Cursed by Darkness (An Urban Fantasy Novel) (Befallen Tides)

by Anna Sanders

  The men hooted together.

  “Man, as long as nobody’s here,” Bo spoke up. “I’m planning on getting faded as hell. I want a joint in this hand and a double shot of tequila in this hand.”

  Robin was the only one silent. He walked with his head ducked down. If someone nudged him, he would grunt an unintelligible response. Since he was normally the quiet one, nobody really bothered him. They continued with their back and forth without a worry.

  Soon the gang walked up a spacious driveway. The squat house they approached was pink with yellow trimmings. Rose bushes, daffodils, sunflowers, tulips, and flowers of all colors decorated the side of the cobblestone path. Little garden gnomes and wind catchers dotted the open spaces between them. The porch held a swing and lawn furniture, the doorway held happy homestead plaques and banners.

  “Your grandparents are like cartoon characters,” Bo said, laughing as Arn popped the front window screen.

  “Tell me about it.” Arn leaned the screen against the porch and slid the window open easily. “And they leave the window open in case one of the family needs something. They’re fucking lame.”

  “Trust like that should be taken advantage of.” Manny brought his cell phone out. “Marta said she would bring some of her club friends by. But, far as I know she ain’t out the house yet.”

  “Tell them they can’t come unless they bring alcohol,” Arn grunted as he jumped into the empty, dark house.

  “You’re really going to tell some girls they can’t come over?” Manny groused. “The fuck is wrong with you, motherfucker?”

  Bo was of the same mindset. “For real, if we can get some honeys in this piece then why pass that up? I’d like me some tail instead of staring at you ugly ass fuckers all night.”

  Robin remained silent. But he did remove his hoodie, showing the others how pale he looked.

  “Hey yo, Rob, why you been so quiet?” Arn frowned at him when he opened the door to let them all inside. “What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” Robin muttered, sliding passed the threshold with shaking hands. “I’m alright.”

  “Nah, man he’s right. You ain’t said nothing since we met up.” Matt chimed in. “What, you feeling guilty about busting up this senior’s center? Like we don’t do worse.”

  The others laughed. “For real, like we won’t do worse tonight!” Arn said.

  “I just haven’t been sleeping well,” Robin insisted, taking a seat in a nearby recliner and holding a hand to his head.

  “It’s that smack.” Bo shrugged. “I told you to be careful how much you toke, homey. You ain’t listening?”

  “No, it ain’t that. I’ve been clean for eight days.” Robin’s voice shook.

  “Well maybe that’s your problem,” Manny said. “You need a quick snort and a big ol’ booty in your face!” He commenced with his texting. “We going to fix you right up.”

  Now that Robin was talking, he couldn’t seem to stop. “I haven’t been sleeping. I keep having these fucked up dreams. I can’t focus on nothing, I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “What dreams?” Arn asked, flicking the lights on throughout their area.

  “Fucked up ones. I’m like… I don’t know… hurting myself. Like, stabbing myself. And choking on blood. Every time I close my eyes, I’m doing something worse to myself, and when I wake up, I feel like eyes are on me. Someone is watching me flip out. And they’re enjoying it.”

  The others got quiet for a minute. They stared at him in disbelief.

  “Shrug it off, man,” Bo tried to joke. “After tonight, you going to sleep well. You just pent up, that’s all. Sometimes weird shit like that happens when you go too long without blazing some chronic or tapping that crystal. It’s normal.”

  “Yeah,” Robin sighed. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  They were quiet again. Manny kept on texting, then damn near licked his chops at the others. “The ladies are on their way. They bringing all the stops. Prepare to get yo dicks wet, son!”

  “I’m going to get some water.” Robin separated himself from them again.

  The others, not being of especially caring minds, left him to his own devices. They all hunkered down in the furniture and littered the coffee table with drug paraphernalia. Soon the living room was under a smoky haze, accented with the blaring flicks of lighters and sniffs at drawn white lines.

  The party was late. But the men didn’t notice. They each delved deeper into a state of numbed minds, laughing at the colors about the room and the patterns on the ceiling. They spiraled through arguments and deep philosophical experiences of the unknown. But it wasn’t enough to drown their cravings for the women, or for the alcohol that they’d promised to bring along with them.

  “Wouldn’t your gramps have something around here?” Bo eventually asked Arn, suspicion coating his words. “I mean, come on now. He the man.”

  “Maybe in the kitchen,” Arn agreed. “I’ll check.”

