Page 2 of Cast Stones
One who bound me tighter to him than any ribbon.
Chapter One
Present Day
It’sa misconception that midnight is when the witching hour starts. Three a.m. is when all my demons come out to play. That’s the time I wake up screaming, my bedsheets soaked in sweat as my past is wrung clean out of me.
My subconscious is an unruly child, filling my head with violent tales of death and violence. I can’t control her in the same way that I control every other aspect of my life, and that’s why I fear her the most.
White knife. Heart sore. Black eyes that scorch and scar like a funeral pyre…
Get back upstairs, you little bitch, or I’ll break your dolls.
Kicking away the damp sheet, I swing my legs out of bed. As soon as my feet hit the carpet, I’m being dragged back to hell… To a cracked stone tablet. To bloodstains tainting light gray—a crimson martyr of all those who went before me.
So many girls.
Agony.
God help me.
No, not God… He forsook us a long time ago.
Us.
Not us.
Anything but us.
My bedroom turns into a vortex of pain, and then an overhead light snaps on, sucking the worst of it away.
“Mads?”
My roommate, Grady, appears silhouetted in the doorway, his brown hair wild and his loose-fitting white Tee on the unfashionable side of lightly crumpled.
“What is it?” I croak.
“Your cell’s going fucking ballistic in the kitchen. You left it there to charge…” His accusation hangs lightly. Grady doesn’t do heavy.“I know I have an early start today, sunshine, but this three a.m. shit is killing my vibe.”
Sunshine.
It’s a nickname that’s way more appropriate for him. His smiles are never forced. His optimism is never trapped beneath a terrible weight.
“Mads?” he sing-songs. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Instead of running to the kitchen to see who’s blowing up my cell at three a.m., the backs of my shoulders are hitting the mattress again.
“I’m dealing with it.”
“Yeah, it looks like it.”
“I’m hoping my indifference will telepathically dissuade whoever from calling again,” I mumble, staring up at the white ceiling, but seeing only gray.
He snorts, and a beat later I’m hearing the familiar chime for myself.
“I swear to God, Mads…”
“It must be work.” Reluctantly, I sit up.
