Dead Flesh Read Free

usually this intense - but whenever I
got upset - angry or frightened, the sounds around me became louder
- oh yeah - loud wasn’t the word. Sometimes I felt like stuffing my
fingers into my ears and screaming. There had always been a soundtrack , as I had called it, since the
age of six - a faint background noise, like someone whispering at
me from behind a wall. But sometimes it intensified and was worse
than deafening. And it was like that today and had been since I’d
come back from The Hollows - the dead.
    Listening to
music helped and I was forever swiping Kiera’s iPod - the music
helped to drown out the soundtrack. But
Kiera had it now - she was listening to it in the bath. I could
hear the music hissing from beneath my pillow. I had my own but it
was busted. Dropped it throwing a hissy-fit at my mum and cracked
the screen - the thing was screwed after that.
    And I knew it
was because of my mother, my father and…I didn’t want to think of
the other one’s name, that the soundtrack had been cranked up to
full. Since being back from The Hollows, I’d had time to think -
reflect about everything that had happened there. I’d wanted to
come back here, it had been my idea, it was my home. But to walk
the quiet corridors and passageways, to sit alone in the vast
kitchen, and walk the grounds had made me think of the ones I had
loved and lost…because of him .
    I was angry -
no - I was fucking raging inside. Even though I was dead I could
still feel things – pain. I still hurt. But even though he
humiliated me, cut my ears off and then murdered me, I knew that I
was angrier at myself than him. How had I been so dumb? Why had I
been so flattered by the words that he had whispered? And I knew
the answer to those questions - I had been desperate. I had been
desperate for the red stuff that he had supplied me. But even more
desperate to be loved. I had lost my mother and father but I had
found a brother - Isidor. Why hadn’t I turned to him? Even when he
tried to warn me, I didn’t listen. For someone who can sometimes
hear too much - I had failed to hear my brother’s warnings and
that’s why I was freaking angry with myself.
    But hey, Kayla,
you’re alive, girl - you came back from the dead - you got another
shot. But not really. I’m still dead, right? The Elders told me I
was a Dark Angel - a dead angel more like.
And what exactly was a dark angel? What was I brought back for? To
help protect Kiera, they had told me. Protect her from what? I
mean, Kiera didn’t need looking after - I’d seen her kick more
Vampyrus butt than I cared to remember; she looked after Kiera and
I wished that I could be more like her. Kiera was my protector -
she was my friend, my sister.
    Maybe Kiera
didn’t need that kind of protection - the fang-ripping and clawing,
tearing kind. Maybe she just needed a friend? Someone to be there
for her - to be there for each other. Like I said, I knew she was
troubled by something - the walls of her room were covered from
floor to ceiling in those newspaper cuttings. It was like she was
looking for something. I knew she didn’t know what, exactly, but I
knew that she would see it eventually.
    The soundtrack had started to fade a little,
so pulling the pillow from over my head, I climbed from my bed and
padded across my bedroom to the large bay windows leading to the
balcony. I pulled back the curtains a fraction and peered outside.
The day looked miserable again and I had forgotten how bleak this
place could be in the winter…spring…oh, who was I trying to kid?
The place was freaking bleak all year round.
    From my window,
I spied Isidor coming back through the woods carrying an armful of
branches. His dark hair was swept off his brow and his Shaggy-Doo
beard jutted from his chin. He hated it when I called it that.
That’s what Potter called it and was always taking the piss. And
that was another thing - being dead hadn’t stopped those two from
bitching at one another. They were