It starts with a single droplet that finds its way down into the open space between the whispers of my hair and my still crisp collar, hesitates at the first bump of my spine, then traces along each of the peaks and valleys until it comes to rest on the small of my back. I squirm and wrinkle my nose, then wipe at the back of my neck.

 

When I pull my fingers away, they are crimson and glowing. Warm. I stare for a few moments, then pull them in close to my face and inhale peonies, cinnamon, and blood. I sniff again and again. And again. Then, before my brain can catch up, my fingers are in my mouth.

 

It doesn’t taste like crimson should — rich and earthy. But it does taste a little like blood. I’m pleasantly surprised to also find hints of anise (I’m a sucker for absinthe) in its seductive drip, drip, drip. I feel a warmth growing in my belly that spreads into my chest, and I look down to see if I’m glowing, too.

 

I’m not.

 

However, I am now skipping through fields of lush peonies with a mischievous red fairy, her hair flamed with sunlight. She’s beautiful and she’s trouble. She’s holding out her hand to me. I reach for her, and when our fingertips touch I moan and close my eyes. When I reopen them, I’m back in the gray alley.

 

Her sudden loss is devastating, but for the first time in a long time, I’m filled up. When I open my mouth wide and turn my face up to the sky, it’s not because I’m hungry. I’m gluttonous. I simply want more.

 

Roughly five thousand feet above me, a murder is taking place, though the motive will never make sense to those of us who were abandoned below. What could a person who has everything still want so badly that they would kill one of their precious own? Even if I could comprehend it, I won’t realize what’s happening until it’s too late. Though as far as the many refugees and victims of mankind’s bespoke apocalypse go, I will have the unique honor of being the first official death-due-to-zeppelin.

 

Up in the skies, where they fled to escape the consequences of their own actions that ravaged the world below, they have managed to maintain a life of relative luxury: fresh food, expensive booze, lavish parties, and even docile servants rumored to be snatched up on their rare trips to the mainlands. The most coveted of their favors is paralstis — a sensual escape from the reality that I suspect still finds them way up there. They’re known to mix it with absinthe, and this final realization will pop into my mind 2.45 seconds before the falling corpse extends its mandatory invitation to join him.

 

The corpse’s name is Jackson Dean, and his father did something with either telecom or tech. His family was only wealthy enough to work one member into the club, their oldest male heir. Jackson had grown up making his way through sociopathic boarding schools into sociopathic Ivy Leagues. Though he sadly hadn’t managed to wrap up his degree before things really started going to shit.

 

Still, he could talk the talk, reference the secret spots on campus the “merit” kids would never know about. Unfortunately for Jackson, extended use of paralstis can cause the heightening of preexisting violent tendencies as well as the exaggeration of narcissistic thoughts. A bigger heir with a bigger temper cracked his head open and spilled his drink, all in one blow. It was Jackson’s blood, Jackson’s drugs, and Jackson’s booze that had swirled together on the hardwood floor, then oozed out of the open door through which his body would soon follow, creating the glorious cocktail meant just for my lips — a Jackson Dean straight-up.

 

In addition to my mouth, I have now also opened my arms wide, begging the gray above for more of it. All of it. If anyone is watching, I’m sure it looks like he’s coming in for a high-speed hug. Between my vampiric appetite and the velocity of the collision, our bodies become forever intertwined. Odd, considering we lived our lives so very far apart.

 

When our deaths make the news, the headlines will provide a much-needed scandalous diversion from the hundreds of faceless deaths crowding what’s left of the newsfeeds. Jackson was handsome in a tragic way. The lesser of the forever-floating evils.

 

The ground dwellers have no way of knowing what’s going on up there, or how justice will be carried out. Though they will notice that a second body — the guilty one — never makes its way down.

And when they hear that I had traces of paralstis and absinthe in my system, generously gifted from above, they will all begin opening their mouths to the sky.