Two years ago, I set myself the goal of publication and yesterday, I reached it!
I just recieved word that my contract with Llewellyn Publication has been finalized and approved.
2 books with the option for the third... how crazy is that??
I'll post more as I learn more... to celebrate, here's the first chapter of my soon to be published thriller, THE FIRST--
One
Yuma,
Arizona
December 22, 1999
Waiting was the worst part. The
sporadic stretches of time between his visits—when he came and hurt her—were
the hardest torture to bear. She had no idea how long she'd been in the dark.
No longer trusted herself to count the days. It’d been October first when he
took her. What month it was now was impossible to figure out but if every time
he raped her marked the passing of a day, every time he cut her, the passing of
an hour then she'd been locked away for centuries and everyone she loved was
dead and gone.
Shifting, she felt the pull of dried
blood and unhealed wounds across her skin. She couldn't see them—the only
kindness the darkness granted her—but she could feel them. Smell them. They
were everywhere. Cuts, long and thin, ran the length of her spine. The inside
of her thighs. Along the swell of her breasts. The soft flesh under her arms.
The soles of her feet. The stench of old blood and infection mingled with the
warm, revolting smell of the bucket she was forced to use as a toilet. She
tried not to think about it. About what had been done to her body. About what
she’d been forced to do to survive…
Sounds penetrated the dense folds of
black that surrounded her.
Footsteps.
Slow and measured.
Terror gripped her, forced movement
into limbs no longer totally under her control. Lurching to her feet, she
swayed beneath the almost impossible heaviness of her own body weight. She took
a few shuffling steps, kept one hand braced against the wall, while the other
hovered out in front of her.
He wanted to play.
Her hands closed on the knob and
grappled with it. Her hands were encased in duct tape—wrapped round and round
until her fingers were fused together and rendered useless. Without working
fingers, getting the door open was difficult, but not impossible. Using both
hands, she gripped the knob and turned. The door unlatched and swung inward.
Step by step, she forced her legs
and feet forward until she slammed into the wall opposite the door. Pressing
her battered cheek against it, she dragged cleaner air into her lungs in ragged
gulps.
Light glowed a dull, muted red
against her lids. Instinct seized her, her brain sent the signal, tried to open
her eyes even though she knew she couldn’t. Her lids wouldn’t budge—hadn’t
since she woke in the dark.
Experience told her that going right
was wrong. There were stairs to the right but they led to nothing more than a
locked door. He wanted to chase her. It was his favorite game. She could feel
him, standing at the base of the stairs.
Staring at her.
Her heart started its frantic
kicking. It bounced around her chest, tried to claw its way up her throat.
Turning left, she moved legs as fast as they'd go, her shoulder hugging the
wall to keep herself upright.
Footsteps echoed after her, slow at
first but then faster and faster.
He was coming.
~*~
He reached the bottom of the stairs
and smiled when the door flew open. Watched her stumble across the hall and
slam into the wall in front of her. He took a deep breath—pulled the sweet
smell of her blood into his chest and held it.
Even at a distance, he could feel
the heat of it. The way it tingled across his skin. His mouth began to water.
The need to taste her was a fire in his blood. He'd fought against the burn for
years. Not because he felt like what he wanted to do to her was wrong but
because he knew.
Eventually he'd go too far and
end up killing her. Killing wasn’t the problem. The problem was the more he had
of her, the more he tasted her, the less he was able to control himself. Every
time he drew his knife across her skin, the urge to push the blade in just a
little deeper grew stronger and stronger. Sooner or later, he was gonna snap.
Wouldn't be able to stop himself. The thought worried him. He could feel it,
circling closer and closer. Not that he didn't like killing—no, killing was
fun. He’d killed lots of times. Animals—cats and rabbits mostly. A dog here and
there.
