Page 20

Kali

‘H oney, can you pack the cooler? I need to get on the road before the traffic hits if I want to make it to the river on time.’

I sighed, annoyed at his lack of planning, but I had married him with the full knowledge that the man I loved had the time-keeping skills of a plank of wood. Luckily for him, I had already planned for his mad dash this morning, so I didn’t even have to drag myself out of bed as I yelled out from beneath the blankets.

‘I packed it last night, babe. You just need to put it in the trunk.’

Footsteps approached before the blankets were pulled back, and Blake’s handsome, smiling face hovered above me. He pressed a kiss to my forehead that lingered for a beat before he pulled away, love shining in his eyes that made me want to grasp his collar and drag him back to bed so I could make him gasp and groan in pleasure, my tongue laving at his fucking incredible cock.

He did groan when he saw the heat in my eyes, but pulled away. I pouted, and he chuckled, running a hand through his thick, luscious hair as he debated the merits of a quickie before he had to be on the road. A few more minutes couldn’t hurt, right?

But no. He bit his fist as he moved further away, shaking his head. ‘Sorry, honey, but I really have to go or I’ll be late.’

‘Do you have to go?’ I whined, curling the blankets back around me to get comfy again. He had let the chill in when he’d pulled them off me.

‘I promised the guys I’d be there, and the cabin is in my name. I’d cancel if I could, but they’re relying on me,’ he explained for the umpteenth time. He seemed mildly annoyed at the repeated question, but he tempered it with a sweet smile. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can, and then I’ll wine and dine you, I promise.’

I sighed, already knowing there was no talking him into staying. It was his post-surgery ritual. Every time he took part in a complicated medical procedure, he took a week or two off with the guys . They would rent out a cabin down south, pull out the poles, and fish to their heart’s content. The problem was that I’d never met the guys , nor had he ever named them. As far as I knew, they were coworkers, fellow surgeons who worked with him on his more intense cases, but none of whom I had ever actually met.

I was beginning to think they didn’t exist. Some part of me hoped I was wrong, that Blake’s friends were real and they truly were going fishing, but my suspicions grew the longer I didn’t meet any of the so-called ‘guys’.

The last time he went fishing, he came back smelling like a woman’s perfume, and that was when I had started snooping. I hadn’t found anything yet, so I was taking that as evidence that I was just being paranoid. I hadn’t brought it up with Blake, afraid that I was just overthinking things. I didn’t want to ruin what we had with false accusations, but that feeling in my gut was there. He was keeping something from me, I knew it. I just didn’t know what.

But… that wasn’t true. I did know what he was keeping from me. He wasn’t just meeting women behind my back, he was killing them.

…Right?

So… how was I in my bed, back at home, still married to the man who had murdered me? I didn’t just dream that all up. There was no way.

‘Right, I’m off! I’ll call when I land. See you in a week, honey. Love you!’

‘Love you, too!’ I called back automatically, as if I had no control over my mouth. ‘Have a nice trip, and drive safe!’

My brows dipped low in a scowl as I fought to keep the words from leaving my mouth. The last thing I ever wanted to do was tell that piece of shit that I loved him. I hadn’t loved him in a long time, even if – and I was ashamed to admit it - I had stupidly held onto that love despite him killing me. And for quite a while.

Yeah, I hadn’t handled his particular brand of betrayal very well, had I? Talk about denial…

Without warning, the world started tilting around me, the walls waving like I was viewing them from underwater. They twisted, getting faster and faster, then they swirled, taking me on a dizzying journey of psychedelic confusion that had my stomach twisting in a surprisingly strong bout of nausea.

I didn’t know what pissed me off more: the baffling distortion, or the sickness it wrought, because for the first physical sensation I had felt since I’d died, why did it have to be nausea, of all things?

Slowly, the distortion abated, settling into a brand new scene that I took a moment to process. I was no longer in my house, no longer curled up beneath my blankets, and Blake was nowhere in sight. Instead, I seemed to have found myself back in the hallway of my old high school. The one where I had met Chance all those years ago in a moment that had irrevocably changed my life. I had once thought it was for the better. Oh, how na?ve I had been.

‘Hey, you,’ Chance’s familiar voice sounded from behind me. I spun to see him in all his teenage glory, pimples and braces and all. He was grinning at me, flashing the metal on his teeth as he sidled up next to me. I realised that we were by his locker. I used to wait for him there between classes. I glanced towards the back wall where the oversized clock ticked away above our heads, and realised it was lunchtime.

‘Hey, back,’ I responded in our typical greeting, once again against my will. It was like I was reliving my memories without being able to change them, yet I was doing small things that I hadn’t done before, like remembering my husband was a serial killer, or looking at the clock.

