The Dragon's Girl

Home Sweet Hell

***Dru's POV***

Louise’s Silverado reeks of gasoline and cigarettes—that chemical menthol clawing at my throat like she’s trying to fumigate my lungs—but all I could smell was Dragon’s spearmint. Phantom and persistent, it clung to my collar where he’d gripped me— hands steady as a heartbeat while Hank’s rifle trembled. His touch didn’t bruise. Never does. Just presses like he’s trying to hold my pieces together.

I read somewhere that mint’s a survivor’s herb. Grows wild in ditches, thrives on neglect. Guess that’s why it clings to me now, sharp and green beneath the rot. The spearmint sharpened, cool and green, and my pulse thrummed like it had when he’d leaned in, his breath a whisper of wild mint and rebellion: “Princesa, respira (Princess, breathe.)”

My wrist throbbed where Louise had dragged me into the truck, the skin still raw under his bandage. A kindness, flayed away. Louise hummed along to the static-riddled gospel station, her fingers drumming the wheel like she hadn’t just flicked her lighter into the gasoline pooling beneath Dragon’s throat. Louise hums along to the gospel static, her wedding band biting into Hank’s switch marks on my knee.

“Ti bêl fi (Sweet girl),” she croons. Same words she hissed when she locked me in the cellar for stealing bread. Sweetness curdles faster than milk in August. “You should’ve known better than to trust a boy who burns.”

“That foster boy—the one who sneaked you Snickers—smelled like mint too," Louise purrs, her voice syrup-thick. "Wonder where they buried him after the gators got his legs?” Her laugh grates like a match strike. I don’t flinch. Don’t let her see me tally the days: *603. 602. 601.*

The world fractures into streaks of pine bark and pavement. If I squint, it almost feels like riding Dragon’s bike—wind stealing my breath instead of fear. Dragon’s eyes still haunted the glass, black coals smoldering in the gasoline haze where Louise’s lighter had arced. 'Burn them all', I’d prayed. But the flames only danced in his irises, never catching.

Last time Louise drove this wild, Hank’s whiskey bottle shattered in the footwell. I still find glass slivers in my sneakers, tiny reminders that home is just another word for wounds left untended.

Kudzu choked the pines into submission as Louise took the neighborhood curves like she was auditioning for a demolition derby. Tires screeched as she veered onto our street, clipping a curb hard enough to slam my temple against the window. Mailboxes rattled in her wake, their metal mouths gaping. A stray cat darted from under the wheels, its yowl swallowed by the engine’s roar. I braced against the dash, the seatbelt locking as she fishtailed into the driveway—gravel spraying, pine sap smearing the windshield like claw marks.

The Silverado hadn’t fully stopped when Louise was already out, her door slamming hard enough to rock the chassis. “Antre! (“Inside!”) Her voice was syrup and shrapnel as she wrenched open my door, her menthol scream sharpening in the humid air.

Before I could register the gravel underfoot, her nails sank into my bandaged wrist. “Now!” She dragged me toward the porch, my sneakers skidding on crushed shells—the same ones that had shredded my palms at the BP station. Her words blurred into static, muffled as if she were shouting through a wall of swamp water. Robotic. Automatic.

A crow pecked at Louise’s azalea bush, its feathers gleaming oil-slick black. It c***s its head, one red eye glowing like the BP station sign. It drops a card—King of Spades, edges nibbled by rats. Hank’s favorite. Coincidence? The Bayou doesn’t believe in those. Some religions believe that crows carry debts. This one’s staring at me like I owe interest.

Louise hauled me through the front door, oblivious to the crow, her grip vise-tight. The living room stank of mildew and old bourbon, the air syrupy with decay. Overhead, the bulb flickered like the Greyhound sign’s dying gasp. *Birmingham: DEPARTED.* My legs moved, but I was floating outside myself, watching the girl with scraped knees and hollow eyes stumble past the rusted stove, its burners cold as Louise’s laugh.

“Don’t stall!” She shoved me toward the basement door, its hinges still bent from when I’d tried to barricade it at 13.

“No,” I whispered, the word dissolving before it left my tongue.

The door groaned open, exhaling the basement’s damp rot—mothballs, and the sweet-iron stench of old blood. Louise’s “workshop” loomed in the corner: a rusted tool bench cluttered with pliers, sandpaper, and coils of braided leather.

The whip hung like a crucifixion relic, a handle carved from Hank’s old baseball bat and its tails studded with nails she’d blessed in vinegar and vitriol to ‘keep ‘em septic.’ ”For your attitude adjustments”, she’d crooned last year, testing it on a stray dog. It hadn’t stopped screaming until sundown. The leather’s smoother where Hank gripped it. Funny how pain polishes things.

