Your Turn to Suffer by Tim Waggoner (free romance novels .TXT) 📗

beg for her help, and then he collapsed like a broken water balloon, clothes and all. Reduced to a spreading puddle of organic and inorganic material.

The same thing happened to the girl behind the register, only she’d attempted to run toward the back of the store, where presumably a rear exit was located. One of the creatures clipped the back of her head with its claws, the impact sending her sprawling forward. She burst apart into splatters of glop when she hit the floor.

Blanche had reached the far end of the historical toy aisle when one of the creatures came running after her. She knew it was going to get her, knew she would die in the same horrible manner as the man and the girl. But still she kept moving, kept fighting, trying to eke out a few more seconds of life before she fell into eternal night. One good thing about becoming a human version of a rapidly melting ice cream cone – at least her death would be over swiftly.

She felt claws rake her back, slice through her coat and top, cut deep lines in her skin. The pain was excruciating, and she thought of how her doctor had used that very word and she almost laughed. The sensation of dissolution itself was curiously painless, and as her body liquefied, she waited for her consciousness to fade, like someone slowly turning off a light set to a dimmer switch. She struck the ground, broke apart into fragments that quickly began to lose what little solidity they had left. But even in this state, her consciousness continued on, and after several moments it showed no sign of dissipating. She realized with a horror deeper than anything she’d ever felt before that there were some things worse than death. Much, much worse.

She lay there, an unmoving sentient puddle, as the Shadowkin continued destroying the Blue Elephant.

* * *

Sharilyn Boland glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard of her Corolla. Three-oh-one. She was officially late for her shift at Go Mart. FML, she thought.

It had been raining for the last several hours, and it showed no sign of letting up. Her car was ancient, and the windshield wiper blades were long past the point of needing to be replaced. The one on the driver’s side was the worst. The wiper’s rubber strip had torn halfway off, and it flopped around on the glass, doing little to clear away the rainwater. Because of this, Sharilyn was driving five miles under the speed limit, earning her angry looks from drivers stuck behind her. To make things worse, her gas tank was dangerously low. She thought she had enough fuel to make it to Go Mart, but she didn’t know if she’d have enough to get home. And although Go Mart was a convenience store with gas pumps out front, she didn’t have enough money to buy fuel. She’d just have to hope the gods of transportation would look kindly upon her later.

Sharilyn was twenty-one and lived with her grandmother. Her parents had split up when she was in middle school, and she had no idea where her dad was these days. The last time she’d heard from him, he’d been living in Arizona, but that was several years ago. Her mom was bipolar and a barely functioning alcoholic, and it was all she could do to take care of herself. So Sharilyn had gone to live with Grandma. She loved her grandmother, but she was desperate to get her own place. She was taking business classes at the community college in Waldron – when she could afford them – and working two jobs, and she still didn’t have enough money to get her own place, even if she had a roommate to share expenses.

She’d started her morning at five a.m., when she’d gotten up, showered, ate a cold Pop-Tart, and headed off for her morning shift as a server at Rise-N-Shine, a restaurant that specialized in serving breakfast food all day. Mornings were Rise-N-Shine’s busiest time, and when her shift ended, she was exhausted. She had to keep hustling, though, and she’d changed out of her Rise-N-Shine uniform shirt and into her Go Mart one in Rise-N-Shine’s restroom before leaving. She wished she had time to run home and shower. She smelled like bacon grease and stale coffee, but there was nothing she could do about it. She’d just have to hope the customers at Go Mart wouldn’t notice.

And to top it all off, she was congested and feared she was catching a cold. With her, colds often turned into sinus infections, and she definitely did not need one of those right now. She couldn’t afford to miss work. For that matter, she couldn’t afford an antibiotic, either.

By the time she reached Go Mart, she was already stressed. When she saw Darlene’s Prius parked in front of the store, she groaned. She was tempted to drive on past Go Mart and call in sick – which technically wouldn’t be a lie as she was sick of dealing with Darlene’s bullshit. But she thought there was a good chance she’d get fired for calling in sick at the last minute, and she needed the money, so she reluctantly pulled into Go Mart’s parking lot and drove around the side of the building where employees were supposed to park. After she turned off the engine, she sat there for a moment, listening to the rain hitting the roof of her car. Maybe it wasn’t Darlene’s Prius after all. Hers was hardly the only one in town, right?

There was a pounding on her car window then, and she jumped, startled. She turned to see Darlene leaning forward, her face close to the window. She didn’t have an umbrella and her long black hair hung down the sides of her face in wet strands. She made a half circle gesture, and Sharilyn knew Darlene was asking if she could go around to the passenger side