Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 44289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44289 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Part of me still didn’t want to believe that night after graduation had been real.
But—as Luna went crazy on the drums and Bishop started sing-screaming into the microphone in a way that had the fans going nuts again—it was like I was back there all over again.
I revisited it often enough in my dreams to be able to recall every detail even though it had been so many years ago now.
I’d made a desperate plea to the night, and then fallen asleep in my car. After what had happened that afternoon at the house, I’d just wanted to be anywhere but home.
Then I woke up and I was…
… there.
I’d never had the words to describe it. Ironic, since words were kinda my whole gig. I was the main lyricist of the group, except for when Bishop got a hair up his ass and decided he was a songwriter again.
But yeah, that night, that place.
It was dark. Pitch-black out. Except there was still some light, somehow. I never did decide where it was coming from.
It was so dark you couldn’t see much except some fog and two roads crossing in the middle of freaking nowhere. There weren’t any trees, any buildings, any hills, or recognizable landscape features. I lived in the city and there was no land like that anywhere I’d ever seen—flat, empty, no lights in the distance.
It was inhuman, and cold, and wrong.
And then he was there, or maybe I should call him an it? It had a male voice, but it was all shadows, only sort of in the shape of a man. The shadows kept shifting, no matter how I squinted.
When it spoke, ice ran through my veins.
But then it—he— knew everything about me, and my situation, and even what had happened that afternoon.
He said he’d heard my plea and was there to help.
He would be happy to kill my father for me.
In that moment, I’d forgotten all the strangeness of the place. In my desperation and sudden hope, all I could ask was, “Can you make it hurt?”
And I felt more than saw the shadow smile. “I can most definitely see to that. He’ll die screaming for mercy. And I won’t grant him any.”
When I woke up and shook off the sleep of the night, I drove home only to find police already there.
They were notifying my mother that my father had died in a car crash. He didn’t die on impact, they said. They were so sorry to tell us, but he’d gone over a cliff. He’d been trapped inside for twenty minutes while the car caught fire and had slowly burned to death.
I kept my face blank as the police finished telling us the gory details. And I gave my mom a supportive hug as she collapsed into my arms.
But I was smiling into her hair.
Apparently, a deal was a deal. And at the time, losing my eternal soul just hadn’t seemed that important.
THREE
BISHOP
I screamed pain into the microphone, lyrics written long ago.
You love to whip me…
Up
In love
So you can shove me…
Down
In pain
Nails dug into my…
Skin
Till we drown…
in blood.
The drums roared behind me as Luna backed me up. Smiling into the mic would be inappropriate for this song, but damn, my girl was on fire tonight.
I’d written this song what felt like a million years ago. I didn’t give a shit about the lyrics anymore. They felt almost as whiny as all of Mason’s sappy ass ballads. Moaning on and on about love.
Pussy was pussy. It was thrown at all of us day in, day out. I couldn’t believe I’d once been such a fuck-nut idiot about it that I’d been willing to throw everything away over a bitch I barely remember a decade later. Dumb little prick.
But I’d been so torn up over that chick, I was willing to sell my—
“Blood,” I screamed the last line of the song as I shredded my pick across my guitar.
That was all we were at the end of the day, anyway. Blood and bone and gristle. Fuck anyone who said different or thought there was more. When I shook off this mortal coil, my body would hit the dirt and that was it. So I better make the best of this shit while I had it.
I slammed the mic back in the stand and looked over my shoulder at Luna. She grinned back before waving at the crowd with her sticks in hand. Her round cheeks glowed, and her fiery pink and blue hair was matted to her head with sweat. Her tiny tank top did little to hide her luscious breasts or sweet soft belly that rounded into those hips—
“Come on, man.” Cash clapped me on the back, dragging me off stage along with Tank, our bass guitarists. This was all part of the show. We went off stage this side and Luna and Mason went to the other side, but usually the crowd—