Page 395 of Phobia
She perked up. “So, we can still be together like before?”
I leaned back to look her in the eye. “I’m afraid not.”
Frown lines marred her forehead. “Why not?”
My finger twiddled my horn necklace, playing with the sharp point. It pierced my finger pad. “Because we started something that must be finished.”
“What?”
Before she could ask any more questions, I rammed the tip of the horn through her perfect skin as forceful as the female vessel’s arm would allow. Rosalie let out a gasp as blood spurted from her belly, coating the horn and dripping down my hand. I must have reached the abdominal aorta, from the way the blood gushed out of her.
I yanked the horn out of her and tossed it aside. Rosalie’s eyes were wide with shock, and her shallow breaths were replaced by wet, gurgled ones.
I watched as she tumbled to the ground, clutching her core. The red of her blood was bright enough to trail noticeable rivers down her still clothed lap.
She tried to speak, but the words came out as sputters of blood. I knelt over her, taking her bloodied hands in mine as the last hint of life left her eyes.
Even though her body stilled, I left her eyes open as I leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to her lips before whispering the promise I had made to her last night. “Forever.”
Epilogue
JULIEN
Haiti – Present Day
“Come on, Julien!” Junior scaled the fence like he had done it more than a dozen times, placing his foot expertly on the rungs he knew could hold his weight best.
I had scaled my share of fences back home in Louisiana, but never one with barbed wire interwoven into it. Needless to say, I was a lot slower than Junior, even though I was nearly twice his size.
“Fuck!” I shouted when my shoe got stuck on the sharp edge.
“Shut the hell up! Someone will catch us!” Junior scolded in Creole. I could speak it fluently since it was the only language my grandmother spoke in our home, but Junior’s speed was sometimes too fast for me to understand.
Junior was two years younger than my fifteen, but he was my only cousin on my maternal side, so I didn’t have anyone else to hang out with during our trip. If it weren’t for Granmè’s brother passing away, I probably never would have visited the land of my roots.
Money was hard to come by for us, but somehow, Granmè had scrounged enough to buy us both tickets back to her homeland to bid a final farewell to her brother. So, while the rest of the family were together, reminiscing about the old days and singing devotional songs, Junior and I were breaking into the local graveyard because he had promised it would be “a good fucking time.”
I yanked hard on my shoe, and the fence rattled under my weight.
“You are the worst at sneaking out.” Junior attempted to jimmy my shoe from inside the lot.
My socked foot ended up slipping out of the shoe and I was able to throw myself over the top. I landed on the ground with a thud.
“I need my shoe!”
“Fuck the shoe,” he whisper-yelled at me. For such a short guy, he really had perfected the mini-dictator thing.
I pinned my fists at my waist and tapped my shoe-less foot. “You gonna be the one to tell my Granmè that?”
My grandmother and Junior’s grandmother were sisters. Haitian families were huge, and we subscribed to the family-tree brand of “my uncle’s cousin’s sister.” You know...the type of familial relationships where everyone happened to be related by at least two separate connections on the family tree. It was damn confusing to keep everyone straight, so when in doubt, you just called the person your aunt or uncle out of some respect that you needed to pay but didn’t know why.
Junior bit his lip as if weighing the pros and cons of approaching my stern grandmother. He must have ruled that Granmè was too scary to deal with. “Fine! We’ll get the damn shoe on the way back.”
We trudged through the overgrown grass, which unfortunately concealed thorned vines really well. Junior and I would have to explain the state of my sock and lacerated foot to Granmè too.
The cemetery was beneath a hill that boasted large trees around the perimeter, casting an eerie shadow in the light of the full moon. I felt a chill down my spine every time the leaves rustled overhead.
“How do you know this place is haunted?” I asked Junior, who was two steps ahead of me.
