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jolenes-doppelganger · 5 months ago

Note

Hi, I really enjoyed the way you write about Rose, so I was wondering if you could write a one shot about Rose The Hat/fem!reader where the reader is a member of the True Knot and can predict the future. As per the story of the book, part of the True Knot left Rose because they were afraid of Abra and the reader went away with them, however she saw a vision of Rose's death and came back just in time to save her :) sorry if my request is not clear, because I write with the help of a translator :)

[Hello lovelies! Super cute ideas! :) I definitely had fun with this one. I hope you don’t mind that I combined both of your asks to write this, I figured they were similar enough to do so.]

Doomsday

Rose the Hat x Fem! True Knot Reader

Summary: The tension between Rose the Hat and Reader leading up to the accident of the Overlook is both productive, and almost damning. Between the love triangle provoked by Rose’s dual pursuit of both Crow Daddy and R, Reader’s visions that produce a future Rose is too stubborn to acknowledge, and the fracturing of the True Knot following the failed capture of Abra, the world comes crashing down both metaphorically and literally as Rose is pulled back from the brink of death by Reader.

Warnings: Alludes to violence, description of gunshot wounds, dying via car crash, implied murder, more death. A metaphysical slap?Hurt/Comfort, hella angsty. Allusions to sex, but you don't get any. (Womp womp).

A/N: This is a re-imagining of the events of Doctor Sleep, what I would consider a healthy split between the book and the movie. It may be tempting to romanticize Rose as the victim here, (she’s evil and really, really, really deserves it), just don’t. The adapted 'Lodsam Hanti, Sabbatha Hanti' chant was translated with the help of this Reddit thread.

Word Count: 5.6k

Waking up in Snakebite Andi’s and Silent Sarey’s trailer felt… Wrong. Mostly because you’d been sleeping in Rose’s trailer for six months. Rose had been on the hunt for ‘the whale’ ever since she felt Abra looking in on her at the supermarket. She’d enlisted you to help. Sure, you could predict when it would rain, accidents, hell you’d predicted the 2017 Eagle Creek fire. The steam from that accident had been weak. Very few deaths. Not a proper ‘Big One’, as Rose called it, but there was something odd Rose had noticed. After taking a particularly good meal, as you’d had once or twice given how new you were to the Knot, you’d get these visions. Real proper visions. Rose had hunches, mostly. They were pretty accurate for hunches, but you, you got images. One trip into a casino, and the True Knot had walked out four hundred thousand richer, not like they needed the money. No, the Knot never needed anything, except steam.

“You gonna go back to the watchtower with Rose?” Andi yawned, in a bra and underwear.

As welcoming as Andi and Sarey were, they weren’t quiet hosts. Noise canceling headphones made little difference. You’d spent your night in interrupted sleep cycles, covering your head with a pillow as Sarey and Andi fucked like rabbits.

“I don’t think Rose wants me there today.” you answered.

“How come?” Andi asked.

Silent Sarey came up behind Andi, pressing her face into her lover’s neck. The two of them were adorable, the token queer couple in the troop of mostly straight men and women that made up the Knot. The twins were the next closest thing to queer. They didn’t really have gender identities, and they weren’t their own people. They kind of existed as facets of each other. Neither one had a gender or identity separate from the other, you supposed that might’ve made them nonbinary. The twins didn’t do labels aside from being ‘the twins’. That was their thing.

“Well…” you stammered, shaking your head to rid yourself of the extensive internal monologue, “She just doesn’t need me. You guys are going up to Frasier to get Abra today, and there’s nothing for me to do except stay with Rose.

Sarey gave a nod. She struggled to communicate with most people in the Knot, except Andi. She’d whisper away in the lisped speech pattern she had, snuggling closer to her younger lover. But the nod was nice. It was her way of saying, ‘I’m listening’.

“Alright, well, I should be getting ready, we’re heading out early.” Andi smiled.

You nodded, pulling on your shoes and exiting your trailer. You didn’t need to be a witness to the farewell sex the couple would inevitably have. Besides, the morning was too fresh to spend in a stuffy trailer.

“Hiya Dreamie.” Barry the Chunk hooted.

Dreamie. That was your name. It’s what everyone called you, and you didn’t mind it. Better than ‘loonie’ or ‘make-believer’. There were worse words, but it was early. No sense in ruminating on the bad.

“Hi Barry.” you smiled back.

