Tormented: A Bully Romance Anthology

by BBB Publishings

  Ignoring him, I started toward the girl. I didn’t know what I could do, other than get her away. Or maybe call after her mother. I didn’t want to talk to the men, or engage them in any way, but with a child at risk…

  The man in the top hat leaned closer to her, his mouth moving. No doubt whispering something horrible to her.

  “Heather!” The mother grabbed her child’s hand and gave her a shake. The little girl burst into tears and clung to her leg. “Come along. We’re late for the park.”

  “Ma’am,” the irate customer with the soggy phone snapped his fingers in front of my face in annoyance. “Hello? I need to speak to your manager.”

  “For what?” I replied without thinking. “I didn’t spill your drink. I wasn’t anywhere near your table.”

  “Look here, young lady, I don’t come here to be harassed. I’ve been coming here for years and I’ve never had any problems until today. Until you.”

  Rage bubbled up inside me so hard I had to bite my cheek to keep from saying anything more. I tried to remember if I’d always had this short of a fuse, or if this was new. Since I’d died.

  A short, rough laugh escaped my mouth.

  Since I was dead, maybe this was hell. Rather than fire and brimstone, I was stuck in my dead-end job serving ungrateful jerks who screamed at me.

  The man in the top hat stepped closer and whispered something in the customer’s ear. I couldn’t quite make it out, but I felt a distinct sense of malevolence swirling around him. Goosebumps prickled down my arms.

  The nasty customer grabbed his chest. “My heart. Call 911!”

  Oh shit. I stared at him, watching the way his face paled to sheet white. His thin lips turned blue. His eyes bulged oddly. He staggered toward me, still clutching his ruined phone over his heart.

  “Help me!”

  He started to fall. I could have grabbed his arm and slowed his descent. Maybe. But I was rooted to the spot, my mind filled with chaotic thoughts.

  Relief. He couldn’t get me fired, on a day where Roger wouldn’t need much of an excuse.

  A perverse sense of justice. He’d been the kind of asshole who’d report me for something I hadn’t done. Just to cover his own ass.

  People like that deserved to die.

  Click. My mind snapped at that thought. I rushed to the cash register and picked up the phone to call 911. Numbly, I asked for medical assistance.

  While the three skull-faced men who’d followed me to The Greasy Spoon watched the thrashing customer on the floor. Smiling.

  He stared up at the ceiling, tearing at his throat, his mouth gaping open like a beached fish. Gurgling. The sound was horrible, until it stopped. The silence was even worse.

  The top hat man returned to his position at the door.

  Hoodie man wagged a finger at me playfully back and forth. No. No need to call. No need to worry. I was too late.

  The man was dead.

  Chapter Five

  The police officer who’d responded along with the ambulance for the heart-attack customer insisted on escorting me home.

  Maybe because I kept staring into space and losing time. He wanted me to go to the hospital to be checked for shock, but I told him I couldn’t afford it. Which was true, but mainly, I didn’t want a doctor asking questions I couldn’t answer.

  When exactly did you die, ma’am? When did you notice that you stopped breathing and didn’t have a heartbeat? How many hours passed until you woke up again?

  “Here you go.” Officer Coleman pulled his squad car over to the curb and looked up at my dark apartment building. “I’ll walk you in.”

  Numb, I waited for him to open the car door for me. This wasn’t the best part of town—that’s why I’d almost been able to afford it. Any other time, I would have been grateful for someone to bring me home after dark. But something nagged at the back of my mind. Insisting that I should be alarmed.

  I was just too tired and shell-shocked to remember what it was.

  I looked around, checking for the three skull-faced men. Maybe I’d lost them. Could ghosts keep up with a car? But if they were ghosts, wouldn’t they have been stuck in my apartment building, rather than following me to work?

  I trudged up the flight of stairs with the officer right behind me. As I stepped off onto the second-floor landing and rounded the corner, it finally hit me like a ton of bricks. I jerked to a halt so quickly that he ran into me with an oomph.

