I feel... alive."
Kansas and I shared a knowing smile.
We did it.
She turned to me. "You stabbed me."
"I did."
"But I'm alive."
"Reanimated, but yes." I rested my hand on her thigh and squeezed.
"And now I'll heal fast, and I'm immortal?"
"That's how it works, yeah," Kansas added.
There was a long pause, where we all stared at each other, trying to contain our excitement.
"Now what?" Eisley asked.
