Page 18 of Curses and Cornstalks
If it wasn’t for the pain radiating through my body, I would swear this is all a dream. A fever dream I can’t escape, and despite my attempts to rationalize this, I can’t. None of this is logical.
A living scarecrow, a century-old curse… it has all the makings of a fucked-up fairytale, and I’m right at the point where everything goes to hell. The villain has just given his dramatic monologue, and he’s about to assure me my death will be quick and painless.
Well, not exactly painless, because my limbs are already aching, my lungs burning with the amount of effort it takes to draw a single breath.
Still, knowing what he plans to do, to squeeze me until I shatter with his rope-like vines, I can’t help but feel… sorry for him.
Sympathizing with psychopaths, Cassie. Good job.
Maybe I’m the one who’s lost my mind…
“Cat finally got your tongue?” His low, raspy laugh fills the clearing. “Have you no other questions before you die? Final words? Not that anyone besides me will hear them…”
The vines around me twitch to life, crawling slowly back up my body. I swallow hard, panic slamming through me.
This can’t be how I die. It just can’t.
I didn’t flee the city after my ex cheated on me and move all my stuff to a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere to be strangled to death by plants.
Fuck me.
“Please, let me go!” I blurt.
I’m all out of ideas, fresh out of a plan. Begging seems to be the only thing I have left at my disposal.
“Maybe I can help you. Maybe there’s a way to break your curse. I can set you free?—”
Atticus laughs heartily this time, his eyes squinting closed as his chest shakes. The sound is warm, rich,lively.And as terrifying as it is for a murderer to laugh in my face, it’s my first real glimpse of the man beneath the mask. A glimmer of who he might have been before he was tied to a stake and left to suffer.
Maybe there’s enough humanity left in him after all…
“You want to set me free?” he asks, his accented voice heavy with amusement. “So I can terrorize your town? Reak havoc on those who’ve done me wrong?”
He pauses, waiting for the weight of his words to sink in.
Shit.
The last thing Cold Springs needs is a mass murderer on the loose, but as the thought crosses my mind, it doesn’t sit right. Even now, as he stares me down with that cold, calculated stare, I’m not as afraid as I should be.
I’m afraid, sure. But notpissing-my-pantsafraid orI’m-in-mortal-perilafraid.
It’s mostly… uncertainty. The fear of the unknown.
This scarecrow could have ripped me in half with his vines by now, but he hasn’t. I’m still alive.
If I overlook the psycho murderer part—which is getting harder to do as the vines creep steadily toward my throat again—and take him at his word, all I see is a man who doesn’t deserve the punishment he’s endured. A hundred years of torture for not loving someone in return?
How unfair.
How cruel.
As shitty as my ex was for fucking my best friend, I wouldn’t wish this kind of torture on him. Endless stubbed toes, warm pillows, and hangnails, sure.
But not this.
One hundred years in a cornfield should be reserved for heinous, unforgivable souls… and I don’t think Atticus is either. Or my judgment could be horribly flawed by the lack of blood flow making it to my brain.
Either way, setting him free in exchange for him letting me go doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.