Some people said animals didn’t have
souls but he knew that wasn’t true. Felt them plenty as they wriggled free of
the meat and bone that trapped them. Sometimes he had to force it out and
sometimes that slippery thing seemed almost grateful to be set free. He liked
it better when they put up a fight. Liked to peel back the skin—layer by
layer—until the screaming thing beneath him simply... stopped.
But his Melissa was different.
There was fight in her. More than
he'd bargained for—it thrilled him beyond measure. He’d had her for eighty-two
days—eighty-three, if he counted today—and she hadn't given in. Hadn't wriggled
free.
Not yet, anyway.
She lurched forward, her gait made
slow and uneven by the drugs he kept her on. Her naked body smeared with blood
he'd drawn. Covered in wounds he'd inflicted.
Beautiful. Almost too beautiful to
be real. He swept his gaze over her face before they settled on her eyes and
the neat row of stitches that kept them closed. He was sorry for it—not being
able to see her eyes. He wanted to rip those stitches out of her lids and force
her eyes open, make her look at him. Make her see him—but he couldn't. Seeing
him would ruin everything.
His eyes traveled downward. The
blood was freshest between her thighs. Thick and dark. Moist and warm. Seeing
it killed his amusement, dried it up. The thought of nesting there—pumping
himself into that slippery hole between her legs, cutting her while he did,
over and over—moved him forward. He could see it. Her blood-slicked skin,
marbled with his semen. His hands and cock covered in both.
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled
out the KA-BAR he always carried. The knife had been a gift from his father for
his twelfth birthday. If he knew what he’d been using it for, his daddy
wouldn’t be too happy. Thinking about it made him smile. He flicked the blade
open and gripped it tight.
Looking at her always made him
hungry.
He started after her, took the
distance slow at first, but every inch forward pushed him harder and faster
until he was nearly running. Fell on her, dragged her under and she went down
swinging and screaming.
Just how he liked it.
~*~
She hit the floor, her skull
bouncing off the unforgiving pad of concrete that had only seconds before been
under her feet. Her arms swung wildly, hitting him again and again.
The sound of his laughter told her
he found her efforts amusing. Anger roiled around with the terror. The scream
forced its way out, nothing more than a dry croak that burned her throat as she
drove the flat of her foot into something soft. He grunted in pain and let go.
Suddenly free, she rolled over,
tried to crawl but couldn't. Digging her fingers into the rough floor, she
pulled—dragged herself until she had nowhere to go.
Dead end.
Pressing herself against the wall,
she drew her legs to a chest that heaved and wracked with dry, wordless sobs.
He'd recovered from whatever
minor damage she'd managed to inflict, was standing over
her. He wasn’t
laughing anymore.
She heard the jerk and snap of
his belt as he yanked it off. Felt the bite and hiss of his zipper as he drew
it down.
Battered knees forced themselves
harder into her chest. Her swollen face buried itself against her thighs.
Please...
please let me die this time. Let me go. Please—
His hand fell on her head,
gripped her hair and flung her to the floor. He crouched beside her, his warm
breath excited and hurried against her face and neck. Grabbing her arms, he
looped his belt around her wrists, yanked them above her head. Bent them back
until they felt like they’d snap in two. Her eyes rolled in her sockets. The
red burn of light behind her lids went black.
Hands fell on her thighs and yanked
them wide. A fierce burn, accompanied by the horrible pressure of him inside
her as he rammed his hips against her—faster and faster—his grunts and moans a
dull roar inside her head.
"Mine. Mine. Mine..." He
muttered it over and over, each thrust accompanied by the only word she'd ever
heard him say. She knew him, but every time she tried to focus on the voice
behind the guttural tone, she got lost. Let herself drift away from what was
happening to her until the pain and horror faded away into nothing more than
shadow.
