SNIPPET ONE - FROM "DYSPHORIA - BURNED BLOOD SERIES BOOK ONE"
Published: August 2023
Published: August 2023
Lilith’s bathroom had turned into a gruesome scene. The hook that hung from the shower ceiling was one of the first items she’d installed when she moved in. Only, she hadn’t had a chance to use it until that night.
Maria’s body hung upside down as a small, carefully-placed tube poured her blood into a large bucket. There wasn’t much to do other than wait, but Lilith liked to watch it. It was the closest thing she could get to table-side service.
It was a pretty sight, but one that had taken her some time to get used to in the beginning and it was a method that had taken her many years to perfect. She’d hardly had to harvest food that way for years, but a small part of her missed it. At least it had given her something to do in society’s boring centuries.
It wouldn’t take long before she had most of the blood tapped out of Maria’s body and thankfully, she had picked her victim well. It would likely be some time before anybody was looking for her.
Maria had turned out to be a brilliant target. She had no children, no husband, and no parents looking for her. It was a perfect, and guilt-free killing. As the blood poured through the plastic tube and into the bucket, Lilith’s mind drifted. She thought about previous victims, and how hard it had been to kill some of them.
Some of them fought her, and some of them begged her not to kill them. Not all of them had been worth the effort. There were some who held memories so awful that she had wished never to have tasted them.
Maria’s killing had been an attempt to distract herself from thoughts of Akara. It was preferable to staring at the wall, or her cellphone as she waited for a message or a call to come through. It had worked. Well into the night, she found her mind devoid of the thoughts that had bothered her before.
She had only happy memories and remembered great feasts. There were many years in which the Unnaturals did not need to hide. They would have large tables, with crystal bottles, filled with the finest blood they could find.
There were even some small groups of people who believed it a great honor to have their blood tapped for their feasts. Those memories were always the most enjoyable.
Centuries later, however, Lilith sat alone in her bathroom as she watched the blood pour into a large bucket on the floor of her shower.
It was a far cry from what it once had been. But those memories kept her distracted. So much so that she did not hear the knocking at her front door.
SNIPPET TWO - FROM OBJECTS OF HORROR
Publishing May 2024
Publishing May 2024
Her smile quickly faded, though. A deep frown burrowed her brow and the corners of her mouth turned downward. The face disappeared from the glass and I heard another creak in the room, a footstep with no weight attached to it.
The sound of a sob pierced through the room, cracking through the silence. I could not move, and I could hardly breathe. It was as if the sadness felt in that cry seeped through my skin and chilled me from the inside out.
I looked around the room, expecting to see her at every turn of my body. The sobbing had not yet stopped. It got worse with each passing minute. There was nobody there to experience it with me. I was alone there with the specter.
“Please,” I whispered. “What is going on?”
The sobbing stopped at that moment. Almost unbelievably, the silence was worse than the sobbing. The air had changed in the room. Instead of feeling heavy and cold, it felt as if it had been electrified.
It was like being caught in a trap. My heart was pounding in my throat and my head was spinning. It felt to me as if I was prey in that room, and that I had walked right onto the territory of my hunter.
With great difficulty, my feet carried me out of the room. Stepping out, it felt as if two hands had been released from my throat. My lungs filled with air again and the light had changed. Everything was different.
For a moment, I considered going back into the room to take one final look at the dress. But just as I took a step toward it, I heard the sobbing again. It emanated from within those walls, a warning to me not to take another step.
My life had changed that day. From one experience, the world had filled to the brim with people and spirits. Every empty space appears to be filled to me now.
Anna Baker will continue to mourn the life she never had, her spirit as encased there as her wedding dress that she never got to wear.
THE MESSAGE
2023
As usual, I found myself in the middle of a conversation that I had paid no attention to. I laughed when everyone else laughed, and occasionally repeated a phrase or word that seemed important to the conversation. A glass of wine sat comfortably in my hand, making a regular trip up to my mouth where the liquid started its important job of making me social.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to be there, or that I didn’t enjoy the company. It was that there was a strange feeling in the air that I could not quite understand. As strange as it was, it felt familiar, too.
I could feel it on the tips of my fingers, like a crackling of electricity that lingered for a moment before popping away. Then, a few seconds later, it would come back. I looked around the room, and those around me didn’t seem to notice it.
It wasn’t until a few minutes later of trying to feel the air around me that I realized I was alone in the room. I had no idea where everyone else had gone. Still, it felt as if the room had been filled with conversation just a few minutes ago. As if they were right there, just beyond a thin veil that obscured them from me.
A movement to my right, just outside of my field of vision. It was fleeting, as if something had blown past me, or a memory had escaped my mind and walked right through the room.
The sudden quiet seemed to amplify the strange feeling of the air, until it felt as if my lungs were filled with needles made of ice and alcohol. Then there it was again. A movement to my right. Only, this time I turned my head in time to see it.
Two wispy and translucent legs walked past me, with nothing left above the knee. I say they walked, but there were no feet or foot steps involved in the occasion. Like a longing, I moved forward toward them.
Intrigue and fear washed over me. My glass now nestled between some books on a nearby table, I came closer to where the ghostly legs had been just moments before. I both did and didn’t know what I was doing, or why.
A force pressed through my chest, sucking the air from my lungs as I fell to my knees. My eyes wide, I looked forward as if the answers to my questions might stare me right in the face.
I would have no such luck.
Another surge through my chest arched my back, until my eyes were turned up toward the ceiling. When it released, I gasped for air. The icy needles stinging my lungs and skin again. There was nothing to think or do. My body felt filled with static, and it pulsated from me like airwaves from a radio.
The sound of a voice, with no body attached made my neck stiffen. It burst into my head like a thought that had stolen its way in.
“Tell her about it,” the voice said.
I wanted to know, but the sound of it turned my stomach and twisted it into a tight knot. My limbs were too heavy to lift my body off the ground. So, I stopped struggling.
“Tell me about what?” I asked into the air around me.
“The accident,” the disembodied voice returned.
A deafening scraping sound pierced through the air around me, filling my head with chaos. I opened my mouth to argue against what was happening, but no sound came out. My mind had no more control over it’s own thoughts. In an instant, I was someone else.
The scraping sound continued as if the inside of my mind were being scratched at. Then, a searing pain in my abdomen. For a moment, it felt as if I had been stabbed, impaled by something that I could not see.
But I could feel it.
It burned, and pressed through me. I felt the warmth of blood as it spilled out and soaked my clothes. I felt the hurt every time I tried to breathe.
Air.
I needed air so desperately that every atom in my body burned for it. Only, when I opened my mouth again I screamed so loudly that the window panes rattled in their frames. It was no my voice that emanated my body. The voice of someone else flowed from the center of my being and out into the air around me, dispersing in every direction.
Finally, relief.
Gone was the static in the air around me. There was no voice that spoke anymore. All that was left was me, and the safety of the ground upon which I crouched.
