“Did you kill her?” I asked.

  My friend grinned. “No. Just tenderizing.”

  “But they aren’t for you,” I told him.

  Flesh shrugged. “You never know. Maybe I’ll get leftovers.”

  END FLASHBACK

  I opened my eyes and smirked. Flesh turned out to be right. Sort of.

  It wasn’t leftovers. It was more like a food delivery.

  They were brought right to me. To us.

  And we were going to feast.

  SAMANTHA ADAMS TROUTT-DANIELS

  The trick to dealing with nightmares is knowing they aren’t real.

  I woke up in the hospital and was scared for a moment, because of bad dreams.

  Then I was scared for another moment, because some bad people tried to hurt me and my family. Not in bad dreams. In real life.

  Because sometimes nightmares are real.

  But Mom and Dad were there in the room with me. And Uncle Harry. And even though the bad people hurt them too, my family protected me, and each other.

  So I wasn’t as scared.

  Then I started coughing, and my chest hurt, and I got scared again.

  Mom used the button on the cord next to her bed to call someone, and a minute later Nurse Bantam came in.

  I didn’t like Nurse Bantam.

  She was a large woman with sharp shoulders, who wore colorful scrubs, but the checkered design on her top, all in bold primary colors, clashed with the wavy, muted pastel pattern of her pants.

  With her face mask on, I couldn’t see her mouth, and couldn’t tell if she was smiling when she spoke.

  Her eyes didn’t look like she was smiling. Her eyes looked red and angry.

  She also had a plastic shield over her face, which made her resemble a robot.

  “How old are you, Samantha?” she asked. Nurse Bantam had a flat voice, the kind that didn’t ever sing.

  “I’m eight, going on nine. Call me Sam.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “With my hands.”

  Uncle Harry laughed.

  “Sam, answer the nurse.” Mom seemed more serious than usual.

  “My chest kinda hurts.”

  “Upper? Lower?”

  “Both.”

  “Does it hurt to breathe?”

  I nodded.

  “Sore throat?” She pointed a digital thermometer at my forehead. “Muscle pain?”

  “My throat hurts a little. I’ve been coughing. Did you get my Covid test back?”

  “Not yet. The lab is very busy. If your throat hurts, I can have Dr. Michaels come and take a look.”

  I didn’t like Dr. Michaels, either. He was one of those people that laughed at their own jokes, and the jokes weren’t good.

  The thermometer beeped.

  “What’s my temperature?” I asked.

  “Ninety-nine point three. A little bit high.”

  “She’s not the only one.” Uncle Harry giggled.

  Nurse Bantam’s eyes became slits. “Mr. McGlade, do I have to adjust your morphine drip?”

  “Naw. I’m good. Except for maybe this. Does this look normal to you?”

  Uncle Harry reached over and picked up a metal bedpan. He had put a chocolate bar in it the night before, and he fished the candy out and shoved the whole thing into his mouth, making gobbling sounds.

  I laughed so hard I started coughing again.

  Dad also thought it was funny.

  Mom and Nurse Bantam, not so much.

  “Mr. McGlade, do you think that sets a good example for the child?”

  “It does. I’m teaching her by example. Waste not, want not.”

  “Also that it’s important to recycle,” my dad added.

  I had another coughing/laughing fit. I was really smart for my age. And also mature. But poop jokes were hysterical.

  “Can you smell anything?” Nurse Bantam asked me when I stopped giggling.

  “I can smell Uncle Harry’s bedpan,” I told her. “It’s making me hungry.”

  Everyone laughed, including Mom this time. But Nurse Bantam didn’t make any sound at all.

  “You wouldn’t like it, Sam,” Uncle Harry said. “Tastes like crap.”

  Nurse Bantam seemed to be annoyed with all the laughter, and she left.

  “Nurse Ratched is definitely going on the suspect list,” Uncle Harry said.

  “What suspect list?” I asked.

  No one answered me. When adults don’t answer a question they are either embarrassed or hiding something.

  “Uncle Harry? What suspect list?”