  My apartment. The busted door. The blood.

  How the fuck was I going to explain that damage to a police officer? Especially when he’d been called to my place of work this afternoon because a patron had dropped dead of a heart attack? Even a medical emergency would start to look suspicious if he saw all the dried blood on the carpet.

  Even if it was my own.

  “Uh, this is fine,” I said hurriedly, turning to smile at him too brightly. “Thank you for bringing me home.”

  Officer Coleman must be good at his job. His eyes narrowed at my sudden eagerness to get rid of him. “I said I’d see you home and inside, safe and sound. This isn’t inside yet, ma’am. So you just go ahead and unlock your door, so I can make sure you’re safe.”

  I couldn’t protest without raising his suspicions even more. Stomach churning, I stepped aside and pointed down the hallway. “It’s 2B.”

  I’m going to jail. Or at least the mental hospital. He’ll take one look at the broken door and all the blood…

  “2B or not 2B, that is the question.” He held his hand out, and I stared at him blankly. “Your key?”

  Why would he need the key when the door was busted off its hinges? I dug into my apron pocket, trying to remember where I’d stuck my key. My jeans pocket. Finally I found the lone key and pulled it out. He plucked it from my icy fingers and turned to unlock my apartment door.

  I stared at the un-splintered doorframe. The intact door that swung open. The nasty beige carpet that was not stained with my blood.

  My mind reeled. My skull throbbed faintly in a fine network of cracks that made my head feel like an eggshell, barely held together by a thin membrane.

  Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. I’d gotten a terrible fever and hallucinated Michael breaking down the door and beating me to death. That was the only…

  “All clear, ma’am.” Officer Coleman stood before me, blocking my view of my tiny space. “Ma’am? Are you sure you’re alright?”

  I nodded, not trusting my voice. He pressed my key and his card into my palm, but hesitated, his cop-eyes searching my face. “That’s my direct number at the precinct. If you change your mind and want to go to the hospital, I’ll be glad to take you. I’m on duty the rest of the night.”

  “I’m fine,” I whispered hoarsely as I brushed past him. “Thank you.”

  I shut the door and leaned my forehead against the smooth wood. Maybe I should have gone to the hospital. Maybe I should have told him everything. Let them commit me. At least then I could sleep, right? They’d dope me up and I wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.

  I turned around and jerked back against the door so hard that fireworks exploded in my head.

  Hoodie skull-face man leered at me from the green chair. “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Six

  Lying in bed, I stared up at the ceiling. Afraid to close my eyes. Afraid to sleep.

  I could feel their eyes on me.

  My heart thudded heavily. Suffocating me, but mocking me at the same time. How could my heart still beat?

  I was dead and three skull-faced ghosts were haunting me.

  Someone chuckled softly in the darkness. “Ah, sugar. Surely by now you realize we’re not ghosts, and you’re not exactly dead.”

  I hated that I recognized his voice. The man with the hoodie. Baron.

  No. I blocked his name from my mind. Names had power, so they said.

  “They do,” the other man said from the foot of the bed. “Which is why we gave our names to you.”

  I felt the
mattress dip as he sat down by my feet, but I refused to look at him, straining to hold my head still. My eyes focused unseeing on the ceiling above my head.

  “Not our formal names,” the hoodie man replied. “We don’t want to rattle your pretty head too much all at once. But the names we gave you are true, and so they carry power.”

  A million questions fluttered in my mind, wild birds trapped in a cage, beating their wings frantically against the bars. Why me? Why were they here? What did they want from me? If I talked to them, would I be damning myself? To what? Why did the quiet one always guard the door? What had he whispered to the little girl? Who else would they hurt?

  I knew by now that they could hear my thoughts, but they perversely refused to answer my questions.

  They wanted me to ask them directly. They wanted to gain another foothold in my mind. My life. They wanted control over me.

  Not real. Not real. Not real.

  None of this is real.

  A ghostly skull face floated into my line of vision. At first, I thought it was my weary eyes playing tricks on me. I risked closing my eyes for a moment, squeezing them tightly, and then opened them again.

