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Coraline remembers having night terrors as a kid.
She would get up in the middle of being asleep, standing on top of her mattress and bellowing like the room had been on fire. Mom said Coraline used to scratch up Dad, trying to writhe out his arms, ugly sobbing while they attempted to calm her down.
Maybe it's because…
Even now on the verge of sixteen, Coraline dreams of her Other Mother.
That twitchy-witchy spidery entity.
She pet Coraline's hair soothingly, whispered about silly, fun games and cozy bedtimes, fed Coraline all of the mango milkshakes she ever wanted. Roasted chicken. Sweet peas and corn-on-the-cob. Gravy served on a miniature train track and a gigantic chocolate cake.
Her stomach hurt.
In her memory-dreams, Coraline eats too much, groaning and clutching her middle.
Everything hurts.
Her Other Mother only laughs like a tinkling bell, piling more and more gravy-sopping mashed potatoes on Coraline's plate.
It hurt.
The gravy turns a dark, viscous red, Red, red, all oozing off the sides of Coraline's plate and onto the tablecloth.
Staining red.
She's staining red.
Coraline bellows out, lurching from her Other Mother's dinner table, feeling the trickle of blood coming from inside of her… and she wakes in her own bed, panting for air. No Other Mother in sight. Coraline's middle painfully cramps up.
Blood glistens darkly on the sheet below and on the crotch of Coraline's pajama pants.
"Darn it," Coraline groans.
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Walking helps a little bit.
So does the fresh autumn air when Coraline decides to wander up a hill.
Her real mom left for grocery shopping and bathroom supplies—"This damn mold, Charlie! I need to go out and buy white vinegar! And your daughter just started her period!"—a half an hour ago. It's getting late. She won't beat the traffic before dinner.
Up ahead is the field of mud surrounded by the tall, dead trees.
Coraline frowns in contemplation.
Wybie refuses to bike around here anymore. He hasn't since they wrapped up her Other Mother's needle-hand in a blanket, tied it up with the passage-door's key, and chucked it all down into the water. For a long time, she didn't come up here either.
Fresh, sweet-smelling mushrooms ring around the entrance of the old water well.
Coraline approaches, stiffening up her shoulders, and that's when she hears a rattling. Deep, deep down.
A gasp flies out of Coraline's mouth.
She races onward, smearing away the mud in frantic movements and pressing her ear down to the heavy, wood cover.
The rattling…
Coraline grabs a nearby oak branch, holding it out with both hands, listening in terror as the well's cover finally rattles open. She screams, jolting backwards with enough force to plop her onto her bottom. Mud smears her oversized yellow hoodie.
A person… a person not much older than Coraline hitches herself out of the well.
"Holy rabies!" comes an eager voice. "I didn't know the Hotel's cellar-door led to THIS!"
"Who are you?! Why did you come here?!"
The other girl turns smilingly to a wide-eyed Coraline, not seeming to grasp Coraline's fear.
"It's kind of a ridiculous story, but I didn't feel like eating with Dad tonight after he forbid me to take my trip to—" she hesitates, looking up and around. Her little, black-lipstick coated mouth thins. "—wait, this isn't Hawifi, is it?"
A gawking Coraline feels her eyes go wider.
"I suppose not—anyways, I went down to the cellar by myself and I found this door behind—"
"What cellar?"
The words leave her full of uncertainty. Coraline lowers her hands, as the other girl stares between the water well and Coraline. Something like a friendly understanding brightens those clear blue eyes. Her hand presents out to Coraline.
"I'm Mavis," she says. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
Coraline takes her hand, eeping when the other girl tugs Coraline onto her feet with only one hand. She's strong. Really strong, Coraline thinks dazedly. And freezing cold to touch. Mavis feels like she's been napping in an industrial-sized cooler.
"I'm… Coraline Jones."
