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Publisher: Cari Silverwood
Release date: October 30th, 2014 Length: 11,000 words Genre: Gothic Urban Fantasy When your own mind is tricking you, who can you believe? Having to figure out whether she was alive or dead had never figured in her dreams or her nightmares. Climbing out of a grave was Nefer’s first mistake. Falling in love again, with the same man she’d met a thousand times before, was her second. Sometimes you have to lose before you can get up and fill the evil ones with a truckload of bullets. Even a nemesis has her off days. |
This story contains graphic violence, adult content, and nonconsensual scenes, though it is not erotic.
Some readers may find this story disturbing.
Chapter 1
She leaned on the tiled wall and watched the grime from her body sluice down her legs then curl into the drain. When she stuck her head farther under the shower, a lump of pure dirt fell from her hair and plopped into the water. Jesus. Sleeping rough in parks and on the streets wasn't helping. The dreams still came to her. The nightmares still stalked her.
Her sister vanishing into that house. Men dragging her away. Beatings after beatings. Rape. Her imagination took her down the dark rabbit hole where she imagined everything possible. And the police had done nothing. Hadn't they? Memories were so damn unreliable after a certain point of intoxication. She swayed and laughed, hiccupping and feeling her tears burn her eyes before they washed away. Try saying that out loud. Intoxi-bloody-cation.
Crying for days made your eyes raw. Drinking for days made your brain raw.
Some rust-brown dried blood leaked color into a trail of water running over her belly. She rubbed at the heavier scab it must have come from. Nothing underneath. She’d healed well from whatever had caused it.
Her memory had gone to hell. Except for Suze. She remembered her. Baby sister. Fuck. She'd had a baby coming. A baby! All that shopping for prams and shit, useless.
Life was just sweet. Not.
The taps squeaked like a poorly adjusted phonograph as she wound them in. For a moment when she’d slid the money across to the attendant, she'd thought he'd not let her through. Sure, it was a public swimming pool but the look of frozen horror on his pimply teenage face had driven home how bad she looked. Dirty, bloody, and with clothes that needed throwing away and torching.
As she toweled her hair dry, she cast an eye over the clean clothes beside her fabric bag. If the attendant had known what was in her bag, he’d have been even more worried.
And she couldn't even remember where she'd gotten it, or the new clothes.
Shiny. Deadly metal.
She rotated the gun, looking for things like safety catches and wondering how many bullets were in the magazine. She'd managed to slide the mag out before and counted them but the number eluded her. An automatic, so surely there'd be at least ten?
She tucked it into the back waistband of the jeans and shrugged on the jacket. As long as she pointed it in the right direction, braced her wrist, and fired straight at the fuckers, she'd be right.
They'd hurt her sister, her baby Suze, and they were going to pay. Her dreams were true. She knew it in her bones. Knew it, knew it. Nobody would stop her.
Bad idea, came the familiar whisper inside her head. A male whisper.
She shook her head, annoyed. Only she would have a male subconscious.
*****
The facade of the haunted house was as garish as when her sister had entered. Evening, so the lights were on. Red floodlights flashed and turned the two story front into a landscape of deep ruby with shadows so dark a gargoyle would hide with ease.
The timber steps creaked under her flip flops.
Enter at your own risk was written in fake dripping blood on a crooked plank sign. At the turn of the cold door knob, the door clicked, then sighed open onto a dark corridor.
Bare timber flooring. Walls with old paintings hung crooked. Fake spider webs. Floating dust.
In the background a soundtrack began to play – distant screams and maniacal laughter, along with creaking and chopping noises.
The far end of the corridor opened out into a small space. There sat a booth which was boringly labelled Booth. The gun dug into the small of her back, as she walked forward. If this got any more classic haunted house, a ghost made of cobwebs would sweep down the hallway.
This wasn't an average haunted house, though. Their advertisements proclaimed it the scariest haunted house you’ll ever see, and to make a will before you come, because sometimes people don’t leave. If you came here you agreed to have the wildest things done to you, in the name of horror, and you paid through the nose for it.
No one else understood how true the ads were.
Suze had come in here and never come out. She knew it, even without solid proof. Sometimes you just fucking knew. And what a time for her stomach to want to regurgitate all over the nonexistent carpet. The floor between her feet shifted and spun. Swallowing down bile, she planted a palm on the ledge at the front of the booth. Were those her toes down there? Since when did she like black nail polish?
