Raspberry Vodka

Almost everyone has a soulmate, that is the first thing Joey Hudson remembers when the subject is brought up. Most people start learning about their future soulmates by the time they get to school, names of their partners appear one morning on their skin, their first words splayed on a limb like a tattoo, or their soulmates thoughts occasionally going through their distant partners head. No one ever felt their soulmate the same way.

For a while, Joey thought she didn’t have a soulmate. The thought never made her sad, she’s seen how some of her school friends acted on the playground, wide eyed, staring wistfully at their surrounding classmates, curious to see if it was any of them.

No, Joey was content in waiting, but even in the waiting of it all she couldn’t help but be curious. Almost everyone in her class had some kind of indication of their soulmates, she was one of the unlucky few who just haven’t yet. She wishes that it was easier to know if she does have one or not, but her mom took a more positive outlook on it.

“These things take some time, honey,” she said one afternoon, when Joey, again, asked her about how she found her soulmate, “All you can do is be patient and wait, the answers will come.”

But it was easier to say that if you already have met your soulmate. Joey frowned as she looked at the cursive words on her mother’s wrist, her father’s name written in black, so dark it could of been mistaken for a new tattoo, even though the name has been on her skin almost her whole life.

She sighed but took her mother’s hand nonetheless, grudgingly accepting that she was just going to have to be patient and see.

—————

It all started one day when Joey was reading.

She was in her room, laying on her bed, book in lap. It was a sequel to a series she has been engrossed with for days, her time between school, chores, and everything else taken up by reading. She loved it and would spend many hours reading until way past the time she was supposed to be asleep.

Joey was already halfway through the newest book, this one checked out just the day before, and was thinking of going to the library again for the next book tomorrow when she felt something hit her in the back of the head, hard.

“Ow!”

Joey sat up and rubbed her head, feeling the pain go away almost as quickly as it had came.

“Is everything alright up there?” Joey’s father called from downstairs.

“Y-Yeah! I’m good!” She yelled back, then looked back down at the pillow. Curious, she lifted it up to look under it, then put it back down when she didn’t see anything that could of hit her. She lifted her hand to the back of her head but couldn’t find any wounds, not even a bruise. It was as if the pain meter existed at all.

Joey didn’t know what it was at the time, just content to go back to her book and ignore the mysterious blow, but it wasn’t until days later did she realize that the pain she was feeling wasn’t her own, it was her soulmate’s.

After days where Joey would feel mysterious scrapes, stubbed toes, and scratches, she finally came to the realization that she wasn’t the one getting hurt. But how to test this theory?

The new book was tossed aside on the bed as Joey thought, curious as to how to see if this is true. Finally, she got her hand and pinched herself in the right shoulder, hard enough to hurt. She did this two more times before she felt herself get pinched back, this time in the left shoulder. Joey smiled at it, then grabbed the book, snuggling down onto her bed to read, happy to finally get an answer to a question she has had for so long.

—————

Joey Hudson was now a Deputy of the Hope County Police Department.

Her new partner, Danny, was at the Spread Eagle, celebrating with her. The barman was busy with the bar up front, which Danny and Hudson were currently being served at, and the Batman’s daughter was running through the rest of the establishment, serving customers seated everywhere else.

Danny laughed.

“Hey, you won’t believe this. Check this out.”

He pulled back his sleeve and showed Hudson a mark on his wrist. It covered most of it and was shaped like a hand, as if someone had grabbed him forcefully. But the mark itself almost seemed to glow, throwing around colors like the inside of an oyster shell.

“Happened earlier today, just before we met up here,” he said, “She was working at the store I was at, tried to stop me from having a jar of mayo dropped on my head. Anyway, she said yes to the date, but we both agreed to take it slow, get to know each other first, you know?”

“Congratulations!” Hudson said, smiling up at him as she raised a glass in a toast. After they took a drink Danny coughed.

“So what about you?”

“Me?” She said, confused for a moment before she realized what he meant, “Oh no, not yet, we haven’t found each other, but they’re out there. I can feel it.”

She certainly can. It’s been many years since she was first made aware of her soulmates presence, but she knew they were there from the occasional wound she felt on her end. She wished they could communicate in some way that didn’t involve having to hurt herself, but the occasional pinch in the shoulder, followed by the one she would receive back, made her know that her soulmate, whoever they are, knew about her as much as she knew about them.

