Butterfly Suicide
Page 25
He never stopped screaming.
I snapped out of my shock, ready to run and pull him free, but before I could move, something in the tree yanked the rest of his body into the orifice. Only his head protruded from the hole, and his eyes, full of agony, met mine. With a loud crunch, the hole shrunk down, severing the head from the body. It landed in the soft mud, eyes open, frozen in terror.
“Grandmere.” The word slipped from me, a horrified whisper. When I turned to her, she’d disappeared. I caught a glimpse of her white dress, flitting through the trees a few yards away, almost as if she was chasing something, but nausea mixed with the fear in my stomach and prevented me from following her. What the hell kind of lesson could she be trying to teach me? Time to wake up!
But I couldn’t, so instead I ran. About half way home, my feet betrayed me and tripped. Mud saturated the blue robe, and the impact caused me to bite my tongue. With the bitter taste of blood filling my mouth, I pulled myself up, leaving one of the gardening shoes behind as I crossed the front yard to my home. Tracking mud on the porch, I turned to face the bayou. The world shimmered with a blinding white light, and then everything went black.
I don’t remember anything after that.
When I woke up, my blue robe hung on the back of my bedroom door. Aside from a few leftover stains from a nail polish accident the week before, there wasn’t any dried mud on it. A quick pat of my shirt and shorts found them clean and dry as a bone, too. Yawning, I dragged my feet out from underneath the covers. Across the room, my reflection in the vanity table mirror did the same, and I sighed at the sight of my curly hair looking like a jacked up bird’s nest.
“Just a dream. Thank God,” I told my reflection, which nodded in agreement.
Then I glanced down.
My feet were caked in dried mud.
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COPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Butterfly Suicide. Copyright 2017 by Mary Ann Loesch
All rights reserved.