  “How did you get so precocious?” Uncle Harry asked.

  “Brains are like sponges,” I said. “They soak up stuff. And I have a pretty big sponge. Every fact that I read I remember. Dad, I know you were bitten pretty bad by Rita Goodall, but human beings only have about 170 pounds of bite force per square inch. That’s really weak.”

  “It didn’t feel really weak,” Dad said.

  “A grizzly bear has a bite force of 1,200 psi,” I continued. “A hippopotamus has 1,800 psi. The Nile crocodile has the strongest bite force on the planet, with 5,000 psi. But that’s not the strongest bite in history. A Tyrannosaurus rex had a bite force of over 12,000 psi. But even T-rex can’t beat the prehistoric shark, megalodon. Based on the fossil teeth, it had a bite force of over 40,000 psi.”

  “How do you know all this crap?” Harry asked.

  “I have an eidetic memory,” I answered.

  Uncle Harry made a face. “What’s that?”

  “It means I’m good at remembering things. I have hyperphantasia. I can picture detailed scenes in my mind’s eye.”

  “Mind’s eye is an expression,” Uncle Harry said.

  “No. It’s real.”

  “It’s not. It’s figurative. Like telling someone to count sheep to go to sleep.”

  “I can count sheep,” I said. “I can see them and count them in my head.”

  “No you can’t.”

  “I can.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Can’t you close your eyes and picture things?”

  Uncle Harry snorted. “No. Of course not. All I see is blackness. It’s like the bottom of a coal mine. At night.”

  “Can you imagine stuff with your eyes open?” I asked. “Like superimposed on real life? Daydreaming?”

  “When I daydream it’s usually just me thinking of dirty words.”

  “Can you see the words?”

  Uncle Harry’s face scrunched up. “No. They’re just… I dunno… floating concepts. Ideas.”

  “So you can’t imagine a red triangle and see it in your head?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I know what a triangle is, but I don’t see it. I just hear my thoughts describing a triangle.”

  “That’s call aphantasia,” I told him.

  “Like that horror movie? With the silver balls that kill people?”

  “That’s Phantasm.” I watched it with Dad last year. “Aphantasia is the term for people who have no visual imagery when they think about stuff. Can you remember your past?”

  Uncle Harry shrugged. “I guess.”

  “Can you see your memories? Like movies in your head?”

  “No one can do that.”

  Poor Uncle Harry. I couldn’t imagine living like that.

  And neither could he.

  “About ninety-nine percent of people can do that,” I said. “When you can’t, it’s called SDAM. Severely deficient autobiographical memory.”

  I’d never seen Uncle Harry look more surprised. “Seriously? You can remember past events like moving pictures?”

  “I remember being born,” I said. “I remember almost everything. Like an HDTV in my head.”

  Uncle Harry turned to my mom. “Jackie?”

  “I have a visual memory, Harry. I thought everyone did. This is news to me.”

  “Phin?” Uncle Harry asked.

  “I can visualize. Not in HD, like Sam. My thoughts are more like grainy black and white.”

  “So you imagine in noir?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, shitpants. I’m mentally handicapped.”

  “To the surprise of nobody,” Dad said.

  “Don’t feel bad, Uncle Harry. There are a lot of famous people with aphantasia. Blake Ross, co-creator of the Mozilla Firefox browser. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar. Even some authors, like Michelle Sagara, Mark Lawrence, and that bestselling thriller author J.A. Konrath.”

  “I don’t recognize any of those people,” Harry said.

  “Apparently you don’t recognize anything,” Dad told him.

  “Don’t be mean, Phil.”

  “It’s Phin.”

  “This explains why I always had trouble with names and faces. I always thought I was just a self-absorbed ass.”

  “You can be both,” Mom said. “One shouldn’t preclude the other.”

  “I wonder if this means I qualify for a handicapped parking sticker,” Uncle Harry mused. “They refused to give me one for my other disability. A huge dick.”

  “He’s right,” Dad said. “He’s a huge dick.”

