The air smelled like saltwater.

Waves crashed into the reef and stretched over miles of sand that glistened under a setting sun. 

Dante stared out toward the horizon with the misty wind dancing around him, and he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to stay and enjoy this feeling until dawn.

Behind him, there were footsteps—heels clicking against the wooden pier and the sudden smell of jasmine following an embrace around his waist. Dante felt a kiss on his neck and smiled. He turned, accepting the culprit into his arms as his hands found the soft, shimmering flesh of her thighs. 

Dante brushed away a few loose curls decored with pearls and looked down at the faceless woman in his arms. 

She slid her hands up his chest, and he rolled his thumbs over the small bump of her stomach while trying to recall the color of her eyes. 

Then, he heard something, an excited burst of gibberish Dante thought sounded similar to his name, and he glanced up just as Nore ran into him. She latched onto his arm and pointed to the end of the pier where everyone else waited. There, he saw Faron and other faceless men sitting on their motorcycles. 

One man shouted at them, the only one with an unblurred smile.

“Be not afraid.”

An unseen force struck Dante in the chest, and he gasped. 

His eyes opened to a dark void dripping with rain and the cold tile below. Not a single muscle in Dante’s body responded to the anxiety thrumming through his temples or the pain in his clenched jaw, and above him, a group of shadows appeared looking down at him. 

Dante’s chest heaved to heavy, painful gasps of air clawing through his lungs, and he watched those towering, white-eyed figures speak in tongues and laugh as they descended onto his body. Their nails raked through the flesh of his face, which slid away like silk, coming off in globs dripping wet heat. 

He screamed, but his voice went unheard. Everything muted beneath shrill giggling that melted into deep, distorted bellowing. 

Then, Dante woke with a gasp, seeing several people standing over him and talking.

He blinked again, and those figures had become the skinless faces of animals stretched out in agony against a blood-red sky. Their throats were cut to shreds, and needles pinned their eyes open. Dante smelled burning flesh and tried to tune out their cries by covering his ears as he stirred against the ground. 

Stop! FUCKING STOP.

“You okay, man?”

Hands grabbed him. Touched him. 

They held him tight and tried to move him. 

Dante panicked.

“Get the fuck off me!” He sat up with a scream, a roar, or holler. A noise that exhaled torrents of rage and fear as he swung at the faceless men and mutilated animals trying to touch him.

“Ay, chill, bro! Chill!”

A voice called out to him, and Dante frantically looked around at the group of teens watching him from all directions. 

The world coiled around him, suffocating with anxiety and memories of walls, steel, and men. Sweat ran down his forehead, and pain struck his neck, the unbearable feeling of fangs sinking into his neck and removing his skin in a slow, single tear. 

Dante felt for a wound.

Nothing.

No. That wasn’t right.

Dante saw it. He felt it—something ripping him apart while he stared up at the sky and watched the moon bleed.

“Hey, you okay?” One of the kids asked.

“Get…the fuck away from me,” Dante breathed into his hands, running them over his face in a moment of delirium. 

“Man, fuck this dude. Let’s go,” Another teen said with a tsk, and the rest agreed. 

Dante listened to them leave, shoes and skateboards scraping against the road that eventually faded into the night. 

What in the fuck?

The voice in his head sounded strange, like they weren’t really his but someone pretending to be him.

What in the fuck was that? 

Something attacked me—ate me. 

A trembling hand cupped the dip of his neck where there was pain, not blood. And Dante sat on the ground, counting every heartbeat and breath in between as he tried to explain what the fuck happened.

But, right now, his head was throbbing. Pain spread through Dante’s temples to the veins connected to his eyes. His vision twitched in an off blur of static that made his eyelids ripple, and he shut everything in darkness. 

There were needles on his skin, tiny points piercing the surface just enough for him to feel each one.

And everything changed.

The city seemed closer—sounds and smell sharpening so that he could hear people in their apartments and smell the grease from dumpsters miles away. Murky, polluted colors blossomed into a vibrant hue of neon halos, and the darkness split into broken fragments of emotions he could swallow and savor like a shot of vodka. Dante suddenly remembered the last time he kissed a woman and the first time he fucked a man, then recalled the smell of rain after a decade and the taste of blood from his first fight.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, sucking in this montage of strange feelings before looking up at the sky where the moon had stopped bleeding. 

Dante blinked until the city stopped moving, and his head didn’t hurt as much. He stood up off the ground and felt for his belongings. Cigarettes. Wallet. Phone. His fingers touched something cold, and Dante pulled the Zippo lighter from his pocket. He stared at it for a moment, then glanced around. 

The alley was unfamiliar. 

He walked toward the street and stepped out onto the sidewalk lined with closed businesses, two of which he recognized. 

Thankfully.

A bus slowed to a stop at the corner, and an elderly man stepped off. He walked past Dante, who wrinkled his nose at the vivid stench of dog piss and chewing tobacco surrounding the man. 

His headache returned, and Dante continued walking, quicker this time while recalling what he remembered last: Nore’s club, the convenience store, cigarettes, the alley, then—

A flash of red and blue lights stopped Dante in his steps, and he looked up, seeing several police cars parked along the street in front of the convenience store. Officers stood outside talking. Two more cautiously walked into the alley where they’d find—a body. 

A fucking body. 

No, a half-eaten corpse. 

Dante stared at the police, then glanced down at the blood on his jacket and panicked.

He stumbled backward but caught himself on the wall and stayed close to the shadows as he hurried out of sight. His feet couldn’t find the right rhythm to run, so instead, Dante kept a brisk pace down the sidewalk.

The lights had long disappeared, but Dante continued to look back and search the streets for anyone that might be following him. 

He slowed to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. No one.

Fuck. Dante wiped his hands over his face. What in the fuck am I doing?

A dog barked at him from a balcony across the street. Its jaws dripped with saliva, triggering another wave of pain in his shoulder. Dante hissed under his breath and squeezed the healed area as he looked up at the mutt. 

Their eyes met in a long glance before the dog ceased its barking and bowed its head with a whine. It fled back into the apartment, leaving Dante staring at the building until something caught his attention. 

Footsteps.

Bare feet against the cold, wet asphalt.

Slow and unsteady with a childlike tenderness.

Dante turned to the alley behind him, where a form stepped out from the shadows of nightfall like a ray of moonlight.