  At first, Arn didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. He saw Robin standing by the kitchen sink, seemingly absorbed with the view from the window.

  Arn walked past him to the refrigerator. There wasn’t much on the shelves. Since they had been out of town, his grandparents hadn’t bought any perishables in weeks, and as far as alcohol went, there was only a half-bottle of Merlot. Arn had no idea what he was looking at, but it was in an expensive bottle, and it would have to do until the others arrived.

  A niggling feeling made him look over at Robin. He could barely see his profile but he clearly saw that his friend was shaking.

  “Robbie? You alright?”

  Robin didn’t answer.

  Arn took a step closer. He placed a hand onto the other man’s shoulder, pushing him slightly. Robin released a hiss of breath, but did not budge otherwise.

  “Rob? You should come back and sit down. This wine is all I can find but the chicks should…” Arn trailed to a stop.

  The first thing he noticed was that Robin was shaking with silent sobs. His face was twisted in horror, and his breath was reduced to tiny, sharp intakes.

  The second thing he noticed was the blood. Dark and slippery, falling off of the counter and dotting the tiled floor in splotchy puddles.

  “What the fuck!” Arn shouted, but then froze as he took in the rest of the scene. His words clogged in his throat.

  Robin was cutting himself. Slowly, deliberately, and without hesitation. One hand lay useless against the basin while the other jerkily cut through his phalanges with a paring knife. The knife was sharp but small, so it took incredible strength to get the tool through skin and bone and tendon. Already two of Robin’s fingers were freed of his body, laying on a nearby chopping board. After Robin finished with the third, he gently picked it up and placed it with the others before starting in on his ring finger.

  All the while Robin did not blink. His eyes were wide and streaming with tears. His mouth was a gaping “o” of pain and paralyzed fear.

  Arn wanted to scream. He wanted to dash from the kitchen, alert their friends, and try to stop Robin. The thought of 911 and hospitals and any sort of assistance flashed through his mind. But he could not move. He could barely breathe. Something was keeping him in place. He involuntarily watched as Robin continued with his chore of dismemberment. Soon Arn could not blink let alone move.

  “Everything okay in there?” someone hollered from the living room.

  They got no answer. Robin continued to sever his fingers. Arn continued to watch.

  Once Robin’s pinky joined the pile of once united flesh, Robin turned slowly to Arn. He handed him the small blood colored knife. Their unblinking eyes met and the sickening, matching fright echoed between the two of them.

  Robin turned back to the sink. He shoved his fingerless hand into the garbage disposal.

  Arn stared at the knife. He wanted to look at Robin and tell him to stop, that what he was doing was awful, but instead all he did was look at the paring knife.

  Then it came. The urge.
So strong he couldn’t ignore it. The pressing need to shove the sharp knife into his thigh. Arn’s heart was already hammering in an instantaneous rush. The thought of hurting himself, something he had never done on purpose, made him feel as if it had clogged up and stopped altogether.

  He was conscious enough to know that he didn’t want to do it. That didn’t, however, stop him from shoving the tool from hilt to handle into the thick of his upper leg. The pain blinded him. A cry stuck in his throat and refused to release. His hand swiveled the blade in his leg, twisting and turning slowly. Then, not of his accord, be began to drag it as hard as he could along the seam of his leg. He pulled the knife up his thigh to slice a larger gash into his flesh. He watched its progress through his pants. The force he had to exert to maim his flesh was supreme, and all the while, he did not scream.

  MANNY LOOKED AROUND the living room. Bo and Matt were absorbed with the television watching Jackass 2.0, and he was staring off into the direction of the kitchen, wondering what was going on.

  “I’m going to see what’s keeping grandma’s boy,” he announced to the distracted room.

  He left.

  Bo and Matt barely heard him. They joked around for a while, laughing at the antics of Johnny Knoxville, oblivious to the activities in the other room.

  “What are they doing in there?” Bo asked when about ten minutes had passed, with no distinguishable sounds from the kitchen.

  Matt laughed at a scene from the movie, which turned into hard coughing. “Shit. I’ve got cotton mouth from hell. Wasn’t Arn supposed to be getting something to drink? And where are those hos Manny promised?” He looked around the room. “Damn, where is everybody?”

  Their red rimmed eyes followed the path to the kitchen. The sounds of the garbage disposal starting and stopping stole their attention.

  “…The hell is that?”

  “I don’t know.” Bo shuffled in his seat on the floor. “Maybe they’re fucking with us, yo.”

