Page 26 of Sweet Venom

VIOLET

Acrushing weight smothers me, pulling me down so viciously, I gasp, my eyes flying open.

At first, I think it’s sleep paralysis—that sickening awareness where my mind is awake but my body refuses to move.

But it’s worse than that.

A woman sits perched on my ribs like a demon, her seemingly skinny frame impossibly heavy, suffocating the breaths from my lungs.

Her once soft and beautiful face is now a grotesque mockery of what I remember. Sunken cheekbones, eyes stretched wide, pupils swallowing the amber, lips curled into something between a grin and a snarl. Our hair is the same color, but hers is longer, reaching her lower back in silky strands.

Mama.

“You bitch.” The bite in her cold, venomous voice slithers over my skin, seeping into me, crawling under my ribs and settling in my bones.

Like it belongs there.

Like it never left.

I try to move, to shift, but my limbs don’t obey me, remaining as rigid and motionless as cement.

Despite the numbness, I want to reach a hand out and touch her. Beg for her forgiveness.

Ask,Why can’t you love me, Mama?

That’s what other mothers did. They loved their kids and spoiled them. I was fine with not being spoiled, but I desperately tried to make her like me. Since we moved all the time, I had no friends, and she was my only source of affection.

Affection she never gave me.

Right now, her fingers dig into my shoulders, nails as sharp as claws. “Useless.”

She lifts her hand and slaps me, the sting reverberating in my cheek. “Your face is fucking disturbing! You’re the mistake of my life and the weight around my neck, Violet. Athingthat shouldn’t have been born.”

I shake my head. A small, weak motion. The only rebellion I can manage—or could’ve ever managed. I want to speak, but my lips remain sealed shut as if stitched together with an invisible thread.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t fight.

I can only listen as she spits her rancid words into my ears, the stench of something decaying curling around my face.

“Youkilledme, you worthless piece of shit.”

Her hands tighten, her nails biting deeper, slicing through the fabric of reality, into my skin, cutting open the fragile pieces of myself that I try to keep together.

I didn’t,I want to say.I didn’t do it, Mama.

But there are no words in my throat, no sound except the way my pulse pounds and pounds andpoundsagainst my skull.

She leans in, close enough that her lips brush my ear,her breath thick and rotting. “You’re a terminal disease who will kill anyone stupid enough to love you. Starting with Dahlia.”

The weight intensifies. My ribs groan under the pressure, my heart a frantic animal trapped in a cage that’s too small.

I scream.

And suddenly, I’m falling.

The world shatters.