Threnody (021).

(This is a 500-word-a-day-novel project.)

The smells of cooking finally roused the man; he swallowed and groaned, sitting up on the couch, rubbing his eyes. Jesse watched him from the other side of the small camping stove, tending to the sausages she was frying on a dented griddle. It’s not real meat, she told him. The box says they taste just like the real thing, but I don’t think so.

He stares at her, remembering.

You missed, she said. Obviously. She holds up the gun.

You’re wearing her skin, the man says hoarsely.

Jesse looked at her hands. At the tattoo. I don’t know, she manages. It seems like you’re right, but I…I wouldn’t know how that would be possible. I remember hurting, and then I wasn’t, and you pulled me out. That’s all I know.

She considers the gun. I’d like to give this back to you, she says. I don’t like guns and I don’t like holding it. If I do, there’s nothing to stop you from shooting me.

Again, she thought, remembering how there had been a flash of light when he’d pulled the trigger, and something happened between them, a flexing of the air that snapped back on him, throwing him to the ground several dozen feet away.

If I shot you, the man says, holding out his hand, I guess you’d just jump into me.

Jesse gave it to him, hoping she was doing the right thing. While he listened she told him that she had been busy, first combing the house, and although she was expecting to find nothing was rewarded with stored seasonal clothes in the back of a closet that she had already changed into; there were some for him too, when he was ready. Her next goal had been looking for any other survivors, but none responded to her hails. The grocery store had been ransacked down to the shelving, but she had found the veggie sausages fallen behind a display case. They’re probably going to make us sick, she warned him, handing him a plate with several charred links. He inhaled them.

Chewing, he looked at her. You have any idea what’s going on?

*

Jesse sat on the steps, picking blades of grass and letting them flutter from her fingers. Ryan was down in the basement; he’d refused to leave until he’d gotten everything useful out of the house, and then had gone silent for a long time. Jesse assumed he was saying goodbye to his girlfriend, though whatever was still down there was certain not her.

She could not create an explanation other than what seemed to be true: that she’d died and jumped bodies. Putting aside the impossibility of such a thing, what happened to the former occupant?

And even more troubling was the fact that when he’d shot at her, he hadn’t missed.

The gun bucked in his hand; there was blood. She slapped a hand over her heart, and when she removed it there was no wound. No blood. Nothing.