4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
The Second Body
The first body was Brody. Gladys found him four years ago—same stillness, same horrible silence, same blood pooling where it shouldn't. She thought that was a wound she'd survived. She was wrong. Wounds like that don't heal. They just wait. And when she rounds the back of the delivery truck in Luke's driveway, Brody's face slams into her memory like a fist. Her knees give out before her mind does. The wine bottle follows.
The truck in the driveway isn't right. Gladys noticed before she even stopped the car—different make, cleaner, the logo unfamiliar. But it's the silence that truly alarms her. No dogs barking. No Duke and Henri tumbling out with wagging tails and yipping excitement. Just stillness, and a front door hanging ajar like a question she doesn't want answered.
She answers it anyway.
Blood. So much blood. A young man sprawled in the truck bed, pale and waxen and still. And suddenly Gladys isn't standing in Luke's driveway anymore—she's four years in the past, staring at Brody's body, the same position, the same silence, the same copper stench filling her lungs until she can't breathe.
She vomits in the grass. She reaches for the shiraz. She drinks straight from the bottle because some wounds don't close, they just scab over, and today ripped the scab clean off.
His name is Joel. He's Jamie's son.
The wine bottle slips from her fingers. Glass shatters. Red spreads across concrete, indistinguishable from what's already pooled in the truck.
The dogs are gone. Jamie's son is dead. And the wine can't dull any of it.