“Hello there, sweetheart.” A muffled male voice.
She raised her head, squinted.
The face swimming before her was...not a face. A white plastic mask covered the lower half, over the mouth area, with a grill like a car. Hannibal Lector on the cheap.
She leaned on the tiled wall and watched the grime from her body sluice down her legs then curl into the drain. When she stuck her head farther under the shower, a lump of pure dirt fell from her hair and plopped into the water. Jesus. Sleeping rough in parks and on the streets wasn't helping. The dreams still came to her. The nightmares still stalked her.
Her sister vanishing into that house. Men dragging her away. Beatings after beatings. Rape. Her imagination took her down the dark rabbit hole where she imagined everything possible. And the police had done nothing. Hadn't they? Memories were so damn unreliable after a certain point of intoxication. She swayed and laughed, hiccupping and feeling her tears burn her eyes before they washed away. Try saying that out loud. Intoxi-bloody-cation.
Crying for days made your eyes raw. Drinking for days made your brain raw.
Some rust-brown dried blood leaked color into a trail of water running over her belly. She rubbed at the heavier scab it must have come from. Nothing underneath. She’d healed well from whatever had caused it.
Her memory had gone to hell. Except for Suze. She remembered her. Baby sister. Fuck. She'd had a baby coming. A baby! All that shopping for prams and shit, useless.
Life was just sweet. Not.
The taps squeaked like a poorly adjusted phonograph as she wound them in. For a moment when she’d slid the money across to the attendant, she'd thought he'd not let her through. Sure, it was a public swimming pool but the look of frozen horror on his pimply teenage face had driven home how bad she looked. Dirty, bloody, and with clothes that needed throwing away and torching.
As she toweled her hair dry, she cast an eye over the clean clothes beside her fabric bag. If the attendant had known what was in her bag, he’d have been even more worried.
And she couldn't even remember where she'd gotten it, or the new clothes.
Shiny. Deadly metal.
She rotated the gun, looking for things like safety catches and wondering how many bullets were in the magazine. She'd managed to slide the mag out before and counted them but the number eluded her. An automatic, so surely there'd be at least ten?
She tucked it into the back waistband of the jeans and shrugged on the jacket. As long as she pointed it in the right direction, braced her wrist, and fired straight at the fuckers, she'd be right.
They'd hurt her sister, her baby Suze, and they were going to pay. Her dreams were true. She knew it in her bones. Knew it, knew it. Nobody would stop her.
Bad idea, came the familiar whisper inside her head. A male whisper.
She shook her head, annoyed. Only she would have a male subconscious.
*****
The facade of the haunted house was as garish as when her sister had entered. Evening, so the lights were on. Red floodlights flashed and turned the two story front into a landscape of deep ruby with shadows so dark a gargoyle would hide with ease.
The timber steps creaked under her flip flops.
Enter at your own risk was written in fake dripping blood on a crooked plank sign. At the turn of the cold door knob, the door clicked, then sighed open onto a dark corridor.
Bare timber flooring. Walls with old paintings hung crooked. Fake spider webs. Floating dust.
In the background a soundtrack began to play – distant screams and maniacal laughter, along with creaking and chopping noises.
The far end of the corridor opened out into a small space. There sat a booth which was boringly labelled Booth. The gun dug into the small of her back, as she walked forward. If this got any more classic haunted house, a ghost made of cobwebs would sweep down the hallway.
This wasn't an average haunted house, though. Their advertisements proclaimed it the scariest haunted house you’ll ever see, and to make a will before you come, because sometimes people don’t leave. If you came here you agreed to have the wildest things done to you, in the name of horror, and you paid through the nose for it.
No one else understood how true the ads were.
Suze had come in here and never come out. She knew it, even without solid proof. Sometimes you just fucking knew. And what a time for her stomach to want to regurgitate all over the nonexistent carpet. The floor between her feet shifted and spun. Swallowing down bile, she planted a palm on the ledge at the front of the booth. Were those her toes down there? Since when did she like black nail polish?
“Hello there, sweetheart.” A muffled male voice.
She raised her head, squinted.
The face swimming before her was...not a face. A white plastic mask covered the lower half, over the mouth area, with a grill like a car. Hannibal Lector on the cheap.
Copyright Cari Silverwood 2014. All rights reserved. No part of these publications may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the author.