The camp was waking up. And you needed some time away from the masses. There was a tingling in the back of your head, an incessant itch. It was the telltale sign of a vision, and a big one. You debated going up to the watchtower. Rose would get the cue, but you and Rose weren’t exactly on good terms right now. Crow wasn’t on good terms with you.

“Dreamie. Rose wants you.” Crow said, scruffy voice jarring you from your thoughts.

“Speak of the devil.” you mumbled to yourself. “Got it, thanks Crow.”

“It’s Crow Daddy to you, Dreamie.” he gave a smile, too white teeth throwing off the otherwise cleverly hidden sneer.

“Got it.” you gave a curt nod.

Then it was back into the lion’s den. You gave a knock on her trailer door before you came in. A noncommittal hum was the permission granted. One step into the trailer and it was clear Rose and Crow had been fucking. The trailer reeked.

“It’s nice outside, you should open a window.”

Rose stretched her arms, in a set of mens pajama pants and a sheer bra. Always with the bras, was she allergic to shirts or something?

“Got any dreams, Dreamie?” Rose smirked, not unkindly.

Like it or not, Rose was always in a good mood after a night of fucking. Always.

“I have an aura, actually.” you sighed.

“Of course you do.” Rose smirked. “I can feel it, the second you walked in. You get this smell to you.”

She stretched again, rotating and twisting her back until her entire spine cracked. It was a bit eerie, watching how far she could bend.

“Someone’s thoughts are loud this morning.” Rose teased.

You shrugged. She was unusually receptive this morning. Or just allergic to minding her own business. You said that one in your head a bit louder.

“Childish, really.” Rose rolled her eyes, stepping out of her bed and coming forward.

You shrugged, giving her an innocent look. Rose raised an eyebrow, and then she pounced. All six feet of her moved with the agility of a cat, snatching you for a deep hug.

“Hmm… You really do have that aura coming on… You always smell like sandalwood. It’s really strong.” Rose hummed.

“And you stink of sex.”

Rose gave a sharp laugh, pressing you tighter against her.

“You don’t like it? It’s my signature perfume.” Rose joked.

The thought was gag worthy. Mostly because the stench of sex was ninety percent Crow’s BO. God that man stunk sometimes.

“I’ll take a shower if you make me some coffee, hmm?” Rose smirked.

“Deal.”

Rose smiled, turning and walking towards the shower cubicle in her trailer. She was connected to a water pump currently, she could enjoy a long, extensive shower at the cost of virtually nothing. This campsite was Knot property, after all. With her behind the closed door, you had an opportunity to fumigate the room with fresh air. Every single window in the trailer was open. You stripped her bed, mostly because a night with Crow out meant a night with you in. And sleeping in sheets someone had fucked in? Not ideal, to say the least.

“Honeybunch, I forgot a towel, do you mind?” Rose called.

You paused what you were doing, going to grab her a towel. You made it about halfway to the door before the aura in your head got deafeningly loud. It was always awful, getting a particularly intense vision. First your ears would ring, really fucking loud. And then you’d get nauseous. All the saliva would dry up on your tongue, your hands would shake, and the world would go fuzzy. If you could compare it to something, you’d compare it to how a diabetic felt when their blood sugar dropped. This wasn’t a crisis of the body, though the body exhibited symptoms, it was a crisis of the psyche.

“Honeybunch? Hey, Dreamie, hello?”

You couldn’t focus on Rose. You were hunched in her kitchen, head in between your knees, breathing in and out really slow.

“Dreamie? Helloooo?”

The water turned off. Rose opened the bathroom door sticking her head out. She looked up, at where your eye level would be, and then right back down. Rose swore softly, grabbing a robe hanging outside of the bathroom door, pulling it on.

“It’s a bad one, huh?”

You nodded, it was all the response you could give.

“Well let me know when the symptoms…”

Her voice dulled. High pitched ringing, deafening. Your vision swam and all you could do was focus on your breath before images slammed into your skull.

Gunshots. That was what you heard. A forest clearing with railroad tracks. Teeny town? Yes. Teeny Town. Your hands were shaking, a gun in them. A gunshot through your head took you out. Immediately your perspective shifted, slamming into another person only to be killed milliseconds later. In between the pain of shifting perspectives and violently intense sensations of being shot over and over, there were shapes. People contorting, half-translucent, bodies disappearing into clouds of smoke. All of this was awful, but what was worse was the scene change.