“Don’t look at me like a dead thing!” She dragged me down the stairs. Mold spores prickle my lungs as the rotten boards creaked like a death toll.

The bulb buzzed to life, exposing cinder block walls tattooed with my childhood claw marks. The chains above Louise’s whip swayed, though no breeze touched the basement. Rusted chains dangled like forgotten puppets. A single crow feather drifted down, its tip stained bourbon-brown.

“Choose your stance.” She pushed me into the support beam, its wood stained with decades of sweat. My fingers brushed a gouge I’d clawed at age nine, the day she’d locked me down here for “mouthing off.”

I braced, fingers digging into a gouge I’d carved at nine. *603 days left. 602.*

*Will I bleed through my hoodie before homeroom?*

*Will Ms. Rodriguez’s desk sit empty, her card still lodged in the gymnasium gravel?*

*Will Dragon’s eyes scan the parking lot for a girl who smells like spearmint and survival?*

“You knew this was coming.” Louise’s wedding ring glinted as she flexed her grip. “That biker boy’s got scars?” Louise snarls, the whip hissing free. “I’ll give you matching ones. Right here—” The lash splits my shoulder. Dragon’s scar is a badge. Mine’s a brand. Louise always knew how to claim what wasn’t hers.

I choked on a scream, mortar dust grinding under my nails as Louise circled. “Hank spoiled you.” The whip kissed my ribs, same spot Dragon’s scar cut across his hip. “Made you think you’re better than us.”

The crescent moon scar on my wrist itched fiercely with every rise of the whip, as if something pulled beneath my skin. A voodoo woman once called it a “moon kiss”—said I was born during an eclipse, meant to walk between worlds. Louise called it a devil’s hoofprint. Both were right.

I crumpled against the beam, hands clawing the gouged wood, but my mind fled—back to Dragon’s crowbar sparking against asphalt, back to spearmint and gun oil clinging to his jacket, back to the rumble of a bike that almost carried me somewhere else.

As pain began to blur the edges of my vision, a low hum echoed through the basement vents—low, rasping, and wrong, like a record played backward. A creole lullaby (“Fais do-do”) tuned to the mournful howling of a coyote. Louise didn’t hear it.

*Burn them all.*

The pain split me in two. One half stayed chained to the beam; the other stood in a swamp clearing, moonlight dappling the murk. The crescent on my wrist pulsed—a brand carved in another life.

Three paths branched ahead:

1. Kudzu-Choked: Dragon’s bike idled in the shadows, spearmint cutting through the rot.

2. Bone-Paved: Crow skeletons crackled underfoot, their hollow eyes fixed on a distant neon cross.

3. Ashen: A figure waited at its end, Stetson tilted, cigarillo glowing.

“Choose, piti fi.” A voice oozed from the trees, sweet as poisoned honey. “Left, right, or…” His cane—a femur polished to ivory—tapped the ashen path. “The fun way.”

The figure tips his Stetson, cigarillo smoke curling into skulls. “Choose, piti fi.” His voice drips like—honey laced with kerosene. The ashen path reeks of his sweet scented smoke and lies. But the kudzu… Dragon’s bike idles there, spearmint cutting through decay.

I reached for the bike.

The figure laughed, sound rotting the kudzu to sludge. “Smart girl. But that path’s got a toll.” His glove brushes my crescent scar, ice searing bone. “You’ll pay it in teeth.”

Louise’s whip yanked me back. The vision shattered, but his promise lingered, etched into the basement’s mold like a grave marker.

******

***Anonymous POV***

The safehouse reeked of stale pizza and burnt circuit boards. This safehouse reeks of stale pizza and the acrid stink of my own fear. Three months squatting here, watching that shitbox across the street—peeling pink shutters, sagging roof, a porch swing that creaks like a coffin hinge.

Boss said it’d be easy: *“Watch. Report. Don’t get seen.”* But the Bayou doesn’t play by rules, and neither does whatever’s in that house.

I adjust the parabolic mic, its crosshairs trained on Louise’s kitchen window. My fingers still smell like the last prospect who worked this job—copper and gun oil. They found him in the Atchafalaya with his eyes gouged out and his ears stuffed with swamp lilies.

Boss said it was a warning. I say it’s a resume requirement.

The monitors flicker, casting sickly green light over my rigged setup. Neighbor’s Nest feed shows Hank lumbering out at dawn, “World’s Best Mom” mug in hand. Hypocrite. Last week, I watched him backhand some old drunken fluzy so hard her dentures skittered across the driveway. I didn’t report it.

