Midweek Sneak Peek (Patreon)

I know I'm working on CDAD and prompts... but you know how it goes when there's ideas for new stories floating around... sometimes you just can't resist writing a little of it. So I did. This is a bit of the story I want to write when I'm done with CDAD. The break is where it splits from chapter 1 to 2, but I combined it so you could read all of what I've got so far. It's definitely... different than what I'm used to, to say the least. I don't know if I'd call it horror... It's a love story. Idk. Take it as you will haha.

Heaven on earth is a shitty little lounge on forty-fifth street, where the ambient range of sky blue to orange cream lighting reflects off the silver and white surfaces to make you feel like you’re on a cloud or some shit. It’s the old fashioned in my hand with its candied orange peel garnish. It’s my line of sight from the bar to the stage, and its singer.

The echo of her heels follows her across the white-stained wood as she goes to sit on a stool with her black acoustic guitar, and from the very first riff, nobody stands a chance. Every eye turns to her. Every mouth stops moving. You could hear a pin drop between that opening riff and her first note, but no one so much as dares to clink a glass and be the first to break that supernatural silence. It’s got to be the quietest spot in Manhattan for those four beats, where she just sits there, giving you a chance to see her.

She’s in a thin, sparkly white spaghetti strap dress. Her dark red hair is pulled up and there’s a loose ringlet framing either side of her face. Her sapphire eyes blaze behind her black cat-eye makeup. And the owner could pour a million dollars more into the expensive décor, into luring actors and models and VPs through the doors, and it wouldn’t matter. She’d still be the most beautiful, elegant thing this god forsaken island has ever seen.

She picks that riff again with her quick fingers and keeps going. She leans into the microphone standing in front of her stool and hums a couple bars of the melody with her eyes closed, and when it’s over, she smiles, opens her eyes, and sings to us. And her voice is the first breath of fresh air after a thunderstorm. It’s the sunshine on your face on a cold morning. It’s the real heaven on earth.

And I wished everyone else would disappear so I could listen unhindered, but someone breaks the silence, and the rest of the lounge goes back to business as usual. I gulp down the rest of my drink without taking my eyes off her and gesture at the bartender for another, trying to enjoy my slice of heaven while I can. But not even heaven gets uninterrupted peace, because there’s always demons trying to break in.

I can see them in my peripherals, watching me watching her, and I wonder how long it’ll take until they’re triggered. The bartender sets my new drink down against my knuckles so I know to grab it, and I almost look away to reach for it, but then her eyes find mine and it’s like a lightning strike. My heart beats three times faster. I can feel the electricity in my fingertips. Taste it on my tongue. And she doesn’t look away. She stares at me like she knows me. Like I’m the only one around and she’s singing to me and me alone, and it feels like it lasts a lifetime. Then she realizes that I’m not the only one around and forces her eyes away to glance at the rest of the crowd, and my heart sinks.

The demons are triggered.

I finally tear my eyes off her and grab my drink, throw it back in one go, and set the glass down as two bouncers reach me.

“Come with us,” one of them says. He’s big, really big, and his eyes are black with malice.

“Why?” I ask.

The other one growls, “You’re not up to dress code.”

I glance down at myself. At the white muscle tank top under my black leather jacket, my ripped blue jeans, and black leather boots. “You only think that because you haven’t seen my ass in these jeans.”

“Get. Up,” snarls the first one.

“I knew you’d want to see.” I slide off my stool only to reach in front of the customer beside me at the bar, grabbing the shot the bartender just set down in front of her and slamming it back as she watches me, dumbfounded. “Yum,” I say cheerfully, “lemon drop.”

The second bouncer snatches my arm, digging his fingers in as he hauls me away from the bar and the protesting woman whose shot I stole. They don’t drag me to the front. They take me through the kitchen, past the cooks who pretend not to see and out the back doors into the alley. There’s a third man outside, wearing tight tan pants and tall leather boots and a dark blue waistcoat.