Darkness, a calm drive on a quiet road, music playing over the quiet buzz of radio static.

The switch was so quick it gave you metaphysical whiplash, almost like your brain was rattling in its skull. A child’s voice with a man’s tamber. That’s what you would describe it as. Looking into the rearview, you made out the shape of a small girl with dark curls and deeply old-looking eyes. Too old for a child, like they were borrowed from a man’s broken stare. Your eyes were dark. A bearded face. Crow. It shook you to see through his eyes. The perspective of the world matched, almost like you were Crow. You couldn’t make out what the girl was saying, but you could make out the threat in them. That was before the car swerved, steering wheel slipping in your hands. This death, was drawn out. You could feel every bone in your neck and upper spine shatter as your head went right through the windshield. The realization that you were going to die, the horrible sense of anguish. And then you cycled. Once, twice, dust.

“.... okay….. How long… Seizures.. Gone…”

So many voices spoke. Your head ached, so did your body. It felt like someone had shoved you into a dryer on the highest tumble setting, you were so sore.

“...There she is! Dreamie, wake up.”

Colors blurred together, someone shoved something into your lips. A straw. You sipped, juice hitting your tongue, bleeding into the metallic taste there. It stung; somewhere on your tongue there was a cut.

“Jesus, Dreamie, you scared the living shit out of us.” Barry said.

Your body lurched. An image flashed, what you thought would be another lurch from a shotgun was entirely different. Barry burning up with fever. Red welts all over him, like that childhood illness your Mom had vaccinated you for. Pox?

“Hey, hey, easy.” someone whispered.

Rose looked down at you, her face contorted into an expression that would surely accelerate the aging of her smile lines.

“She’s never had one this bad… She was seizing for five minutes before she stopped. Then the last one you saw for yourself.” Rose told Walnut, the doctor of the Knot.

He nodded, taking off the blood pressure cuff and stethoscope he’d been using.

“Well, she’s stable now, it should be okay for the group to leave, we’re already delayed by-”

“NO!”

Rose jolted, gaze snapping downwards. She gave you a confused, angry look.

“What do you mean no? Jesus, send them off already. I can handle little Ms. Visions here.”

Your mouth was so dry, tongue bleeding and swollen. Grabbing for her wrist, you tried to get Rose to understand, to listen, at the very least.

“Shh, tell me in a minute.” Rose replied.

You squeezed more insistently. Rose pursed her lips, looking down at you with a warning look. You stayed silent. Even if the Knot left without you being able to warn Rose, she could always call them back. You stayed with Apron Annie while Rose dressed, slapping her topper on her head before slipping out of her trailer door.

“You sure gave her a scare, you know?” Annie smiled sweetly.

“I… I saw something bad.”

“I figured. You tell Rose first though. I wouldn’t know what to do with your visions.” Annie shook her head.

You curled into the older woman’s grasp. She’d been a runaway slave before the Knot. Crafty, quick, an avid reader. Nobody read more than Annie, simply because no one refused to be fooled like Annie.

“And your hair is a rat’s nest, lord have mercy.” Annie sighed.

She got up, getting some of your hair tools before setting down to the task of combing out and braiding your hair. It was comforting, the massaging of rosemary oil into your scalp relieved some of the ache in your head.

“Walnut said to keep drinking that juice. Your blood sugar dropped during the seizure. You’d best listen.”

You nodded weakly, sipping the juice without complaint. Annie’s accent was creeping back in, it always did when she was being stern with somebody.

“You jus’ rest here awhile.”

←→

It was safe to say Rose didn’t believe you. You’d sat down with her and explained the vision front to back, the men who’d done the shooting and Crow’s death via car crash.

“Rose, I know what I saw-”

“I. Don’t. Care.” Rose snapped. “We need this Abra girl, and the bitch child isn’t going to kill the team.”

Denial. Always with the fucking denial.

“Rose, please.” you tried to coax her.

“No, don’t ‘Rose’ me. Your blood sugar dropped, you had a seizure, and…”

Even Rose was having a hard time believing her own lie. She didn’t want to be wrong. Abra could fix all of the True Knot’s problems. Steam on demand? God, what a novelty. After Grandpa Flick had died, Rose had gone frantic. They’d lost three True in twenty years. Three. That was like losing three family members in two weeks and Crow was getting old. Last night had been an anomaly for them. A whole night of love making three weeks after they’d taken steam? God, that never happened. Rose was still aching from it, still sore from the intensity of it. How often could that be if they were taking steam every three months? Could Abra withstand every two? Every two months for ten, twenty years? They’d consistently age backwards. A secluded ranch, a house? Somewhere permanent? Rose needed that more than she cared to admit.

