Michael F. Stewart

The Goth boy stares at me, and I give him a what-are-you-looking-at stare right back. ____ dead,_ he says in a dull monotone. __ardon me?_ Adriana asks, but he keeps staring at me. __ou__e dead, too. Look at your veins. They__e blue._ He points at my forearms where dark veins run their lengths. __ou__e rotting like me._ I glance to Adriana, hands clasped and praying that she won__ leave me here. Adriana__ stopped crying now and squints at the boy before standing to pull closed the curtain that rings my cot. __razy,_ she says with an uncertain smile. __ou__e not rotting._ . . . ninety-nine, one hundred . __o,_ I reply. __ut I will if you leave me here.

I start to count. This is the important part. I have to count right. Not too fast, nor too slow. All the way to one hundred. It must be spoken aloud, without interruption. Whispering is acceptable; the count keeps my wolf to the Dark Wood. It keeps me on safety__ slender path.

I hear a siren and, if we weren__ already in a hospital, I would have assumed they were coming for nearly everyone in this room.