The tip of his knife sank in,
dragged along her breast, skirted around the rapid, uneven rhythm of her heart
but she hardly felt it. His tongue came next, flat and wet against her breast,
lapping at the blood his knife had drawn. The feel of it turned her stomach—she
was almost glad when he pushed the blade in further and she prayed this time he'd force it deep enough to kill
her. It bumped along her ribcage, its journey made jagged and broken by each
brutal thrust of his hips. The blade skated along her belly, his muttering
became frenzied, almost enraged. The pounding between her thighs came even
faster, even more violent.
Over.
It was almost over—
The blade at her belly sank in deep,
a vertical breach that stole her breath and answered her prayers.
The lift and drag of the knife being
yanked from her torso set her on fire, followed by another thrust of both hips
and knife. “Mine.” This time he sank
the blade in at a diagonal angle.
Lift. Drag. Thrust. “Mine.” Diagonal.
Lift. Drag. Thrust. “Mine.” Vertical.
It was the letter M.
Something inside her broke free and
floated away. The legs she'd tried so desperately to close, even with him
between them, went lax. A sudden warmth stole over her and she smiled.
She was dying. She was finally free.
~*~
He felt for a pulse. Nothing.
Watched her gore splattered chest
for the rise and fall of breathing. It was still.
He bathed her and put her in the
trunk before driving toward the place he’d picked out a few weeks before. It
was far from where he’d kept her, even farther from where he’d taken her. A
small building appeared to the left of the road and he turned. It was a
Catholic church—St. Rose of Lima. The structure was squat and brown, hunkered
in the dirt it sat in, as if afraid of the wide night sky and endless desert
that surrounded it.
St. Rose served a transient
congregation. Mostly migrant workers that labored in the cotton and melon
fields that dotted the landscape. He drove around the back of the building and
killed the engine. He watched the back of the building for a few minutes to
ensure it was empty.
The first time he’d ever seen her
was in a church—one much different from St. Rose. It’d been a Baptist church.
Tall and proud. Surrounded by trees. He’d seen her sitting in the front pew
with her grandmother—her stunning face so serious, her Sunday dress clean but
faded and nearly too small for her growing frame—and knew she was meant to be
his. She belonged to him. Looking at her, one word pounded through his brain,
over and over.
Mine.
She’d been young, too young to be
alarmed when she caught him staring at her. She’d looked at him from across the
aisle with the bluest eyes he’d ever seen—and smiled. Just remembering it took
his breath away.
He popped the trunk and got out
of the car. This time he cradled her in his arms like he was crossing the
threshold with his bride. Hunkered down, he freed one of his gloved hands from
his bundle and unlatched the gate to step into the tiny prayer garden behind
the church.
It was nothing more than a few
trees and some rosebushes planted next to a marble bench but he imagined it was
paradise as he stretched his Melissa out over the bench. Kneeling beside her,
he pulled a pair of cuticle scissors from his front pocket and used them to
snip the sutures from her lids. As careful as he was, each pass of the scissors
tore the delicate flesh. Blood leaked from the corners of her eyes and he swept
it away, smearing it across her temple with his gloved thumb. After the
stitches were removed he peeled them open, eager to see her beautiful blue
eyes. Anticipation soured in his belly as soon as his eyes locked onto hers.
They were empty.
The blanket fell open, gave him a
glimpse of naked flesh. Distracted, he moved it aside completely to give
himself some more. He cupped her breast, still warm from the blanket, and
fondled it—felt himself go hard at the sight and feel of her. His eyes travel
downward until they found her stomach and the collection of stab wounds he’d
left there. His groin began to throb and his free hand fell to it, began to stroke
it through the rough fabric of his jeans.
He considered having sex with
her, one last time, but the thought was fleeting, chased away by a flutter—weak
and sporadic—beneath his hand. The hand on his crotch went still and he
flattened the other against her chest and pressed down. Searching for the
heartbeat he was sure he’d just felt, but there was nothing there. A minute
passed, then two. He dropped his hand. She was gone.
He was unsure of how much time
had passed but when the lone howl of a coyote cut across the desert he took it
as a warning.
It was time to leave.