She just wished she knew who they were. It wasn’t the fact that she hadn’t met the person who is supposed to be “the one,” no, Hudson never thought of it like that. The idea of someone being so close, almost as if they are there with her right now, sharing her pain from cut knees to tears from broken friendships, while still being a complete stranger, it infuriated her, them being so close to her while not being there at all. She wanted them to be there to share it all with her, but the best she could do was give the occasional signal that yes she was still thinking of them and that she hoped to finally meet them soon.

Some people are just luckier than her, she guesses, getting caught back into her conversation with Danny, who started talking about the Sheriff. The night progressed and the bar started to slow down, only slightly, when Hudson felt it, a pain so strong in her gut, as sharp as a knife, that caused her to get up and run to the restroom. Danny was still sitting at their spot, laughing, assuming Hudson had just one too many to drink.

Hudson got to an empty stall and quickly closed the door, falling next to the toilet, ready to vomit, but the expected nausea never came. The pain was still there, but it took longer for Hudson to realize that it wasn’t her who was receiving it.

The pain had started to fade, but slowly, turning into a dull ache that lasted longer than anything Hudson had ever felt before. She leaned against the stall door and closed her eyes and thought hard, wondering what was happening. It didn’t take her long to realize what she was feeling was her soulmates sorrow, as painful as a blade, almost as if it was her own. A tear ran down her face and Hudson reached up to wipe it away before she pinched herself in the shoulder, only having to wait a moment before she felt it back.

She sighed and leaned her head against the wall, wishing, once again, that she could meet her soul mate, maybe then they could find some relief from the suffering that they're currently feeling now.

—————

A black bag was slowly being lifted on a stretcher, carried into a nearby ambulance. Hudson watched this happen, stony faced, as they closed the doors, the paramedics getting back into the car, ready to leave for the hospital.

Some people had stopped by, hell, even the fucking peggies came, out of nowhere, to watch Danny get taken off to the hospital for his spouse to identify to the doctors later. Sheriff Whitehorse was there, saying something right next to her, but Hudson didn’t even register anything he was saying, not that she was trying.

She couldn’t believe Danny was dead, gone in a moment at the hands of a speeding driver. She didn’t even see his murderers face, they had started speeding off the moment Danny’s body had hit the road, Hudson still sitting in the car, dropping her milkshake on the floor as they sped off, just leaving him there.

Hudson couldn’t bear to be there anymore and in a moment, so quickly as if she had simply magicked it to be so, she was in her car again, speeding away from a yelling sheriff. She didn’t care, let her be reprimanded for it later. She needed out.

She drove, probably breaking the law at the speed she was driving in, until she turned off down another road and found herself in just open field, Falls End so far behind her she couldn’t even see the towns lights in the distance. Hudson stopped the car and slammed the door shut, seeing Danny’s milkshake through the window, half melted, still in the cup holder where he had left it.

Hudson turned around to look at the fields around her. It was quiet, no noise being made but the sound of crickets chirping away, as happy as they could be. Hudson didn’t know what to do, so she sat down, sinking to the ground, back against the car door. She drew her knees up to her chest and laid her head on her hands, wishing so desperately that it was just a bad dream.

But it was real, all just too painfully real, so Hudson laid her head back, looking up in the sky to watch the stars.

The usual pinch came and Hudson realized that whatever she’s feeling right now, whatever dull ache of raw sadness, similar to what Hudson felt from them years ago, was being felt by her soulmate at that moment. Rather than feeling comforted by it, however, Hudson grew enraged.

She got her fist and slammed it on the ground, once, twice, screaming obscenities at her soulmate. She knew they couldn’t hear them, but that didn’t stop her. At that moment, she hated them, hated the fact that they were not there, that they were letting her suffer through this alone. But all she could do was continue to slam her hand on the asphalt until blood streamed through her fingers.

She leaned her head on her knees, sobbing, bringing one arm up to her knees and leaving her damaged hand next to her as she cried. She felt the pinch again, this time more tentative. It was apologetic, a small brief gesture that showed that whoever they were, they were listening. With the feeling, Hudson’s anger ebbed and all that was left was a hollow space where the anger had lived before. She gave a shaky sigh and, with her good hand, gave her own shoulder a pinch back.