“Please call them back.” you pleaded.

Rose shook her head immediately.

“No. No, no, NO!” Rose snarled. ‘They’ll snatch the girl in Frazier, kill the family if necessary. It’ll take three hours tops. I can’t lose this chance just because you had a bad dream.” she snapped.

She watched your mouth bob. There was real fear in your eyes, real anger. It reminded her of a child fighting a tantrum. God, you really were young. Seven years in the Knot, snatched at seventeen, eighteen? A baby. You were a total baby to her, and so fragile. You were young enough and new enough to your gifts that Rose could take a chance on your dreams being wrong. It was plausible that your gifts had far more variability than just visions of the future. She wasn’t going to waste the best catch of her life because someone had anxiety.

“When they all die, it’s your fault.” you mumbled, getting off the floor of her trailer and practically running out of the door.

“Come off your soap box, Dreamie!” Rose growled.

You were gone. But someone else was waiting at her doorstep.

“Rose, Walnut called. The sickness that took Flick? Barry has it.” Annie anxiously whispered.

Rose’s breath caught in her chest. The sickness? Flick had died of old age, exasperated by heart conditions, not a sickness. But that was a lie too. For a week now, members of the Knot had been waking up with red spots on their bodies. Walnut had brushed it off as a skin condition from the bad showers, but privately he had told Rose a different story. The Knot was sick, they needed steam. Steam from a young, healthy, vaccinated child like Abra. Chicken pox was his diagnosis. And the True Knot weren’t healthy enough to withstand it.

←→

A night later, Walnut called. Barry was getting worse. He was starting to cycle. The group was scared and facing the possible passing of one of their own. There’d be no time to delay, they needed to work fast, leading Crow to split up and take a more direct approach to the girl’s residence. For the first time since the invention of the interstate, Rose told her people to speed.

“Rose, Dreamie is asking for you.” Annie interrupted her thoughts.

Rose turned, smiling up at her longtime friend. The smile fell off of her face, landing on the floor like a glass dish. Her stomach lurched. Annie had a spot on her neck, a big one too. Giving a tighter, less genuine smile, Rose slipped out of her trailer. Dreamie was curled up in a camp chair. She looked cozy, in blankets. Rose’s mind was elsewhere, she had every reason to prepare for a fight.

“If you’re here to tell me-”

“I’m not.” you cut her off, looking up at her gently.

Rose let out a breath and then nodded. She motioned you up, sat in the chair and opened her arms. You were a comforting weight in her grasp, and you smelled faintly of sandalwood. You’d have another vision soon, not that Rose cared. What was more pressing was the weight of your body on hers leaving her feeling soft, a bit vulnerable.

“Spend the night with me.” Rose whispered. “No strings attached.”

Rose needed it. She needed the intimacy of a night with someone young, inexperienced.

“What about Crow?” you whispered back, face twisted into an anxious look.

Rose sniffed, letting out an annoyed breath. She’d had enough of your anxiety for three decades. But they were so close to getting it all, and Rose wanted it all.

“Crow isn’t going to find out. One night, one.” she whispered, eyes glimmering with an unfamiliar softness.

God, what you wouldn’t give for one night. The teasing, the pet names, the sleep overs… And it wouldn’t be rough, judging from the look in her eyes.

“Okay.” you breathed out.

Rose smiled, kissing your temple. You both stood, her hand in yours, bare feet padding across the dirt of the campground. Her trailer smelled of incense which meant she’d been meditating extensively, probably astral projecting to ensure the troop headed to Abra was okay. There were a few candles lit, adding to the ambience.

“Come here.” Rose whispered, shutting her camper door.

Her arms found your waist, her mouth on your neck. She was so damn tall, and soft. Soft everywhere now that she was aging. You liked her soft, it was comforting.

“Lay down on the bed for me.” Rose whispered.

