Page 90 of Shadows in Bloom

When I try to shake my head—No, Winnie. Don’t listen. Ignore it. It isn’t me. Wake up. Run—nothing happens.

I’m nothing but a puppet as the entity controlling my body has me grinding up against Winifred, my pussy riding her thigh. Nothing but utterly helpless as I feel my other hand find its way between us, snaking up to join the other wrapping around her neck. Squeezing.

The pretty hazel eyes looking up at me in fear bulge, lips gaping like a fish as Winifred struggles for air, her legs and torso writhing under my unmovable body. Shadows shackle her wrists, just as they shackled mine, keeping her from clawing at my hands.

What are you doing? I demand internally. STOP!

“Say it,” the voice, harder than it was moments ago, grits out.

Inside, I’m banging on invisible walls, watching with blood-curdling terror as Winifred’s fluttering lips turn blue.

You’re going to kill her!

“SAY IT!”

Shadows coil up and around Winifred’s face, mapping out her features…her gaping lips…her reddened, glistening eyes…

And I can’t help but notice how cold she suddenly feels…

Unnaturally so.

A shadowy finger dips threateningly into her mouth, and my mind…

It just… it whites out.

I’m sorry, Winnie. I tried…

6

WINIFRED CHAPEL

I’m not sure what wakes me.

If it’s the scent of dirt, of grass, of something that is just…not quite right.

If it’s the breeze that tosses loose strands of hair over my face, tickling my eyelids, my lips.

If it’s the awareness that there’s hard earth beneath me where there should be a soft bed, and a distant crackling of woodfire in otherwise deafening silence.

Or if it’s racing of my heart and quickening breaths as the realization that I don’t know how I got here sinks in. Last thing I remember is struggling to keep my eyes open so I could finish the chapter I was reading. In my bed. In my room. In my house.

When my eyes fly open, it’s a blurry bright circle I see first, cradled in shadows. The full moon.

Pushing to a seated position, hands splayed in the leaf-strewn grass, I look around, blinking away the last remnants of a heavy, dreamless sleep as I try to catch my bearings and make sense of my surroundings. Figure out where exactly I am.

Then, and only then, can I panic about the hows.

My attention snags on an orange flicker in the distance—the source of the crackling and popping sounds. A fire. Someone’s here.

Chest squeezing with a combination of wariness and relief, I scramble up to a stand, in nothing but a silk nightgown that goes down to my knees, and start making my way toward the only sign of life in an otherwise dark and desolate forest. Without my glasses, I feel more disoriented than ever as I navigate with my hands and squinted eyes.

It doesn’t escape me how…wrong this all feels.

The silence.

The stillness.

The fact I’m even here at all.

---