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his head snaps back, dark eyes clogged with interrupted sleep and confusion and fear. 
    “Twila?” and he sounds lost and far away. “Jesus, Twila. Are you…” but there’s no sense in asking and instead he fumbles for her wrist, pressing his thumb to botched suicide scar tissue and the blue-green intersection of veins and arteries.
    She can feel the faint throb of her pulse pressed beneath her brother’s touch. And so she knows even before the relief in his eyes and the ghost of a smile. 
    Blondie wipes at her forehead with a sponge cut in the shape of a pink flamingo, pushing aside her ink-black bangs. She tries to sit up, but he makes her lie right back down on the tangle of sweat-damp sheets. Her pillow is crusty and stiff with dried snot and blood; she doesn’t have to look to know that she’s shit herself. 
    “I feel better,” she says, shaky, but almost her own voice this time, and then there is no strength left to say anything else. Blondie is crying and he hugs her tight, shit stains and all, strokes her matted hair, and holds her till dawn.
     
    Her head feels empty, scooped clean by the dream and the fever and filled with angry, buzzing hornets. A stingy breeze whips at the curtains, rearranging the heat. 
    She sits on the floor, in cool shadows where the late morning sun doesn’t reach, and begins to unwrap her hand, winding away the sticky gauze, pus-yellowed and it still hurts like a motherfucker. Blondie has gone to get her a glass of water and see if there’s any booze left. The last layer is stuck to her skin by big, scabby magenta blotches, but when she pulls it free there’s only a little blood and a faint whiff of ammonia.
    (buzzbuzzbuzz)
    And the perfect crescent of Arlene’s kiss underneath; Twila turns her hand over and there it is again, incisor and canine and bicuspid punctures tattooed into her palm. Life line and heart line and soul line severed. Twila tries to make a fist and the swollen flesh cracks, drains about her wrist like an amber bracelet and trickles to the floor.
    She feels dizzy again and has to brace herself against the wall. Her hand looks like a picture she once saw of a brown recluse spider bite and she remembers a word, necrosis .
    Down the hall, Arlene slams herself against the bathroom door. There are split places in the wood and the paint’s peeling away from the blows, but Blondie’s dragged the sofa and a table and all kinds of shit to barricade her in.
    “Go right ahead, bitch,” Twila mutters at the door. “Knock yourself fuckin’ goofy. See if I care.”
    Arlene moans and gurgles and hits the door again.
    (buzzbuzzzz)
    Then Blondie comes out of the kitchen with Twila’s Catwoman tumbler and an almost empty bottle of Papov vodka, trying not to notice the sounds from the bathroom. He sits down next to his sister, pours the vodka into the cup and mixes with an index finger.
    “I don’t think she can get out,” he says uncertainly.
    Twila sips her drink and glances towards the door.
    “Find me a hammer and I’ll fuckin’ nail the bitch in,” she says and takes a bigger swallow. Lukewarm, and the alcohol burns going down. 
    “I was so scared, Twila,” he says, and now he’s staring at anything but her eyes. “I thought you were dying, that you were gonna wind up like her. Hear her? She gets worse and worse, and then the power went out last night and…”
    If I open my mouth, they’ll all fly out, and she sees the wriggling black and yellow bodies clinging to Blondie’s face, digging their stinger-tipped asses into his pale cheeks and clenched eyelids, trying to crawl inside his nose.
    “…there wasn’t anything left on television anyway. Just fucking snow and test patterns.”
    And Arlene throws herself extra hard against the bathroom door. Twila closes her eyes and listens to her brother and the hornets and the wail of a siren far away.
     
    The end of the world rave had been Twila’s idea.
    And the twins played host and hostess for