"This is sooooooo wicked! I never to get to meet anyone other than my Dad's friends and—oh my darkness!" Mavis exclaims, letting go of Coraline's hand and gleefully pointing to the Pink Palace Apartments below. "That's so so soooo cute! Aww!"
She's…
Coraline gawks again, watching as the tips of Mavis's toes lift from the ground.
Levitating?
.
.
This is insane.
Some random girl just crawled out of the water well completely dry—and wasn't scared at all—and didn't have the Other Mother's key on her— and it didn't even look like it was hard for her to climb probably a hundred feet up on slippery rocks—
How—
Coraline's head spins.
She inspects the opened water well, not finding anything sinister lurking inside. Nothing feels wrong.
By dusk, Coraline returns to the gardens, showing Mavis the petunias and the marigolds. Maybe she's dreaming again. Her fingertips rub vigorously over her eyelids, and Coraline blinks open her eyes. Nope. Definitely gotta be awake.
Mavis oohs and ahhs over every little thing. She waves cheerfully to Mister Bobinsky doing jumping jacks on the roof.
"You're one of those humans I've heard about?"
Coraline rakes a hand into her light brown hair cropped and tipped with blue. She feels a little shabby next to Mavis, with her also cropped hair but a pin-straight black and turtleneck dress. The other girl doesn't have a ton of mud all over her.
"Last I checked," she grumbles.
Mavis looks from the potted roses to examine Coraline. A flash of a grin appears on Mavis's lips. "Ghoul!"
"You're a ghoul?" Coraline monotones.
"No," Mavis says, holding back a snicker. "I'm a vampire."
"An actual vampire?"
"Yep!"
"Prove it."
Coraline folds her arms, squinting her eyes when Mavis peels up her top lip, exposing her pearly-white fangs.
She supposes they appear real enough to her… but…
"How do you kiss with fangs…" Coraline whispers, and she didn't mean to say her thoughts out loud. It just happens sometimes. It has gotten Coraline into more trouble with her mom than she cares to count. This doesn't seem to deter Mavis who beams.
"Like this!"
She grabs onto Coraline's face, mashing their lips together with a happy hum. It's a shock of cold against Coraline's heated mouth. Her face pinkens under Mavis's fingers. Mavis pulls away, dropping her arms and shyly clasping her hands behind her.
"Oh."
Coraline says this quietly, her head fogging.
Suddenly, so suddenly, Mavis's blue eyes darken into a bloody red.
She leans towards Coraline, sniffing her and 'mmming~' as if catching a whiff of something particularly delicious.
With a lick of mortification crawling up her belly, Coraline realizes it's the smell of her menstrual blood.
Oh no.
Oh no no no no…
Mavis giggles.
"Ziiing~!"
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This is…
"This has been fun," Mavis admits, her lips twitching downwards, "but I better go now… Dad will come looking for me…"
"Dad?"
Coraline doesn't know how long it's been since they marched down the hill, or wandered into the gardens, but she can barely see the sunlight flooding from the horizon. The blue of Mavis's irises glow with an animal-like luminescent.
"Dracula," Mavis says simply, and Coraline nearly suffocates herself from inhaling too hard.
Dra—
She doesn't know how to process that, Coraline's mouth slack when Mavis once more giddily kisses her.
"Can we see each other again?"
"Y-Yeah," Coraline murmurs, hearing Mavis's squeal as she levitates off her feet. No strings, no tricks, no reasonable cause. Nothing has ever been reasonable about her life in Oregon so far, Coraline thinks. Strange things just happen.
In the darkness, Mavis vanishes with a bat-like screech. Her wings flap noisily.
"I'm home!"
Her mom rolls up her car, gesturing to her daughter standing alone by the garden's entrance.
"Coraline Jones! Get your keester over here!" she yells, holding up a plastic-topped container. "I got pie!"
Under the apartment's light, Coraline takes in the glistening red of the newly baked cherry pie.
Her middle cramps up.
She groans.
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