  The face was closer, transparent and insubstantial, but detailed enough that I recognized the man in the modern-day suit. His face was lean with a hint of a neatly trimmed beard along his jawline beneath the white paint.

  Since he didn’t touch me and was barely visible at all, my brain decided there wasn’t anything more to fear. It literally couldn’t handle one more thing to be scared of. So a floating skull face slowly moving closer to me was just a phantom thing that my fragile mind couldn’t make sense of.

  He couldn’t be sitting at the foot of the bed and floating toward me at the same time.

  So it was okay. I was okay.

  Tendrils of smoke swirled around his floating head. It smelled good, almost like incense. Spices and special, exotic wood, soothing and somehow sacred. Almost church-like. I relaxed a little more, breathing in that woodfire smell.

  “There, that’s better.” A whisper-soft touch of a ghostly finger brushed my cheek. “I wish we had time to do this right. You deserve a special rite. I know you’ve been through more than your human mind can even process. It’s too easy for you to shut down and convince yourself that we’re not real.”

  “You’re not real,” I mumbled.

  The smell of smoke made me sleepy. I was so tired. Tired of fighting to survive. Tired of being screamed at. Tired of being someone’s punching bag. Tired of being a doormat.

  But when you’ve had filthy, disgusting boots wiped on you for so long, how do you stop lying still and quiet while getting stomped on? When you can’t possibly wash off all the accumulated filth and muck that has stained your soul?

  “You need to know that we’re real. This is all very real. You need the truth. Even if it burns and makes you scream.”

  That didn’t sound good. I tried to make my eyes open. I tried to lift my arm and shove the phantom skull away. But the smoke was too heavy. It pinned me against the mattress. Gently—but I was definitely pinned. I couldn’t even turn my head.

  I struggled a moment, one last-ditch effort to wake myself up. But his lips brushed my forehead in a soft kiss that seemed to suck away the last of my strength.

  “What is my name, sweetheart? Say it.”

  Stubbornly, I clenched my teeth together. I’d learned the game of silence a long time ago. I’d lost most of my strength of will over the years, but my voice was still mine. Nobody could make me talk if I didn’t want to. My words were my own.

  A fiery cross replaced the phantom skull, so bright it hurt my eyes. Even my skin felt tender and sore.

  A dream. It was only a very real dream. I’d wake up tomorrow…

  “Will you?” His soft voice broke with emotion. “Humans are so very fragile, sweetheart. Here a second and gone. You don’t have tomorrow. You only have now.”

  The cross gleamed brighter, red-hot and fresh from the forge. Sweat trickled down my forehead.

  “Say my name when you feel the burn, and this will all be over. I promise.”

  My jaws ached. I strained harder, determined to wake up. This had to be a dream. I’d injured my head. Severely. I was hallucinating. My brain was swollen and bleeding inside my shattered skull. I should call Officer Coleman and tell him I’d changed my mind. I really did need to go to the hospital.

  I rolled my eyes, trying to keep the fiery cross in sight as it moved down my body. I could the heat of its passing. Across my left shoulder. Down my arm.

  My forearm, the inside of my left wrist. Searing heat. The comforting smell of smoke took on the charred odor of burning flesh. It was burning through my arm. Crisping skin peeled away. I thrashed. I screamed inside my head, but I couldn’t open my mouth. I couldn’t. It was important.

  The burning sank into my skin and lit my bones on fire.

  “Cross!”

  Chapter Seven

  “You’re late,” Roger growled as I tied on my apron. “Sick tat. Funny that I never noticed it before.”

  I held my left arm up, turned so he could see the inside of my wrist. “You really like it?”

  “Yeah, definitely. It’s not new, is it? It’s not red at all.”

  I shook my head.

  It was new. But it wasn’t a tattoo. Not exactly.

  When I’d woken up this morning, I thought the burning cross was just another crazy dream. But a silver and black cross had been burned into my arm, detailed with carved skulls. The longer end curved slightly into a knife’s blade.