“Oh, hey there,” I tell him, and immediately whirl around leading with my fist, clocking the big bouncer on the jaw. He doesn’t budge, so I lift my knee and bring my foot up, aiming to smash my sole into his groin. He grabs my boot before I finish and lifts, knocking me straight onto my back.

“Stand up,” the smaller bouncer says.

“No, I’m good,” I groan. “Thanks.”

He reaches down and grabs the shoulder of my jacket, hoisting me off the cement like I weigh absolutely nothing and throwing me back against the wall.

“Easy on the leather,” I complain, grimacing through the pain. “This thing’s an antique.”

“Do you ever shut up!” the third man snarls. He’s in my face before I can blink, his fists clenched in the collar of my jacket, shaking me.

“No,” I answer. “And if you’re going to do something, you better do it before the alcohol kicks in, because both of those old fashioned were doubles.”

He lets my jacket go, takes a couple steps back, and nods at one of his lackeys. The bouncer lunges forward, crashing his fist into my stomach so hard that I buckle over and puke up everything I just drank.

It takes me nearly half a minute to recover as I gasp for air, but when it isn’t so hard to breathe, I straighten up, wipe the back of my hand across my lips, and say, “Well now I’m definitely not paying.”

“Where is it?” the leader asks.

“Where’s what?” I ask. He glares at me, so I shrug. “Maybe you should be more specific.”

Without him saying anything, the bouncers each grab one of my arms, holding them up as they push me back until my shoulders meet the wall. He follows, producing an intricately carved knife that he presses to the side of my jaw.

“Maybe I should relieve you of your flesh,” he rumbles.

The blade is so sharp that I barely feel it break through the first couple layers of skin, and instead I feel the air cooling the drop of blood it sends sliding down my neck.

“You know, that threat was scary the first time you used it,” I tell him. “It’s losing impact.”

That’s a lie. It’s terrifying every time. So terrifying that I could vomit again, and I have to swallow down the bile rising in my throat and smile at him so he doesn’t see right through it. Maybe he does see right through it, but my defiance still infuriates him. He grabs me by the face and slams my skull back into the brick, and then his bouncers let me go. I drop straight to my knees, but everything is spinning so badly that I can’t stay upright, and I fall onto my face. There’s more blood dripping down the side of my cheek from the back of my head, but that’s the least of my worries.

“Do you ever tire of running your mouth?” he asks.

I manage to get one arm under my forehead so it isn’t touching the disgusting alley floor, and take in a deep breath to say in one shot, “Do you ever tire of the eighteen hundreds? Seriously, would it kill you to dress for this century?”

Someone’s foot connects with my ribs, and something cracks as the force sends me rolling onto my back.

“Where is it?” he demands again.

I turn away from them and curl into myself. “Eat me.”

His footsteps amble around to the front of me, where he kneels and reaches one hand behind my head. His fingers grip my hair, pulling apart the gash from the brick so that I whimper and more blood seeps out of me. He let his disguise fall so I can see his real face. So I can see how his grin stretches from ear to ear, baring his shark-like teeth at me as his pitch-black eyes bore into mine.

He lets me stew in the horror of that smile for several seconds before he says, “You’re not worth the energy it’d take to pick bits of you from my teeth.”

I inhale deeply, shut my eyes, and sigh, “That was kind of mean.”

He lets my head go so suddenly that it thuds back onto the pavement, and then he stands. “Kill her.”

And even though I know it’d go faster if I made it easy, if I let them kick me in the stomach and the head and I took it like a champ, it’s an instinct you can’t override no matter how many times you’ve been through it. I can’t help it that my arms shield my head, and my knees pull up to my chest. I picture heaven on earth in her little white dress and brace against the blows they rain down on me until everything goes quiet and black.