  “Hey!” Matt screamed through the house. “What’s going on in there?”

  For a moment, there was silence. Then the garbage disposal started again.

  Bo and Matt looked at each other warily. Something definitely felt off. The two of them rose at the same time, reaching into their pockets for any weapons they had on their person. They stayed close by each other’s side and proceeded into the kitchen.

  When they passed through the threshold, they found Hell.

  The kitchen had become a human butcher shop. Robin was slumped against the kitchen sink. One of his hands was stuck down the garbage disposal, and he was systematically flipping the switch on and off. Arn was stretched across the floor with self-inflicted cuts maiming his skin. He was topless, the words “I deserve this” were carved into his skin. He was rapidly losing torrents of blood, but he still dragged a vicious blade over his collarbone. Manny was almost unrecognizable. His face was cut so badly that flesh was hanging off of his jaws. And even in his state he rifled through the cupboards in search of something to continue his torture.

  Matt was able to release one horrid shout before his face went slack and he brought himself unwillingly into the foray. He reached for a blade and brought it close to his face. In tiny, precise movements he scraped at the skin along his jawline, just enough to draw trickles of blood along his chin. Then from there he moved up to begin hacking at his ear. The cartilage made disgusting popping sounds as he removed it from his head.

  Arn had become too weak to cut himself any longer. On the last gash, he dug the blade as deep as his remaining energy would allow.

  Robin removed his mangled hand from the sink. With his other hand, he squeezed so that his veins produced a spray of fresh blood. He was foaming at the mouth and his eyes were slack. Then he fell to the floor in shock, convulsing.

  Bo waited his turn, forced to watch his friends mangle their bodies before ending their lives. When it was his turn, he stumbled forward into the kitchen. Finding the cooking axe on the chopping block next to Robin’s fingers, he dropped his pants and grabbed his privates in preparation.

  WINX WALKED FROM the shadows of a nearby hall into the kitchen. The bodies of her sister’s killers circled each other in a clockwise fashion. All of their eyes were open, unseeing, but told a story of complete and utter terror.

  With poise, she moved her dreadlocks back from her face and into a pony tail. Then she knelt beside the body of Bo, her last victim. She took a long look at him. Then at Robin. Matt. Manny. Lastly, Arn.

  Deja’s killers were finished, and rightfully so. The urge to take a trophy for her pains was a monumental one, but in the end she decided that it would be a waste of time carting around the dirty, rotting flesh of the scourge.

  She would let them decompose in the stale kitchen before being carted off to a morgue for inspection. Her work was done. The scum would not hurt anyone ever again.

  Winx stood fluidly when a car door sounded outside. Glancing out the window, she saw a group of chattering ladies coming up the walkway. They each held grocery bags of goods and giggled at the intentions of their promiscuous night. Winx read their minds easily. They liked the idea of playing with bad boys and taking exotic drugs. They were approaching with the hopes of enjoying carnal delights well into the early hours of the morning.

  The women proceeded through the unlocked door, calling for Manny as they let themselves in.

  None of them saw Winx standing inside. She stepped over the dead and to the sliding glass door that led to the back yard. She made it to the grass, unfurled her blush red wings, and took off into the night sky before the first high pitched screams began.

  Funny. She had expected ending Deja’s killers would have made her feel less empty inside. After all, she had waited so long to do it. Everything had fallen into place just as she had obsessively imagined for months and months. It was exactly the end that she had planned for them.

  But their deaths did not bring Deja back. Deja, with her easy laugh and her teasing eyes, the awful nicknames, and the way she forced Winx to laugh every time they talked. Her sister had been the only friend that she’d had, the only one willing to tolerate her moody behavior and make a joke about it. She had been gone for so long, but Winx still felt the cold hole left in her chest that was once filled with the warm love only a sibling can give.

  Maybe killing them hadn’t fixed anything at all. She felt no different. Only a brief satisfaction that was tramped down by her pressing longing for a phone call from Deja.

  It was of no consequence. What was done was done.

  And now Winx had to run.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Anna Sanders is a simple soul originally from southern California. Her interest in writing began at the early age of 12 years old after having an eccentric and exciting English teacher. Her hobbies include hiking, killing zombies in video games, cooking, and obnoxiously singing showtunes. For the past six years, Anna has been an avid participant in the annual NaNoWriMo challenge.

  She currently resides in Carson City, Nevada with her husband, their two daughters, and a fluffy behemoth of a dog named Jojo.

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