  It looked like ink until you touched it, but I could feel the intricate details in my flesh like I’d been branded. It wasn’t sore, and it looked like it’d been a part of my arm forever.

  “Maybe it has been,” Cross whispered. “You were marked for us a long time ago.”

  It was the first time one of the three strangers who’d attached themselves to me had spoken today. Even with skulls painted on their faces, they were grimmer than yesterday.

  Hoodie man leaned against the bar, arms crossed in a formidable man-spread pose that took up three seats. Even though no one could see him but me, no customer dared sit anywhere near him. “Three days.”

  “And today’s the third day,” Cross added. “Time’s running out, sweetheart.”

  “Hot food,” Roger bellowed, reminding me of my job.

  I let myself sink into the familiar ritual and grind of waitressing. I smiled and chatted with customers. Cleaned up spills. Delivered food. Fetched ketchup and more coffee.

  While my mind swirled in an ever-wider and faster whirlpool with deadly riptides.

  The tattoo-burn on my arm was real. Roger could see it. So could several of the regulars.

  Three days, and today was the third day.

  Since Michael had killed me.

  I’d probably die tonight—for real—if I didn’t go along with what these three wanted. In a way, it’d be a relief. I wouldn’t have to try and figure out this supernatural voodoo shit that gave me the willies. I wouldn’t have to worry about how to keep the lights on, or Michael coming back to finish the job.

  But whatever purpose or reason that I’d been spared would be for naught. Did I care? Honestly?

  I didn’t owe anything to these men. Or the gravedigger at the crossroads. I didn’t even know his name or why he’d sent me back.

  Curiosity sparked inside me, fueled by all the questions spinning in my head. I still wanted to know why me. What was so important that I still needed to complete?

  I’d never been important in my entire life. Nothing I’d ever done had made a difference, other than maybe putting a smile on someone’s face. I’d never righted a major wrong or saved someone’s life.

  The man in the hoodie huffed out a gruff laugh. “We ain’t in the saving business, sugar.”

  Yeah. I didn’t think so. Not when a single whisper yesterday had been enough to give that customer a heart attack.

  I got th
rough the shift. Somehow. Even with the three of them hovering like grim reapers. The tension was so thick that even the regulars were quiet, quick to eat and get the fuck out. Roger closed down at five since business was so slow.

  Tick tock. Tick tock.

  How many more hours did I have to think about what I was going to do? Michael had killed me around nine. “What do I have to do?” I finally asked out loud.

  “Nothing at all,” Officer Coleman said with an innocuous good-old-boy smile. He leaned against a silver sedan parked along the curb. I almost didn’t recognize him without his uniform and squad car.

  Maybe it was the building dread straining inside me as my time ran out. Or Baron’s intensity that ratcheted up another notch. He came closer to me, with Cross on my other side. Cem fell in step behind me, and for once, his silent watch didn’t creep me out.

  Because all my internal alarms were blaring at Officer Coleman. He was a nice enough man for all I knew. He’d taken me home last night and checked out the apartment for me. A very police officer thing to do. Protect and serve and all that jazz.

  But the seemingly nice police officer had no reason to be here now, especially in plain clothes.

  He knew where I worked. He knew where I lived. He’d been inside my apartment and knew I was alone.

  Dressed in nice jeans and a Saints t-shirt, he didn’t look threatening. Not like the three men dressed in black with skulls painted on their faces. But he was trouble. My teeth ached, and the phantom cracks in my skull throbbed a warning with every beat of my heart.

  “I thought I’d take you out to dinner, Karissa.”

  I hated that he made me afraid. I hated that I smiled to take the sting away from my rejection. “I’m sorry, but I can’t. I have plans.”

  “Oh, that’s too bad. I can give you a ride home if you’d like.”

  I started walking with the purposeful stride all women are taught at an early age. The kind of walk that said leave me the fuck alone, I have keys gripped in my fingers like daggers.