Prologue
I’d have to admit; I
wasn’t used to the physical exertion. The muscles throughout my entire body
ached and burned like they were on fire. Sure, I did my share of chores around
the house, but digging a hole was beyond the kind of work I normally did. It
wasn’t a routine for me. I had never done something like this before. I just
prayed that the hole would be deep enough. Because it would be terrible if I
did all this work for nothing. A waste of my precious time. Because God knows
that I don’t have time to waste.
I stopped once the hole
was the exact size I needed it to be. Like I said, I had never done this sort
of thing before. I hadn’t planned to dig a gigantic hole in the woods big
enough to bury a body in. A body I hadn’t intended to kill. If I said it was an
accident, would you believe me? Probably not. You don’t even know anything
about me. And neither did she.
I wiped the sweat from
my brow, feeling satisfied. A job well done, that’s if I were giving out
compliments to myself, which I’m not. No one has ever praised me for anything
that I’ve done in my life, so why start now?
I turned and drove the
shovel into the mound of dirt beside the hole. I had to finish this before it
got too dark or worse, someone came into these woods and saw what I was doing.
Then I’d have to get rid of them too, and I wasn’t sure I could handle killing
someone else.
I
walked over to where I had left her body and grabbed her arms, pulling her
toward the open grave. Her back scrapped against the earth, cutting her skin,
not that I cared. Once I was at the edge of the hole I had just dug, I dropped
her arms and sat down beside her.
Dirt covered her body
from being dragged, but she was still beautiful. I ran my fingers over her
hair, now tangled in a brownish red. The blood had dried in a crust form,
matting the hair to her head. If you saw her now, you wouldn’t know that her
hair was once blonde, though browner at the roots like mine.
I wondered if they
would miss her, but quickly blocked the thought from my mind. I wouldn’t let
her. Or at least I wouldn’t miss her. To be honest, I really didn’t even know
her all that well. We knew nothing about each other because the truth of the
matter was, we had just met for the first time in fifteen years. A secret that
was kept from me. Actually, there were many secrets kept from me, but she was
the one that mattered most. But I won’t sit here and waste any more time
reminiscing over the past I hadn’t known about until just a few days ago.
Getting to my knees, I
rolled her into the hole. The hole wasn’t deep, maybe two or three feet. Her
body hit the bottom with a loud thud.
No sound escaped out of her, which told me she had to be dead. She needed to be
dead for this to benefit me.
Leaning forward, I
peered into the open grave. She didn’t move. Was I expecting her to? When I
arrived here in Craven Falls, I had only one thing on my mind and that was to
find out who I really was. Well, until her. This girl now lying in front of me.
I hadn’t meant to hurt anyone when I arrived in this town, but I did and there
was nothing I could do about it now.
I jumped down into the
hole and laid her on her back, whispering in her ear. Words only meant for her
to hear, that’s if she were alive. I wished that she hadn’t provoked me into
killing her and wondered at that very moment if we were alike? If we shared the
same habits and loved the same things as clothes and music. It didn’t matter
now. I made one tiny, infinite mistake, and now I have to cover it up.
A low chuckle escaped from deep inside
my throat as I stared down at her. I wasn’t sure where it had come from. Why
did I think this was funny? I wondered if it would have ended up differently
for her if she wouldn’t have been such a pest? Well, I couldn’t think about
that now. She was already dead. She was in the woods where no one would come to
look for her. Because in all honesty—they wouldn’t even know she was missing.
I climbed out of the
hole and stood above her. My lips spreading wide as a smile appeared. A side of
me that felt all too new.
A gust of wind with a
faint smell of rain came from out of nowhere. I needed to stop dicking around
and cover her body before it rained. There were no leaves on the trees to help
shelter me from the rainwater, just scrawny twigs like branches.
I turned and picked up the shovel,
scooping the dirt onto her body until the hole wasn’t a hole anymore.
It sounds like a great read. I love the.cover.
ReplyDeleteThis book looks like it’s going to be interesting.
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