Boss doesn’t pay me to care. He said to watch it, so I watched.

Installed cameras in the oak tree out front, hacked the neighbor’s Wi-Fi to piggyback their Nest feed, even rigged a parabolic mic on the roof. Still. Nada. Unless you counted the parade of sketchy visitors: Hank lumbering out every dawn with Louise’s “World’s Best Mom” mug, cops with their hats tipped low, and city officials in cheap suits reeking of bourbon and bribes.

My report was due in two hours. So far, all I had was:

7:03 AM – Subject exits house wearing “Jesus is My Life Coach” pajamas.

7:07 AM – Subject screams at azalea bush.

7:12 AM – Hank exits, chugging from mug (Note: Mug reads “World’s Best Mom,” irony level: lethal).

7:42 PM – Deputy Ray Dawkins sneaks out the back door, adjusting his belt.

Boss’s last warning hissed in my ear: “You’ll know when you see it. And if you miss it, I’ll melt your servers into scrap.”

Tires screech—a sound like nails on God’s chalkboard. I lunge for the binoculars, whiskey sloshing over my keyboard. The same gray Chevy Silverado—rust gnawing its wheel wells, bumper dangling by a zip tie—careened around the corner, its suspension groaning as it rode two wheels.

*Jesus, Louise, ever heard of brakes? How’s that landboat not flipping?*

The Silverado fishtails, gravel spraying like shrapnel. The driver-side door flew open before the truck fully stopped. Louise erupts from the driver’s seat, a honey-baked hurricane in a neon flowered muumuu, waddling faster than a meth-headed roach. But it’s the girl she drags out that freezes my blood—stringy hair, blue eyes too old for her face, hoodie swallowing her whole.

My gut clenched. *Where’ve I seen that face?*

“s**t, s**t, s**t—” I toggled the mic’s gain.

Zoom in. Right wrist. *There.*

The crescent scar glows faintly, just like in Boss’s photo. My gut twists. “Alive,” he’d growled, slamming that grainy pic on his desk. “Not a scratch.” But this kid’s already etched with stories. That scar’s pulsing, a lazy rhythm that doesn’t match her heartbeat.

Louise hauled the girl toward the house, screaming loud enough to peak my audio: “I’m not done with you!” The girl moved like a marionette with cut strings.

“Boss’ll skin me if I wait.” I stabbed the burner phone’s speed dial.

One ring. “Report.”

“It’s the girl. The one from the photo. Louise just dragged her inside—looked like a damn UFC takedown. Orders?”

“Ghostrider. Her status?”

I toggle the feed. Her signature flares orange-red, but in the corner… a blotch with wings. Crimson. Wrong. And behind it—

“Thermal’s glitching. There’s… something else here.”

Silence. Then, low and lethal, “Stay sharp. And Ghostrider… keep that thermal cam on the basement.”

I squinted at the monitor. Behind the red blotch… a shape like a man in a hat, cold as a tombstone.

The thermal feed warps. A shape solidifies—Stetson, cigarillo, grin wider than a gator’s. My pulse jackhammers.

“No. Nononono—”

He winked—a spark flaring where his eye should’ve been cold. The figure’s gloved hand rose, a cigarillo glowing sudden and bright in the thermal feed—impossible, since the rest of him read arctic blue. He took a drag, the ember flaring crimson, and exhaled smoke that coiled into skeletal shapes.

The crow on his shoulder hopped to my desk, its thermal imprint morphing into a woman’s face I’d seen in old faded Polaroids hanging in the boss's office .

“Evenin’, snoop,” the Baron’s voice crackled through my headphones—a frequency that shouldn’t exist. “Tell your boss his mama says hello.”

My chair slammed backward as if shoved, and the feed died. I choke. Boss’s mama died in ’09.

My coffee went cold. He shouldn’t know I’m here. He shouldn’t know anything. As the air around me filled with a spearmint aroma, the screen fizzed to static, but not before I caught the crow’s wing dipping—a mocking salute.

My headphones crackled with a hummed creole lullaby (“Fais do-do”) during the silent footage.

The safehouse lights flickered. Shadows dripped down the walls like tar, congealing into a top hat on my desk. A moth-eaten rose lay tucked into its band, petals crumbling to ash when I reached for it.

My monitors rebooted, each screen flooding with static—except one. The basement feed now showed the girl, her heat signature blazing white-hot, and behind her… a skeletal hand resting on her shoulder. The hand drummed a rhythm—three beats, then one.

A sacred number.

A death toll.

The crow’s thermal imprint caws, syncing with the rhythm:

“Time’s ticking, Ghostrider.”

******