Page 25 of Grave Love
If life is one big game to Blaze, maybe it is a game to me too. He likes killing women, and I want to be tortured until I die. Whynotdo this?
What’s stopping me?
I unlock the front entrance of Last Spring Mortuary, then slip inside, leaving the funeral home dark. It’s better this way. You never know if another staff member will unexpectedly show up.
Like Blaze.
“Hello, little corpse,” a deep male voice says from behind me.
I spin around. Blaze emerges from the shadows, dressed completely in black. He takes my hand and pulls me toward the crematory. My fingers buzz, and nerves flutter in my stomach.
Inside of the crematory, a dim candle flickers in the corner. The flame dances over his skin, his cheeks even starker than before, as if he’s sunken in on himself. Dead already. Evil.
And somehow, I feel myself going toward him. Yearning to embrace that darkness.
His shoulder brushes me as he passes. He stretches into the chair on the opposite side of the crematory, slinking into the seat like he’s in charge. Comfortable. Taking up my space.
I don’t know what to make of this, so I go to the screen next to the retort. The oven is off and has been cooled down for hours, but I still check the dials like I’m working. Give myself something to do. At least this way, I don’t have to question why my skin heats whenever he’s near. Why my body tingles, anticipating his next move.
His hand comes into my vision and pushes something forward.
A glass flute in my hand, filled with a bubbly liquid, the drink light pink in the shadows.
He’s giving me champagne?
I raise a brow. “What are we celebrating?”
“Our arrangement.”
I flinch my head slightly. Does that mean he wants to kill me tonight?
“Think of it as practice,” he adds.
I take a sip. The bubbles pop on my tongue, and a sudden dizziness fills me up. Champagne always gets me drunk faster than other alcohols. I grip my purse, the canvas bag and the noose inside of it. Waiting for me.
Forus.
“Why do you wear a bag over your head when you touch yourself?” he asks.
My cheeks boil. It’s like he can read my every move, even when I hold my purse against me for comfort. I quickly find the other seat in the room, sitting across from him. He knows everything about me, doesn’t he? At least, it feels like that. I should hate it, but the fact that he knows so much thrills me. He doesn’t think of me as a freak; I simply am what I am, and he wants to understand me.
I roll my eyes. “None of your business.”
“Are you ashamed of yourself?” he asks.
I jut my chin forward. In a way, I am. It’s protective. If I can’t see anyone else, then they can’t see me either, and I don’t have to endure their dismissal of my existence. I don’t have to acknowledge the video proof from my past that spread like wildfire, proving that I wasn’t the normal person I claimed to be. That I’ve always beenthis.
“I’ve always done it,” I say. It’s partially true. Since I dropped out of the doctorate program, it’s one of the things that has helped me come. “It calms me, I guess. If I can’t see what’s going to happen, then I can forget.”
“Forget that you’re being brought to the executioner’s block,” he says.
Our eyes meet, his piercing blue irises like an icicle ready to impale me. It’s not lost on me: Blazeismy executioner. What we’re doing—me eventually teaching him to use the retorts and him fucking me until I’m comfortable coming for him while I die—it’s like being blindfolded. The way blinders calm a horse as it races to the finish line.
“When I kill you, you won’t have a bag over your head,” he says, looking down his nose at me. “I want to see your face when you die for me.”
My insides twist, the heat lowering to my core. It’s fucked up—socompletelyfucked up—and I can’t stop myself from enjoying it. From wanting more.
I want to see his face when I die too.