You complied, walking backwards, meeting her blue eyes. Your thighs hit the bed, and you scooted, backward, laying flat over her comforter. Her mouth was on yours, lips soft, tempting, and tongue flicking out to taste you throughout the kiss. After every kiss she’d give a soft hum, her fingers lazily slipping under your shirt to caress the skin underneath. Her fingers were soft, and she gave a sly grin, shifting her hips to straddle you further. Your arms tangled in her hair, enough to tempt her into removing the topper. She did, leaning further into the kiss. You would’ve thought someone like Rose wouldn’t like soft, wouldn’t find the moments of drawn out foreplay and intimacy worthwhile. You were wrong, so so wrong. Her mouth on your neck, her hands grasping you tight, bodies tangled like pretzels. This was right, this was the moment.

←→

An early morning call awoke Rose. It was from Walnut. She was on the phone for thirty seconds, and then her hands were wrapped around your waist. “Wake up, wake up!” Rose said, distressed. “Wha..”

Her hands were everywhere, lifting you up, throwing open the curtains to illuminate your body. She ran her hands over every inch, skimming every mark, every mole, every soft stretch mark. Rose didn’t relax until she was sure you didn’t have a single mark.

“Oh, thank god.” Rose almost wept with relief, clutching you tight.

“Rose, what’s happened?” you asked, now wide awake and worried.

“The Knot has chickenpox. It killed Barry.”

Your body tensed. You’d never told Rose about the vision you’d had of Barry. “Chickenpox? Chickenpox can’t kill-”

“It doesn’t kill rubes. We aren’t rubes, Dreamie.” Rose growled out. “And if we don’t find a cure it’ll kill all of us.”

All of us?

“Rose, I was vaccinated as a kid.”

Her expression tensed, and then relaxed. But then she frowned, a furious expression on her face.

“That’s because you’re young. Spoiled by modern medicine.” she spit.

You reached up, cupping her face. Rose was lashing out because she was scared, and upset. One of the Knot had died. Her family had died. You leaned forward, kissing her forehead. Rose didn’t cry, but she reached forward, cradling you tight.

“Thank god you’re vaccinated.” she whimpered.

←→

The Knot didn’t take Barry’s death well. There was a bit of hysteria, hysteria Rose struggled to calm. She leaned on you more and more, spending her nights tangled up with you in her sheets, an escape from her stress, from the hunger that was starting to claw at everyone’s throats. She had gray hairs again. Her crow’s feet were pronounced, skin starting to go scaly from sun damage. You didn’t love her any less, taking time to appreciate every bit of her changing body in between the bursts of passion. You aged too, turning from 17 to 21, almost 22. It wasn’t much of a difference, you were already quite young for a Knot member. But the hunger was awful.

“My joints ache, I’m going to take a shower.” Rose sighed, rolling out of bed.

She leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to your sleepy face. You smiled, watching her pull on sweats and a shirt before grabbing some things. She meant the camp showers. They had a bit more space than her RV stall, you couldn’t blame her. The heat was more consistent too. You went back into a blissful sleep. It was broken fifteen minutes later when you heard a scream.

Half dressed in a pair of panties and an oversized shirt, you were running out of Rose’s trailer, bolting through the campsite in the direction of the scream. It was Rose, crumpled in Annie’s arms in front of the shower, sobbing in confusion and anger. Her towel was sagging.

“Rose, Rose.” you whispered, kneeling down and helping to cover her.

Her hands landed on your shoulders. An image burning forward. Gunshots, cycling, a smoke filled campsite.

“They’re dead. Everyone is fucking dead.” she sobbed.

You’d made it to the steps of her trailer before she collapsed against the steps, wailing like the dying.

“Crow!”

An image flashed through your mind, fear and pain as the vertebrae of your neck compressed, body flying through the windshield. Everyone had died, just as you’d predicted. Rose hadn’t listened.

←→

“That the last of it?” Annie asked, out of breath.

“Yeah, just two boxes.”

You were busy packing your things into Annie’s and Diesel Doug’s truck. In the days following the death of eight of the most prominent True Knot members, chaos had erupted. People packing their bags, convinced death was on their doorstep. The chickenpox was taking someone every other day now. Everyone was running, everyone was fleeing. You were leaving for a different reason, more personal. Rose had lashed out at you, blaming the entire loss of the crew on you. Rose insisted that if she had known that the visions were serious she would’ve called back the team. Your visions were serious, she just hadn’t listened. More fighting, more name calling, more discord.

“I’m sorry Rose treated you that way.” Doug sighed, shifting the car in gear. “We’re all grieving, but treating you that way was a shitty thing to do.”