 _______________________

It’s the feeling of being poked in the cheek that wakes me, and the smell that comes with it. Dirt and peanut butter. I recognize the scent instantly because kids are always sticking their fingers where they don’t belong, and I can’t resist opening my eyes suddenly and letting out a startled yell. That startles Jake, my nine-year-old neighbor, and he yells too as he topples backward onto his butt. Then we’re both laughing for a moment before the pain kicks in. I’m sat on the floor of my apartment building, leaning back against my own door, and a groan replaces my laugh as I cradle my head in my hands.

“You okay, Summer?” Jake asks.

“No,” I grumble. “I feel like I got beat to death.”

His mom finally comes out of their apartment a few doors down, sees us, and spits, “Jake,” while gesturing sharply with her hand to get him away from me.

He ignores her to pinch one of my eyes shut. “Go back to sleep.”

I chuckle and pretend to snore until his mom stomps over and tugs him to his feet by the arm. “It’s ten in the morning,” she sneers at me. “Have some class.”

She thinks I’m drunk.

In her defense, that’s not an unfair assumption, but I still mumble, “Easy for you to say,” as she drags Jake away toward the elevator.

I manage to grab the door handle, pull myself to my feet, and get my keys in my hand before the nausea hits. Being awoken from the dead is a real bitch, and the more brutal the death, the worse the sickness. In my rush, I fumble my keys around the lock, which only makes me more frantic as I finally shove it into the hole and twist. I leave the keys in the door to sprint to the bathroom, barely making it to the toilet in time not to hurl all over my floor.

It's disgusting. I know from experience it’s full of blood and viscera that got mixed into my guts from the beating and stayed out of place when I healed, and I try not to look at it as I flush and stand. I grab a black claw off the counter and clip my medium-length platinum blonde hair up. My light brown roots are coming in, and I eye the box of bleach sitting on the back of the toilet with boredom as I reach for my toothbrush and toothpaste.

The mint relieves me from the taste of my insides, and I practically scrub my tongue raw before turning on the water and cupping some to my mouth to rinse. After washing the rest of the toothpaste off my toothbrush, I cup both hands back under the cold water and wash my face. It helps liven me up a little, but my head is still splitting.

I trudge out to the kitchen and pull a bottle of whiskey off the top of the fridge, twist off the cap, and fill a random eight-ounce glass on the counter to the brim with one hand while my other reaches up to the cabinet above me. I open it and grab a small orange pill bottle, set the whiskey down and pop off the top. Two Percocets spill into my palm and I throw them to the back of my throat. Wash them down with a gulp of whiskey. Keep gulping.

Wait. That pill bottle didn’t rattle when I was done with it. I set down the empty whiskey glass and pick up the orange bottle to give it a shake. Also empty.

I pull my cell phone out of my inner jacket pocket only to find that the screen is cracked. “Assholes.” I just bought that phone too. At least it still works, and the screen responds to my input as I tap on it and show the camera my face.

It unlocks, and I pull up the thread with my plug as I pour another finger of whiskey into the glass. ‘out’ I tell her.

I lift the glass to my lips to sip on it while I wait, but the dots pop up instantly that she’s typing. ‘of what’ she asks.

I type ‘my prescription’ and hit send, but that prompts me to reach up into that same cabinet to grab a much larger see-through orange bottle. There’s less than a gram of weed left in it. ‘spot near a dispensary?’ I add.

She tells me to meet her on Madison and Eighty-Second at five, which gives me plenty of time to wish I was dead for real. I leave the last couple sips of whiskey in the cup and trudge to the front door to finally retrieve my keys. I close and lock it, and then toss the keys onto the kitchen counter as I walk by and into the living room, where I fall onto my back on the couch.

The room is already spinning in the best way, so that I almost can’t feel the confusion in the rest of my cells. Being beaten to death is a lot like coming home from a long day at the beach, when you lay down and still feel the waves. It’s like my body wants to feel pain. It knows it should, but there’s none there. So it tingles instead. Muscles twitch like falling in a dream. If I wasn’t well on my way to being severely crossfaded, I’d get random spikes of adrenaline that make my heart want to explode, but I am, so I don’t. Instead, I shut my eyes and ride the wake of the high straight to dreamland.