Page 58 of Beneath the Desert Bloom
Diagnosis: existential horniness with a side of demonic bonding.
Treatment: unknown.
Prognosis: deeply fucked.
She laughed, bitter and low.
She couldn’t sit still. Couldn’t lie back down.
She stood, stretched, and pulled on jeans, boots, a hoodie that didn’t belong in this climate. Threw her charger andtoothbrush in a backpack. Slid her notebook and a half-empty bag of trail mix into the side pocket.
She didn’t even know where she was going. Just… out. Away.
A reset. She could go to a motel, get pancakes. Text Eli and pretend she’d just been out of range.
She could choose to come back. That was the point. The illusion of choice.
She grabbed her keys. Slid her phone into her pocket.
Her hand paused over the obsidian stone.
She took it.
She didn’t speak. Not to herself, not to the house, not to the thing she hadn’t admitted she was afraid of yet.
She just opened the door and walked outside.
The desert air wrapped around her.
She didn’t stop to look at the horizon.
She didn’t want to see anything out there.
The car groaned on the first try. Then again. On the third, it started.
“Good girl,” she muttered, patting the dash.
She backed out slowly. The headlights cut through the dark like dull knives.
The dirt path was barely visible, even with high beams. But she knew it by muscle memory.
Outside, the silence felt thicker. Like she was being watched.
Her grip tightened on the wheel.
“This isn’t permanent,” she said aloud. “I just need to get my head on straight. Somewhere with concrete and traffic and zero supernatural sexual tension.”
She nodded once, like she was convincing herself.
Ten yards down the path, the engine sputtered.
She frowned. Tapped the gas. The vehicle lurched forward.
Another thirty feet and she heard a screech under the hood. The lights flickered.
She hit the brakes and stared into the dark.
The road looked wrong.
