Blood.
That's the only memory he carries from a childhood
he does not remember. And now it is all he knows. Blood is his
life.
Knox Bishop has done a lot of horrible things,
all at the command of the man who holds his leash. It's a matter of loyalty for
him. Allegiance to the man who saved his life when he was a child. So he goes
where he is needed and does what he is told. He tortures. He kills. He kills.
He tortures. It is an unrelenting cycle that he constantly craves and can never
quite satisfy.
Until her.
Eighteen year old Lacey
Barnes distributes her assets to fund her dreams. Medical school is the end
game and she is determined to get there by any means necessary. But a family
member's careless mistake derails her plans and now she must pay a price in
order to save him.
She goes to Knox willingly offering him the
only valuable thing she has. Herself. In doing so he allows her into his world,
a world filled with darkness but rather than being scared it intrigues her. It
lures her, calls to something in her that she hadn't known existed until he
awakened it.
Every bit of his
flaws is reflected in her and Knox will do anything to keep her in the darkness
with him.
Knox
I’m not what you would call normal. The word has no meaning
to me. But I’ve been pretending to act normal. It’s something I’ve been
practicing since I’ve been aware of the thrum and its significance in my life.
I was seven when I first heard the lullaby. Second grade, just before recess.
It happened in a squall. Nothing and then all at once. I remember everything
about that day. The bell rang and the other children went to play. Not me.
Never me. I always stayed behind, mostly by choice, but never contested because
the other children thought I was weird. I think maybe they unconsciously knew
that I was lacking something fundamental. Something they all had and I didn’t,
and maybe even never had at all. Whatever it was, I was alienated, excluded
from their games. But I couldn’t say it bothered me. I was indifferent to it.
Katia would sometimes play with me. Yuri’s youngest daughter, my adoptive
sister, kept me company when she wasn’t with her own friends. But she’d been
home sick that day.
In the small classroom with its oversized,
rainbow-colored letters hanging over the chalkboard and tiled number blocks
littering the carpeted floor, I sat in the beanbag chair staring fixatedly at
the class pet. Sweet Ms. Devon always stayed with me but she’d left for a
moment. A moment to heat her lunch. A moment to speak to a fellow staff member
in the teachers’ lounge. But it’d been a moment too long for me. The noise in
my head had been too loud. The urge too strong. The pink-eyed little rabbit,
Mr. Apples, and the yellow pair of scissors sitting blades down in Ms. Devon’s
“Best Teacher” mug had been too much of a temptation for me to
resist.
The pounding of my heart. The lullaby and the
thrum. The latch had given way beneath my shaking fingers, soaked with
apprehension and anticipation. The struggle. The frantic movement of something
living, something warm, with the same accelerated heartbeat as mine grappling
for life. Desperate for freedom even while knowing the inevitable hand of death
loomed was intoxicating. The thrill, the excitement, the sweet seductive power.
I swam in it. Like too much candy on Halloween. Too much ice cream in the
summer. It had been a quick death for Mr. Apples. It had been crude.
Amateurish. But ever so effective in quieting the discord of my
mind.
Poor, sweet Ms. Devon came to find me on the
floor of the overly-bright classroom. Huddled on the floor, covered in Mr.
Apples. She’d been one to smile a lot. But I stole her smile that day and
replaced it with horror instead. Her pretty features contorted like a Kabuki
mask.
Francette lives in Massachusetts with her
amazingly supportive husband of ten years and her darling two year old son.
Reading amazing books has led her to writing and she’s dabbled in fan-fiction
before self-publishing her own works. She’s constantly thinking up new stories
to write and does her best work when music is playing in the background.
Romance is where she’s most comfortable but she hopes to one day venture in
mystery novels. She has a weakness for coffee ice cream, tropical fruits and a
good glass of wine.
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