  “What suspect list?” I asked Uncle Harry again.

  “Hmm? This is the first I’ve heard of a suspect list.”

  “Dad?”

  “Ask your mother.”

  “Mom?”

  Mom and Dad were both tough, but Mom was tough plus stubborn. “We’re not ready to talk about it, Sam.”

  “Is this about the person who sucked your blood?” I asked.

  Mom frowned. “How did you know about that?”

  “Sometimes when you think I’m sleeping, I’m not sleeping.”

  “That’s called eavesdropping,” Mom said.

  “It’s called being in the same room as you while you’re talking. How am I supposed to turn off my ears?”

  No one had an answer to that, and maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Now they’d be more careful when they spoke around me.

  I tried a different approach.

  “Mom, remember when we saw that squirrel that wasn’t afraid of us when we walked toward it? I wanted to pet it but you said it could have rabies. Remember that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You told me about the danger. Or else I wouldn’t have known about it. I could have touched that squirrel, and it could have bitten me, and I could have gotten rabies and been dead in two to ten days. So isn’t it better to tell someone if something is dangerous?”

  “This kid is gonna be a hoot when she’s a teenager,” Uncle Harry said. “She’s already smarter than both of you. She’s almost as smart as me.”

  I almost said that our dog, Duffy, was smarter than Uncle Harry. But that would have been mean.

  “Honey, you know those bad people that put us here?” Mom asked.

  I nodded. “They’re gone. You and Dad said you killed them.”

  “I helped,” Uncle Harry said. “I was essential to saving the day. Unless the authorities press charges. If that happens I have five witnesses who will swear in a court of law that I was in Los Angeles eating pancakes.”

  Mom appeared uneasy. “Well, yes, those bad people, Larold and Rita Goodall, are gone. But… one of them isn’t.”

  My eyes got big and I felt like I had to pee.

  “There is a third one,” Dad said. “Who calls themself Blood. We don’t know what Blood looks like.”

  “Blood sucks people’s blood,” I stated. “Like a vampire.”

  “Vampires aren’t real,” Mom told me.

  “Did I tell you guys about that time I infiltrated a bloodsucking cult?” Uncle Harry asked.

  “Were they vampires?” I asked.

  Uncle Harry shook his head. “No. Spoiler alert: real vampires don’t exist. What exists are loonies who think they’re vampires. And werewolves. Werewolves exist.”

  I looked at Mom.

  “Werewolves don’t exist,” she assured me.

  “We were cops, Jackie. When did we get the most homicides? During a full moon. Because people go crazy during the full moon.”

  “He’s exaggerating,” Mom said.

  “I’m not. I never exaggerate. I’ve said it over a million times.”

  “Is Blood going to come after us?” I asked. I was getting scared again.

  “You want the truth?” Uncle Harry asked. “Or do you want us to tell you that we’re all perfectly safe and life is perfect and that unicorns are going to fly into the room and shit rainbows and cotton candy on your head?”

  “Unicorns shit cotton candy?” I asked.

  I was allowed to swear if I was repeating something an adult said.

  “Unicorns, and werewolves, and vampires, don’t exist,” Dad said.

  “But mentally disturbed people do,” I said.

  No one answered me.

  “So Blood is coming after us,” I stated.

  “That’s how it usually works,” Uncle Harry said. “I don’t see why now would be any different than the last twenty times. I blame your mother. She attracts psychos like flies to a fresh dog turd.”

  “We don’t know if anyone is coming after us,” Mom assured me. “But me and your father, and even Uncle Harry, are pretty tough. We’ll protect you.”

  That should have made me feel better.

  But it didn’t.

  I knew there were bad people, who did bad things. Even our hospital was named St. Erasmus. Eighteen hundred years ago in ancient Rome, Erasmus angered the emperor, who imprisoned him, stuck in him a barrel full of protruding nails, and rolled him down a hill. When he survived, they whipped him, covered him in flammable plant tar, and set him on fire. He survived that too, so they jabbed a red-hot hook into his belly, and wound his intestines around a pulley, slowly disemboweling him with a crank.