You nodded once, sneaking a glance in the rearview. Rose stood in front of her trailer, arms crossed, top hat balanced on her head. You could feel her thousand yard stare from here.

“You’re gonna die out there, Dreamie.” you heard a voice crawl through your ear, invasive and almost wet feeling.

“Well at least I won’t die alone.”

A phantom sensation cracked through the bones of your face, like you’d been slapped. You let out a choked cough, catching Annie’s attention.

“I’m fine, choked on my own spit.” you mumbled.

“Bitch.”

You didn’t get a response. You figured she was saving the last laugh for later.

The drive into the Montana mountains was rough. Snow was starting to fall.

“You had to take the Denver route?” Annie groaned.

“Who the fuck goes through the rockies at this time of year? It would take days!” Doug growled.

They were both irritable, both covered in red spots. You were in denial this time. If they died you really would be alone. Maybe that was Rose’s last laugh. The three of you settled into the hotel, Doug and Annie in a king bed, you in a twin pullout. Everything was quiet. Too quiet. You couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was going to happen, and you sure as hell couldn’t sleep. An overcoat on, boots crunching through the gravel, you set out to explore the area around the hotel.

You felt a bit dizzy, probably from the altitude. Sitting on a boulder for a bit didn’t help, deep breaths of cool mountain air just made you feel sicker. Your ears began to ring, and that’s when it all added up. You were ready to brace yourself when-

“My, my. What a temper you have.”

You were speaking through Rose, a man’s flushed, pained face underneath her as Rose batted away his arms like he was nothing but an overgrown toddler.

“So much fire. Such a waste.”

You could feel Rose’s anger, her hatred for this man. You recognized him, he’d shot a few of the True Knot at the Teeny Town campsite. And his stare was so familiar.

“Or maybe not.”

It was horrific, this vision. You could feel everything Rose was doing, her sighs of delight as she ate the man’s steam, her thumb in his thigh. Rose was cruel, but this cruelty made your stomach churn in knots.

“Oh, you’re not alone in there.” Rose breathlessly gasped. “What are you hiding? What’s in those?! Something special, huh?!”

That disgusting, inescapable feeling of dread clawed through you. It was impossible to speak in visions, but you wanted to. You wanted to scream. You could see the boxes as she saw them, alive and vibrating. They were full of darkness, and in Rose’s haste she wasn’t inspecting the aura, she was ravenous for food, for blood.

“They’re not special. They’re starving.”

The vision was a blur from there. Horror, fear, pain as Rose was eaten alive. You awoke on the ground of the hotel reception room, gasping for air and shaking.

“She has these seizures, poor dear.” Annie was tiredly explaining to the frightened hotel receptionist.

You didn’t let them give you juice. You didn’t let them feed you. There wasn’t time.

“I need the car.” you gasped to Diesel Doug. “Stay here.”

←→

The drive up into the mountains of Colorado was awful. You’d been taught to drive in the snow three years earlier by Jimmy Numbers, but this was something else. You’d loaded up Diesel’s trusty all wheel drive truck up with gas at the final station, filling up both tanks with diesel. You were driving up the mountains at night, hands glued to the wheel. Rose would be proud of you, pinpointing the location of the vision through memory alone. But this wasn’t about being proud.

The lights of the Overlook were on. You didn’t have time. Rose’s trailer was parked outside, you didn’t have time! You turned off the car, leaving the keys in the ignition, doors unlocked. It was so cold up here, one of the doors was frozen shut. You didn’t have time to break through the door, so you made the next best decision, breaking through a window with an axe. It was boarded up but the wood had rotted, giving you enough bend to punch through the wood with the butt of the axe. There were voices, not from people. The same darkness of the man’s boxes lingered here, and the whispers added more adrenaline to your movements. The hallways were mazes. It felt like this stupid hotel was trying to confuse you, to trap you here. It wanted blood, it knew you were hindering its meal.

“... I seem to have nicked your femoral artery. Gonna bleed to death, huh?”

You knew that voice. Well. A kid darted by you. Jet black hair, dark skin. Abra.

“You’re…” she stammered, backing away.

“I’m not here for you. Go.” you snapped at the little girl.

You turned, following the direction she’d come from. A large hall came into view, stairs descending downwards. Rose was crouched over the man, voice echoing. You attempted to step down the stairs, but there was some kind of force keeping you there, confusing you. Why did you even want to go down there in the first place? No, you were here for the little girl, weren’t you? Because you’re hungry. The woman at the bottom of the stairs is hungry too. You can’t let her catch the girl before you do, you’ll go hungry.

