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“ No!” I screamed at her, all patience gone. “You are not a part of me. You aren’t…”
A fury I hadn’t felt in years bubbled through my chest. There was only one way to get through to her. I grabbed the porcelain mug from her hand, smashed it on the counter, and swiped it a gleaming shard across her perfect white throat. She fell in a heap, blood everywhere.
As I stood over her, watching her hair turn strawberry, I felt a tug and looked down at my leg. Carol A
***
The thought is fleeting. What have I done?
I’ve just killed Carol A
The blood drips… drips… drips… from my arm. I feel lighter already.
Novel Excerpts
ALL THE PRETTY GIRLS
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“No. Please don’t.” She whispered the words, a divine prayer. “No. Please don’t.” There they were again, bubbles forming at her lips, the words slipping out as if greased from her tongue.
Even in death, Jessica A
He noted the signs of death dispassionately. Blue lips, cyanotic. The hemorrhaging in the sclera of the eyes, pinpoint pricks of crimson. The body seemed to cool immediately, though he knew it would take some time for the heat to fully dissipate. The vivacious yet shy eighteen-year-old was now nothing more than a piece of meat, soon to be consigned back to the earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Blowfly to maggot. The life cycle complete once again.
He shook off the reverie. It was time to get to work. Glancing around, he spied his tool kit. He didn’t remember kicking it over, perhaps his memory was failing him. Had the girl actually struggled? He didn’t think so, but confusion sets in at the most important moments. He would have to consider that later, when he could give it his undivided thought. Only the radiant glow of her eyes at the moment of expiration remained for him now. He palmed the handsaw and lifted her limp hand.
No, please don’t. Three little words, i
No, please don’t. Hear these words, and dream of hell.
***
Nashville was holding its collective breath on this warm summer night. After four stays of execution, the death watch had started again. Homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson watched as the order was a
The cheers depressed her. The whole holiday depressed her. As a child, she’d been wild for the fireworks, for the cotton-candy fun of youth and mindless celebration. As she grew older, she mourned that lost child, trying desperately to reach far within herself to recapture that i
The sky was dark now. She could see the throngs of people heading back to whatever parking spots they had found, children skipping between tired parents, fluorescent bracelets and glow sticks arcing through the night. They would spirit these i
A memory rose, unbidden, unwanted. Trite in its way, yet the truth of the statement hit her to the core. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Or became a woman. Her days of purity were behind her now.
Taking one last glance at the quickening night, she closed the blinds and sat heavily in her chair. Sighed. Ran her fingers through her long blond hair. Wondered why she was hanging out in the Homicide office when she could be enjoying the revelry. Why she was still committed to the job. Laid her head on her desk and waited for the phone to ring. Got back up and flipped the switch to the television.
The crowds were a pulsing mass at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison. Police had cordoned off sections of the yard of the prison, one for the pro-death penalty activists, another comprised the usual peaceful subjects, a third pe
The young reporter from Cha
As she watched, her eyes flicked to the wall clock, industrial numbers glowing on a white face: 11:59 P.M. An eerie silence overcame the crowd. It was time.
Taylor took a deep breath as the minute hand swept with a click into the 12:00 position. She didn’t realize she was holding her breath until the hand snapped to 12:01 A.M. That was it, then. The drugs would have been administered. Richard Curtis would have a peaceful sleep, his heart’s last beat recorded into the a