  Why did people do these kinds of things? What goes so wrong in someone’s life that they feel they must make others suffer like that? What’s happened in a person’s head that hurting someone else is not only okay, but fun?

  I’m only eight, and though I know a lot of facts because my main hobby is looking up stuff, I don’t understand why people are so mean. Shouldn’t life be about how many people you can help, rather than how many get hurt because of the things you do?

  Why are there so many bad people?

  Why?

  I took my cell phone and wireless earbuds out of my bag of stuff, which was in the drawer next to my bed. Then I played Zombie Sugar Jackers Quackers: Mother Duckers, which had just released fifty new levels.

  It helped me to forget how scary life was.

  HARRY

  Aphantasia? WTF?

  There have been a few times in my life when I learned something new about myself that blew my mind.

  Decades ago, I realized I was pansexual. Which means I’m sexually attracted to anyone with a pulse. This was an odd realization, because I grew up during a time where sexuality was stigmatized, and my life would have been easier if I’d been straight.

  It wouldn’t have been as much fun, though.

  This SDAM revelation put a lot of things into perspective. I had incredibly vague memories of my past. I had trouble remembering names and faces. I couldn’t relax without drugs, because I had a constant audible dialog babbling on and on in my head. Meditation never made any sense to me. Picture myself on a beach? I could be on an actual beach, and once I closed my eyes I would forget how my surroundings looked.

  Having a know-it-all child tell me this, when years of therapists never even mentioned the possibility, pissed me off.

  I was also pissed that apparently my brain was different than everyone else’s. People could actually see and relive their memories? They could picture their loved ones? They could actually count sheep?

  WTF.

  But I couldn’t dwell on my own mental uniqueness. Because even though I couldn’t remember every single time some maniac tried to kill me, I had the scars to remind me. As a consequence, my survival instinct was hella strong.

  We needed to figure out who and where Blood was, before they came calling.

  So I immediately sprang into action, after a nap.

  When I awoke, I had breakfast, which was some kind of meat puck. It tasted like they boiled one of Charlie Chaplin’s tramp shoes.

  At least the gravy wasn’t bad.

  I hope it was gravy. Maybe the meat puck was leaking.

  I was hungry, so I licked off the protein frosting, and ate the green Jell-O.

  Then I called my maid and had her FedEx me three guns from my armory.

  Then, another nap.

  I was awoken by the candy striper, or whatever the modern woke term was for hospital volunteers. A gawky teen with sleepy eyes and acne dotting his cheeks over his face mask. He had thinning red hair in an uneven crew cut, and bloodshot eyes that probably meant he was stoned to the bejesus belt.

  “You want some brownies? Heh heh.” His hoarse voice, and stoner laugh, helped confirm my belief that this dude was crazy high.

  “Hells yeah I want brownies.”

  “I made them myself. Heh heh.”

  “Baked?” I asked, a pot-head double entendre.

  “Heh heh. Totes for-evs.”

  He gave me one, which was cut into an uneven trapezoid shape and had a cratered top as if it was made by a small child without parental supervision.

  I took a bite because; free brownie.

  The taste was… off.

  “What’s that different, savory flavor?” I asked.

  “Heh heh. Heh heh. Heh heh.”

  It didn’t taste like any kind of weed I’d had before. It was tangier. Almost meaty.

  “So you volunteering here because you like hanging out with ill people?” I asked, polishing off the brownie.

  “Heh heh. Court-mandated community service.”

  I could guess why he got community service. But I had to be wrong. “Isn’t marijuana legal in Colorado?”

  “Heh heh. Heh heh. It wasn’t drugs, bro.”

  “What was it?”

  “It was—heh heh—a valuable lesson.”

  So the candy striper didn’t want to bare his soul and confess his criminal ways. I squinted at his nametag, and was going to ask about his unusual name, but instead decided to go another route.

  “Ever hear of the Destiny Drac?” I asked.