Xxx

CHAPTER [X]

I walk up to the counter. All black. Gilded.
The man behind it doesn’t look at me at first — just my hand.
“Your ring looks like it should be the Evil Queen’s smartwatch.”
His voice is casual, but the words hang in the air like perfume and smoke.
He says it again.
Slower.
Like the sentence itself might unlock something in me if I let it in.

A single downlight paints the countertop in gold, the kind of gold that stains you if you touch it.
The glass case below is filled with relics: pearl-handled knives, brooches shaped like extinct birds, a hairpin coiled like a snake about to strike. They don’t seem for sale. They seem… stored here, like a mausoleum for objects too venomous to keep in homes.

“You know who wore that ring before you?” he asks.
I don’t answer, because I don’t. Because maybe I do.
A faint hum threads through the air, mechanical but alive — like the pulse of something sealed behind the walls.
He leans forward.
“You shouldn’t keep it on when you sleep. It talks in your dreams.”

The counter light flickers. In that blink of shadow, I see my own reflection in the glass — not quite mine. The eyes are darker. Hungrier. The ring feels heavier, like it’s trying to drag my hand somewhere.

⸻

Now I’m outside.
The air is sharp with gasoline and early frost.
I’m pumping gas into a black sedan that doesn’t belong to me.
Somewhere out there, my next meal is moving through the night — oblivious, warm-blooded, alone.
I lick my teeth.
I can already taste the first syllable of their fear.

The highway stretches east, asphalt slick with moonless light. The Trail of Tears swallows the tires, mile by mile.
Fog crouches low to the ground like it’s waiting to pounce.
The trees here are stripped raw — white sycamore bones jutting out from the black earth, their roots clawing at the ditch as if trying to drag something under.
Shadows from their branches fall in tangled nets across the road, and every so often, one catches on the car’s hood like a hand that almost stops me.

The wind carries the smell of wet cedar, ash, and something metallic — faint, like a drop of blood in a swimming pool.
A burned-out church leans against the horizon, its steeple a black finger stabbing at nothing.
Every fencepost along this stretch wears a crown of rusted barbed wire, the kind that tears skin and doesn’t apologize.

⸻

The Morning Star is in the passenger seat — or maybe they’ve been here the whole time.
They smell faintly of crushed roses and burnt sugar.
“Do you even know what you’re looking for tonight?” they ask, turning their head just enough for me to catch the glint of a smile in the dashboard light.

“I know,” I say.
“No,” they say, “you know the shape of it. That’s not the same thing.”

Their fingers tap the ring on my hand, one slow click after another.
“That thing will keep whispering until you give it something worth keeping.”

“I feed it,” I tell them.
“You feed yourself,” they correct, leaning closer. “The ring just keeps count.”

Outside, the fog parts to reveal a small bridge over a narrow, black-water river.
The reflection of the headlights ripples like something breathing just beneath the surface.
“I could take you to them right now,” The Morning Star says. “The one who’s been dreaming about you without knowing your name.”

“What’s the price?” I ask.
They smile wider.
“You’ve already paid it. You just haven’t found the receipt.”

The fog thickens until the road is gone, the trees gone, even the car gone.
I’m standing in the middle of something white and endless, and my breath is the only sound.
My tongue touches the edges of my mouth and finds nothing.

My teeth.
My teeth.

I open my mouth to say it, but it comes out as a warm gust of air that vanishes instantly.
My teeth.
I’ve lost my teeth.

I drop to my knees in the mist, running my hands over the ground — no, not ground, glass. A mirror.
Somewhere far below, I see myself driving, lips pulled back in a smile too wide, too red, too full of perfect teeth.
Not my teeth.

“You don’t need them anymore,” The Morning Star says, somewhere behind me.
I turn, and they’re holding my teeth in their palm, each one threaded onto a thin gold chain.
They lift it to my neck like they’re crowning me.
“They were never yours. They were only on loan.”

My jaw aches with emptiness. My hunger deepens.
I try to speak but the words come out gummy, childlike.
“What—”

“Shhh,” they say. “Bite down on the night instead.”

The chain is cold. The teeth click together against my throat like dice being shaken before a game begins.

Outside, the fog climbs the walls.
The gases keep rising.
In the mirror above the dresser, my reflection smiles — all teeth, all mine — while in the bed, I feel the raw, wet emptiness of my gums.

The boy watches me through the smoke, his eyes two pits of tar where nothing green or gold could ever take root.
Somewhere in the pipes, water runs. No one is in the shower.

The chain around my neck clicks softly, like it’s counting down to something.

⸻

CHAPTER [X+1]

The motel door is open.
The boy is gone.
Only his cigarette burns in the sink, ash curling like the tail of a dying animal.

I step outside barefoot into a parking lot drowned in silver fog.
Neon light leaks from a single sign that reads ICE but the rest of the letters have burned out.
The air is colder than it should be.
I taste metal, then dirt, then nothing at all.

Somewhere in the fog, a car engine turns over and dies.
I hear The Morning Star’s voice — close, but not in any direction I can follow.
“Teeth or no teeth, Levi,” they say, “you still have to bite.”