—————

She knew that the arrest was going to go bad, there was no doubt about it. The Marshal, Anna that went by the name of Cameron Burke, had came into the police station, smug and certain that whatever warrant on Eden’s Gate leader, Joseph Seed, was good enough to protect them from the peggies rage, after all, who would ignore a direct order from the government itself for an arrest? To do so was stupid, and to do so while alone, surrounded by cops, was downright insane.

Not for the peggies though. Hudson actually felt, for the first time in her life, scared for her life, jumping into the helicopter as Rookie Deputy Anna May Shawn shoved Joseph Seed in the seat in front of her, before sitting down in her own. Hudson didn’t even have time to ask the rookie what happened in the church, after all this was the deputies first real arrest, nothing like the small stuff she talked about doing back in the local zoo, before the peggies swarmed them.

The other Deputy, Staci Pratt, had tried to get them out of there, but the helicopter crashed and the next thing Hudson knew, she was being dragged out of the crash’s ruins by Eden’s Gate.

They were told to be thankful, grateful even, for being spared after what they did, unlike Anna May who had somehow, unlike the marshal, miraculously evaded capture from the cult. No, the peggies were not happy with her and planned on giving her the rightful punishment she deserved for trying to take away their “Father.”

Hudson had spit at the Seed who said it, the one she recognized as John Seed, a real piece of shit who was always causing trouble in Holland Valley. He had smiled at her when she did it, a creepy twisted smile that held no warmth, as her, Pratt, Whitehorse, and Burke were separated and sent off with different heralds, like puppies found in a crate all ready to be adopted.

Hudson was given to John, taken to his bunker and locked in some sick room covered in sins, the herald himself talking about Hudson’s own sin, how her wrath was going to cause her end if she didn’t learn to abandon it. He could help her, as long as she decided to become loyal to the Father and the Project, to renounce her ways and just say Yes.

She told him to go to hell and he had laughed. Then, of course, he got to his sick idea of getting her to admit her sins, trying to force her to atone for whatever crimes he thinks she’s committed. She’s not going to give in, not to him, and he knows it, and so the torture continued, every day as he tried to get her to say yes.

Even with what was happening in John’s bunker, none of it wasn't going unnoticed by her soulmate. The occasional pinch on her shoulder, their own form of communication so familiar, was pointless in her current situation. She was tied up, stuck in her chair, unable to respond back to them. Each response grew more panicked, Hudson would receive multiple pinches from her soulmate after John’s latest torture session, but she still wasn’t able to respond back.

Even so, in the long periods of time where Hudson was allowed to sit alone and think, she knew her own soulmate was on a war path of their own. Cuts from blades, blows from both fists and weapons, hell, at one point it felt like she had jumped off a cliff, her body aching so bad before the pain faded, she felt it all. Hudson could only take it as a sign that, whatever her soulmate was doing, they were doing it to get to her, it just had to be it. The pinches still came, but less of a question of if Hudson is alright and more of a reassurance on their end. They’re on their way to her right now, she just had to hang on.

Unless the Deputy got to her first. Hudson had felt her heart sink when she saw Anna May run away from the bunker door, leaving her down there in John’s twisted basement. He had goaded her later, voicing whether or not that the rookie even cared about her, asking how could the Deputy leave her dear princess behind?

Hudson would of loved more than anything to rip those words out of John’s throat.

But she didn’t have much longer to wait before she got herself out, finding a broken piece of metal to cut her way through multiple peggies. She was almost out, almost free, just one more in her way.

Hudson lunged at the peggies and heard a loud gasp, but cared not for the person struggling in her grasp. She knocked them to the floor and got on them, trying so hard to just end it, one stab through the neck and she’ll be one peggie closer to freedom-

She pushed the metal down, hard, and gasped when she felt a sharp pain in her own cheek as she cut into the person below her. She raised her other hand to where the pain was already fading, then looked down closer at the person below her, realizing it was Anna May.

“Rook?” Hudson said, shocked, and scrambled off of Anna May. She sat up and touched her cheek where a small drop of blood was slowly sliding down it. Anna May then, without breaking eye contact with Hudson, reached up to her shoulder and pinched it, the feeling duplicated in Hudson’s own shoulder.