‘What are you doing after school today?’ Chance asked, trying and failing to seem nonchalant. I remembered this. It was the day I met Blake for the first time.

‘Nothing much. Why?’ The words spilled from my mouth without permission.

‘Do you… want to come over? There’s something I want to show you.’

I blinked at him in surprise, though I was anything but. I was screaming inside my head. No! Abort! Don’t do it! Run as fast as you can!

‘ Like, to your house?’ I asked, internally cringing at how ignorant I sounded. Of course, he was inviting me to his house. This was the first time he had ever invited me over, however, and the giddiness I had felt as I thought he was asking me out would soon be crushed, only to be replaced with a new kind of heart-pounding excitement when Blake had swooped in. He had charmed me in an instant, and I quickly forgot about my unrequited crush on my friend in favour of the brother who actually saw me as a girl.

This was the moment that set me on the path to destruction, but no matter how hard I screamed inside my head to stop, to say no, to find another friend who I didn’t have a crush on so I could live a long, happy life and not marry a serial killer , there was simply no changing the past.

‘Oh, uh, sure,’ I stammered, blushing up a storm. My cheeks were so hot that it was a wonder how Chance never noticed my pathetic little crush on him. Or perhaps he had and was just being polite by not mentioning it. Either way, it ended with the same result.

He didn’t reciprocate those feelings, and I ended up dead.

Chance’s face caved in on itself, the vision grotesque enough that I actually blanched and stumbled away from him. The vision was followed closely by the scenery joining Chance in its macabre display of deformation. The world was warping again, and I was once again shoved from one memory and into another with only the bile-raising knotting of my stomach to show for it.

On and on it went, memory after memory, each one showing me a moment in time where I made the wrong fucking choice. If only I had said no. If only I’d let things be. If only I hadn’t snooped or tried to put myself out there. If only, if only, of only.

But what if’s weren’t going to help me now. There was no changing the past, only embracing the future. The real question was, what kind of future could I have now that I was dead? I knew that I needed to avenge not only my death but the other girls’ as well, but how could I do that from beyond the grave? And how could I get this memory bombardment to stop?

I didn’t know what was happening to me, or why. I hadn’t slept since I’d become a ghost, for obvious reasons, so I could determine that I wasn’t asleep. I wasn’t dreaming. It had to be something else. But what?

Bianca’s terrified expression pushed to the forefront of my mind. Her blood. Her screams. Her agonised sobs. Her demand that I make him pay.

Something clicked inside me, then, like she had somehow given me the permission I needed to follow through on that very demand. Our desires had aligned, and we had merged.

Holy shit. I ate Bianca…

Now that I was thinking about her, it was like I could feel her presence in the back of my mind. Not like a physical presence, but more like an echo of her. That echo grew and grew until I could feel her in every atom of my being, like they had sucked her energy into each and every cell.

Which was strange, because I was a ghost, and I no longer had cells. I wasn’t a physical being… so why did I suddenly feel like I was?

It wasn’t the same sensation as when I’d been alive. I was pretty sure I would never feel that again, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. There were some aspects of having a physical form that I missed, but for the most part, I enjoyed not being beholden to the needs and limitations of a body. I missed the taste of my favourite foods, but I did not miss the emptiness of hunger. I missed the sensation of being touched, the pleasure of being brought to a climax, but I didn’t miss the bite of pain that came from being sliced apart, broken, and chopped into pieces.

Even though I’d felt a continuation of the searing agony after my death, each carving Blake had made, each clean break of my bones as he dismembered me and cut me into smaller pieces, it wasn’t the same as if I had been alive. Sure, it was torture in and of itself, but the sensation was different, like I was being pulled apart at the seams and was barely holding on by a thread. It had taken me ages, possibly years, to feel like I wasn’t going to fall apart if I so much as turned my head.

Something about the mere thought of Bianca flipped some sort of switch, and the memories stopped, my senses slowly rousing. I could feel myself again. I could feel that I was lying prone on the ground, sticks digging into me and blades of grass tickling my skin. It was odd, since they were both tangible objects. They should have drifted right through me, not pushed up into me or brushed against me.

What the fuck was happening?

I inhaled deeply, out of habit rather than necessity, and jolted at the shock of the sensation of air moving through my nostrils, my lungs inflating, the rush of oxygen hitting my brain.

‘What the…?’

The air moved back out through my throat, drying my mouth and making me cough. I shouldn’t have been coughing. There shouldn’t have been any air moving through my body at all, unless it was through me. What was happening to me?

‘Yes, ghost girl. That’s it. You’re doing so well,’ the now-familiar voice of the shadow man praised from somewhere nearby, but I was too overwhelmed and overstimulated to even begin to try to open my eyes to look for him.

Instead, I sank into the awaiting darkness, eagerly embracing its promise of peace.