The dragonfly wing petals vibrate, tapping against each other in silent staccato. The bumpy center seems to pulse, growing warm under Anastasia’s fingers. The vines twitch and tangle, drawing closer, drawing tighter together. Suddenly, and without warning, she is afraid, her deeply buried animal instincts rising up to protect what’s already past protecting. She tries to pull her hand away.

The flower holds her fast.

There is no sensation of stickiness, but her fingers refuse to budge from the surface all the same: it’s as if she has become bonded to it, glued down so suddenly that there was never any chance to break the seal. She takes a step backward, and drops abruptly as the log rolls out from under her feet. Even that isn’t enough to sever the connection between fingers and flower, only to wrench her arm from its socket, leaving her dangling and terrified and in pain. She opens her mouth to scream.

She never sees the vine begin to move, not until it slithers tight around her face and neck, cutting off her air, cutting off the sound before it starts. The rest of the vines are close behind, binding her, cocooning her, until all that remains is a tangled knot of vegetation, bucking wildly as she struggles.

Inside the vegetable cocoon, thorns as fine as threads are pushing out of the vines, piercing her skin, slithering into the meat of her. They begin pale as bone and quickly brighten to a deep, arterial red as they drink and drain, drowning themselves in blood.

Bit by bit, the struggle stops.

Bit by bit, the heart of Anastasia Miller stops with it.

5.

Caroline hangs up the phone harder than strictly necessary, taking some satisfaction from the act of slamming it down into the cradle. Then she picks it up and slams it again, wishing she could hang up more than once.

“Asshole,” she mutters before looking around guiltily. Little pitchers have big ears, after all. But there’s no sign of Anastasia: her transgression has gone unwitnessed. Normally, she would be concerned. Right now, she’s just relieved. Ana didn’t need to hear that. Ana didn’t need to hear any of that.

Where does he get off? Alan walked out on them when he heard she was pregnant, not the other way around. Alan said he didn’t want to be a father, that he had never wanted to be a father, and he never would want to be a father. Now he’s hunting her down and demanding to be a part of his daughter’s life? Now he’s acting like he has a say in where she lives, what she does, how she raises Anastasia? No. It doesn’t work that way. Once you run out, you don’t get to swagger back in like the running was nothing. You just don’t.

You don’t.