“Wh- it was you-?”

But Hudson stopped herself. She knew she is going to have to save the questions for later, as much as she wanted to talk to Anna May and figure out what the hell was going on, she couldn’t, not right now. She wasn’t the only person John had decided to lock up in his home made torture chamber, and she sure as hell isnt going to leave them there to die in it either. Once they were all free, then they will talk.

—————

The night was clear, perfect even, celebrating the death of the Baptist just as everyone inside the Spread Eagle was.

Or, well, almost everyone. Joey Hudson sat outside the bar in an old wooden chair, drink in hand. She should be inside, after all, she’s been sitting in John’s damn chair for weeks now, the last thing she of all people in Holland Valley should be doing is moping, but inside was Anna May, and Hudson just didn’t know how to face her yet.

She instinctively reached up to give her shoulder a pinch, then stopped herself. There was no need for that anymore, her soulmate was inside, just behind that door, so why couldn’t she talk to her?

Hudson never really thought of Anna May in that way. She was kind, funny, and always had a good laugh, but the idea of Anna May and her as her soulmate didn’t match up in Hudson’s eyes. Maybe she always had a different expectation when it came to her soulmates true identity, maybe she just wasn’t sure about her own feelings towards her, but Anna May was her soulmate, and she can’t even think of a reason to why she could be feeling how she does right now.

She sighed and leaned back in her chair. Hudson didn’t know how to feel, happy that John is dead and she’s free from him, and reunited with her mysterious soulmate, or resentful at Anna May for taking so long to find her.

As if summoned by Hudson’s thoughts, Anna May herself came out from the Spread Eagle. She was holding two beers, but frowned when she realized that Hudson already had one to drink. She placed the spare beer on the porch fence and sat in the chair closest to Hudson’s, not looking at her. Hudson gave Anna May a glance, but returned the silence, sitting there in the dark for a long time as the fireflies danced in the street in front of them.

“I wanted it to be you,” Anna May finally said. She blushed a deep dark red when she said it, giving a glance at Hudson, who had given her a curious look, before looking away again.

“You did?” Hudson asked. She couldn’t help but feel amused.

“You’re just- you’re amazing,” Anna May said. Her cheeks grew redder.

“I can say the same for yourself,” Hudson went back out to looking at the street, “all the stuff you’ve been doing out here, raising hell for John and Faith. I wish I was there to see it.”

“I wish you were to,” Anna May replied. They both were silent again, the quiet interrupted only by the chirping of crickets.

“So, how long did you know?” Hudson asked. Anna May gave a small sigh.

“I was listening to the peggies radios one day. John was broadcasting on it, after I escaped from him the first time. He-“ but Anna May stopped talking when she saw Hudson nod. She took a deep breath.

“I wanted to so so badly to go back and save you, I really did-“

“But you didn’t,” Hudson said. Anna May nodded.

“John has started to fill the bunker with that Bliss stuff they’ve been growing all over the place. If I stayed, I would of died. All I wanted to do was pry that door open and get you out of there, I really did-“

“Hey, I understand, and I don’t blame you. If I were you, I would of ran out of the county after seeing what John was doing down there.”

“I’m so sorry,” Anna May said, her voice coming out in a whisper. Hudson reached over and put a hand on her arm.

“It’s not your fault,” she said. She pulled the hand back and they went back to sitting there. Hudson was more surprised to find herself finally relaxing.

“So, what happens from here?” Hudson asked.

“I’ll probably have to go face Faith next,” Anna May sighed, her face growing darker.

“No, I mean what happens with us now?”

“Wh-Oh!” Anna May’s eyes widened. She must of had the same thoughts as Hudson.

“I don’t… I don’t know,” Anna May finally admitted, looking away from Hudson as her face started getting red again, “I don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Hey, I’m not saying we have to get married right now,” Hudson said, causing Anna May to giggle, “let’s just, you know, take it slow, like my friend Danny once said. Let me get to know you, the real you.”

“Take it slow? I- yeah, I’d like that,” Anna May gave Hudson a smile and looked back out at the road. Hudson looked out at the street with her and, for the first time since the arrest, truly felt content and at peace.