Page 18 of Werewolves and Witches AU

My eyes blink open. Everything is blurry and white. I blink again. Still blurry. Blink. Still white.

Dragging my tongue over my teeth is gross, and my mouth feels like something crawled in there to die.

“Ugh,” I croak out loud. Great. Blind and a zombie.

I roll my head in a circle. Owww.

Oh, but wait, not blind.

The pale-blue morning sky is just visible through my bedroom window, and its bright light floods my ceiling, catching on the dust-laden spider threads that dangle there.

Far too quickly for comfort, I lift my pounding head and stare down the length of my body. My legs are still crossed and my jeans unbuttoned. Slowly, I untangle my painfully pretzelled legs, and pins and needles shoot through my feet and calves as I make my way to standing.

Unsteady, I tread on the lip of the side plate and kick at least half the salt and charred mugwort ash all over the floor. Under Zombie Milo’s boot-pocalypse, a candle also snaps. Holding my hands out for better balance, I wonder how the Iberian ibex can scale an almost vertical cliff face to lick salt from the rocks with just hooves, when I can’t even make the six or so steps into my bathroom without destroying everything in sight.

When my sleeve catches on the handle of the bathroom door, I crash into the sink, and grab hold to steady myself. I came in here to brush my teeth, but now that I’m up and moving, I realise I really need to pee.

Urinating when you can’t feel your legs from mid-thigh down is an… experience.

Not bothering to fasten my jeans, I turn to face my reflection in the mirror. Things are bad. My hair looks almost silver. I’ve always had white hair, my mom did too, it’s a Family Line thing, but it’s never looked so… I poke and pull at a few of the longer strands, tucking my chin into my neck to see them directly.

Doing that forces my tongue against my teeth, and I gag. Fishing my toothbrush out from under a roll of toilet paper, I try to squeeze the last of the toothpaste onto it but it’s no use; the tube is empty. My shoulders sag dramatically—I was supposed to buy some yesterday. I shove the brush into my mouth anyway.

“Ugh,” I groan again. But this time, not because of Zombie Milo—because it feels so good.

A minute later, I flip the toilet lid down and sit to take off my boots and socks. When I’ve wrestled my way out of my jeans and underwear, I chuck it all outside the bathroom to sort for laundry later and turn on the shower.

“Oooh, cold, cold, cold.” Hopping from foot to foot, I cower in the corner away from the stream of water until it heats.

Edging closer, I wait until the water is likely hot enough to take off the top layer of skin before stepping under it. This is exactly what I need to wash away the last of Zombie Milo and ease some of the aches and pains from sleeping cross-legged on a hardwood floor all night.

As I comb my fingers through wet and knotty hair, my mind travels back to the spell. Was any of that real? It felt real. The damp grass wiped the chalk dust from my boots, the salty ocean air filled my lungs, and Sarah’s request for my help had been heartfelt and genuine.

Preoccupied, I pour a handful of shampoo into my palm—no, I probably shouldn’t be using the stock I’m supposed to sell, but it seems silly to have an apartment filled with boxes of shampoo and then buy different bottles to use.

Lathering my hair, I wonder how any of it was even possible. Sarah Blackwood had introduced herself as a witch from the sixteenth century. Which is madness because that would make her… four hundred and fifty years old. But she didn’t look much older than me, and I’m twenty-four. No, twenty-five.

Despite our age gap, she was really nice and super interesting to talk to—even though her story was a sad one. Sarah had been travelling the area to sell healing potions and decided to stay on in the town to help the residents with a few ailments. She also told me about an ingenious invention to help make sea water drinkable because there had also been a drought recently. When she’d done as much as she could, and it came time to leave, she found she couldn’t.

Sarah described it as like being surrounded by an invisible wall that had appeared overnight, as if by magic. She’d walked its perimeter, trailed her hands over it the whole way around, but never found a gap nor a break. Not only that, but she said no one else in the town could sense it, and each day when they woke up it was as if their day had reset, leaving them with no knowledge of the previous one.

I pause, my fingers buried in soapy hair. These people have lived the same day over and over for almost five hundred years. My mouth hangs open.

Shampoo suds sting my eyes at the same time as others pool in my mouth.

Ewww, yuck.

And owww, my eyes.

I scrunch them shut and step back under the stream of water. Blinking, I rinse my eyeballs. Then my mouth. Then my eyeballs again.

Through blurred vision, I hunt for the conditioner, but each bottle I investigate is the wrong colour or shape. With half-cleaned hair and a twice-cleaned mouth, I shut off the water, step out, and wrap the towel around my waist.

Wiping the steam from the mirror reminds me that I need to shave, and as I rummage for my shaving cream, I wonder how the residents of the Lost Colony are still alive. This whole situation doesn’t really fit inside my brain.

I let out a long sigh. In part because I can’t work out how to even begin processing this, and also because I can’t find my shaving foam, but mostly because I have now found my conditioner.

I flip the cap. The company I get these products from also make skin care, so I really don’t see that there can be a lot of difference between their conditioner and shaving cream. I hold the bottle in my hand for a moment—thinking—then squeeze a fair amount out and slather it over my jaw and neck. Imagine doing this every day for five hundred years…