There was something you were forgetting. You looked down at the woman below you, confused. She was gasping in pleasure, feasting. You were so hungry too. You saw where the little girl had gone too. You knew where she was. No. No, the woman was important. You could feel it, an unmistakable, annoying little scratch in your brain. You were close to remembering something, almost like you were trying to remember a dream.

Dream! No. No. Dreaming? Day dreaming? Dream… Dreammmmmm…….

Dreamie. Rose, the vision, the hotel. The tricks of the hallways, the bad aura. It all connected in your brain.

“.... Not special. They’re starvi-”

“NO!”

In your haste to get to Rose, you have walked, half slid down the stairs. There were about ten figures between you and Rose. All reaching all starving, all grabbing, all-

“The girl is in the maze.” you gasped. “She has more steam than all of us combined.”

The figures jerked, each turning to look at you with a peculiar, inhuman hunger. If the Knot were vampires, these were phantoms. Demons of the night, more deadly, more encompassing. The kind of dead that don’t stay dead.

“The maze. A girl named Abra.” I gasped.

They pushed forward at once, nearly stampeding you in their haste to eat. The man was heaving, reaching for the ax. You kicked him in the ribs, hard. Rose lay on the ground, crumpling in on herself, red dots crawling up her arms in accelerated fashion. The dead had taken much of her steam.

“Rose, Rosie.” you gasped, reaching for her.

She looked skeletal. It was the kind of skeletal that a True Knot took on before they started cycling.

“Steam.” she weakly pointed to the man.

And you both were starving.

��→

Rose sat in a camp chair outside, feet propped up. She was soft looking, back to the usual look she got in between feedings.

“Mmm…” she hummed, twitching slightly.

“Crook in your neck?” you asked.

“More like an itch.”

She looked up, holding her arms out.

“Let me see my beautiful girl, hmm?”

You smiled, curling in her lap. Tilting her head back, she exposed her jaw. You took the bait, nibbling softly as she sighed in contentment.

“I’m itching to open a canister.” Rose smirked. “Get nice and full, spend the night in the sand…”

She was getting old again. And the spots were coming back.

“Rose, can we try the siphoning method?”

She rolled her eyes.

“The pox spots only show up when I haven’t eaten. They go away once I’m full.”

You leaned in, nuzzling your nose against hers.

“It can’t hurt to try.”

Rose sighed, and then nodded. You both arose, walking into her trailer. She took out one of the canisters. You’d filled it with the spirit of the Overlook twins after they’d fed from Abra. It was easy enough, coaxing out the spirits. They’d gorged themselves on the little girl, ripped her to shreds, practically. Open up a canister that had a tiny bit of steam, and they’d pounce, only to be sucked inside with the vapors of steam. That’s all these spirits were, after all. Steam with a bit of bite. They tasted good, too.

“Alright, do you want to do the ritual?” Rose asked.

“You’re Irish is better than mine.” you smiled softly.

She nodded, holding your hands in hers.

“Meabhair, suaite, gortú” We are the chosen ones.

“Wounder rúnda, gortú” We are the fortunate ones

“I ngach slí gortaithe” We are the True Knot and we endure. What is tied can never be untied.

You took deep breaths of the steam in, filling your lungs with the haunted essence of the twin girls. Once the entire can was bubbling in your body, you reached forward, breathing the steam that had now become your essence into Rose’s awaiting mouth. In theory, you were breathing your own essence down her throat. Your vaccinated essence.

Her lips found yours once you were done, her hands tangled in your hair as she kissed you hard. She tasted like the blackberry mojitos you’d made an hour ago, tongue rolling over yours.

“I love being alive with you.” Rose moaned, half pulling, half dragging you out of the trailer. She was young again, twenty seven, shimmering and panting with desire.

“Rose!” you giggled.

Her hands ran under your skirt, grabbing your thighs mischievously.

“It is broad daylight.” you snickered.

“And I don’t see anyone around, do you?”

She took an inhale of your hair, catching a whiff of an aura hanging over your head.

“Dreamie, no seizures.” Rose playfully warned.

“Shh. It could be a Big One.” you winked.

It was a new year’s celebration, anyway. A new year, a new decade. Twenty-twenty. Something about those numbers screamed food, or more so, misery. But for the True Knot, misery was food, death and destruction was food.

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