The fog shifts, revealing the greenhouse — or something that pretends to be one — glass panes slick with condensation, each window glowing faintly from within.
Shapes move inside.
Slow, deliberate.
Waiting.
CHAPTER [X+1] (continued)

The closer I get, the more the air changes.
It’s sweet at first — orchids, lilies, something tropical.
Then it turns sharp, chemical, like a hospital where the patients are all plants that shouldn’t be alive.
The greenhouse breathes through a rusted exhaust fan, coughing out steam and the faint stink of burnt foil.

Inside, the glass sweats.
Bulbs hum overhead, bathing everything in sickly gold light.
Potted flowers bloom in impossible colors, their petals slick as tongues.
Rows of wilted things lean toward me, as if they’ve been waiting for the heat of my body.

And at the far end, in a lawn chair with his shirt open, sits the old man.
Skin like yellow paper.
Eyes milky and bored.
A small glass pipe glints beside him, already warm to the touch.

“Close the door,” he says, not looking at me.
I do. The latch clicks, and the air gets thicker.

The trade is old and ugly and I know it too well.
He passes me the pipe first, the smoke filling my chest, burning up my throat, making my heart trip over itself in the rush to get out.
Everything goes soft around the edges — the flowers breathing, the light pulsing, my reflection in the glass flashing teeth I no longer have.

The old man’s voice is just background noise now, lost under the sound of my pulse.
I drop to my knees in the damp dirt floor, my hands pressing into soil that’s warm, alive, moving.
The chain of my teeth knocks against his thigh as I work, and for a second his eyes focus, like he’s seen the whole story in that single cold touch.

When it’s over, he leans back, eyes closed, already somewhere else.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and taste smoke, rust, and the faint sweetness of something that used to be human.
The greenhouse door creaks open, and cold night air slices through the heavy heat and poison inside.
I stumble out, knees scraping gravel, lungs gasping for something cleaner than the smoke choking my chest.
My skin sticks to the cracked leather of my jacket, slick with sweat and shame.

The stars are faint, swallowed by fog that climbs like fingers over the cracked asphalt.
Somewhere a car engine grumbles in the distance—lost, like me.

The Morning Star’s voice threads through the haze, closer than breath.
“You’re running out of teeth, Levi. Running out of teeth and time.”
I clutch the ring like it’s the only anchor I have left.
“Where now?” I ask, voice cracked, hollow.

“Wherever the hunger takes you,” they whisper.
“Wherever the Trail of Tears bleeds into the night.”

I rise, shaking off the sticky remnants of the greenhouse like a second skin.
The night waits — dark and endless.
And so do I.

The night blurs into neon bruises.
I’m not driving.
Mrs. Smack is.
Natalie — the one who smacks right into four cars before you can even blink.

Her hands grip the wheel like they’re holding onto the last thread of sanity.
Her eyes flash, wild and hollow.
“Hold on, Levi,” she snarls, voice rough like gravel scraped raw.

The Trail of Tears stretches ahead — black and endless, bleeding into the fog.
The tires screech.
Metal screams.
Glass shatters like fragile bones breaking in slow motion.

We tumble through the wreckage, but the world stays spinning.

Later, they drag me into her bedroom — this cramped, stale room that smells like old smoke and regret.
Someone presses a phone to my face.

“Oh God. Oh God, no.”
I cough out the words, tasting the desperation like dirt and rot.
“I haven’t showered in weeks.”
Weeks, months, years — they all bleed together now.
Homeless, ragged, a ghost chasing the sun with nothing but cranberry juice with lime, vodka, ice.
Feathers tangled in my hair like wild, dead things.

I tell them I brushed my teeth in the Cumberland River — Tennessee River — scrubbing my gums raw with sticks and dirt.
“Stroking my face with sticks and dirt does wonders for your cuticles,” I say, voice thin as smoke, half-laughing.

They don’t understand.
They can’t understand.

But I do.

Because in this filth and fire, I’m still breathing.
The room tilts sideways, like I’m drowning in slow motion.
Natalie’s gone quiet, her breathing ragged, matching the pulse pounding in my skull.
The phone slips from my hand — a thin lifeline cut loose.
The walls close in, soaked with cigarette smoke and stale sweat.
I want to scrub it all off, but there’s no water here. No mercy.

Outside, sirens wail somewhere far off, a lullaby for ghosts and lost boys.
I press my forehead against the cracked window, tracing the faded graffiti carved into the glass — a crown, a dagger, a pair of eyes watching.
I taste the river on my tongue, muddy and cold, like a memory I can’t quite hold.

My teeth ache — or maybe it’s just the hunger gnawing beneath my ribs.
I’m hollowed out and full all at once.

A sudden cough rips through me, shaking loose a laugh that tastes like ash.
Feathers in my hair catch the light like broken promises.

“Levi,” a voice whispers through the haze.
Not Natalie.
Not the room.
The Morning Star.

“Keep moving.”

I close my eyes.
Step into the dark.
And let the Trail of Tears swallow me whole.
The air shatters — glass exploding in a thousand shards, raining down like blood on concrete.
A car horn screams, jagged and unforgiving.

I’m falling, falling — teeth gnashing in the void, skin scraping raw against gravel and broken dreams.
My lungs burn with cold fire, every ragged breath a countdown.

Natalie’s voice cuts through the chaos — sharp, desperate.
“Hold on, Levi! Hold the fuck on!”

But the world tilts too fast, too far.
The last thing I see is the twisted metal, the flicker of headlights like hell’s own fireflies, and the ring — glowing cold and hungry on my finger.

Then nothing but black.