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

did you?” Aashrita said. Her voice started out weak but grew stronger and more forceful as she went on. “My family was in denial of it. They self-medicated – Dad with booze, Mom with drugs. My brothers and sisters used both in various amounts and combinations. And when my parents saw I was quiet, moody, and withdrawn, they assumed it was nothing but normal teenage angst. Nothing to be concerned about.” She released a bitter laugh. “No therapy or antidepressants necessary. ‘She’ll grow out of it,’ they told each other. ‘It’s just a phase.’ They knew better when they found me in the bathtub later that night. The water was long cold by the time they entered the bathroom, but it was still red. I’d used a pair of garment scissors to slice deep vertical gashes in my forearms, just like I’d read on the Internet you were supposed to if you wanted to do it right. The scissors lay on the bathmat, blood on them still wet.

“You know what the funny thing is? The racism didn’t bother me all that much. You kind of get used to it after a while. It hurt because it came from you. You called me a brown bitch not because you were racist, but because you knew how much it would hurt me to hear those words come out of your mouth.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” Lori said. “No, that’s a lie. I did want to hurt you. I blamed you for my knee getting fucked up, and I wanted to get back at you in some small way. I was a stupid, self-absorbed teenager wallowing in pointless anger.”

While she would’ve hopefully found her way out of that emotional state on her own eventually, Aashrita’s death – and the guilt and shame she felt over the way she’d treated her friend the afternoon before she killed herself – had shocked her out of it. She’d stopped focusing on herself after that, dedicated herself to helping others. As a PT student in college and as a professional working at Get Moving!, she’d come to have a much better understanding of how people could react emotionally to receiving a chronic injury. Her own experience with such feelings gave her far more empathy for her clients than a lot of other PTs had. But while her guilt had motivated her to make positive changes in her life, it had also caused her to bury the memory of Aashrita’s suicide, and sometimes she didn’t remember Aashrita at all. She remembered now, though, and she wouldn’t allow herself to forget again.

“You say you wanted to get back at me in a small way?” Aashrita’s voice burned with barely restrained anger now. “Well, small actions can have pretty goddamn big consequences!”

Lori said nothing for a moment. She looked into Aashrita’s eyes as the woman’s words sank in.

“You’re what I need to confess to and atone for,” she said. “I mean, what I did to you. You were teetering on the edge, and I thoughtlessly pushed you over. I’m so, so sorry.”

“You can’t confess to me. I already know what you did. But congratulations on your little epiphany anyway. There’s more you need to know, though. A lot more. Think you’re ready?”

Lori answered truthfully. “I’m not sure.”

Aashrita’s smile was cold. “Too bad. You don’t have a choice.”

Aashrita’s brow furrowed in concentration, and her facial muscles tensed. Lori heard a wet tearing sound, and Aashrita let out a cry of pain. The lower end of her intestine came slithering out from her body cavity, disturbing the flies gathered there. The intestine swayed like a viperous snake, and Lori realized she was looking at Aashrita’s colon. She’d caused it to tear free from her anus, and now it was rising further upward, snaking between their two bodies.

“We’ve covered the past,” Aashrita said. “Now I need to show you the present and the future. I wouldn’t be much use as an augur if I confined myself solely to what was, would I?”

Lori tried to protest, but the colon shot toward her mouth, slid past her teeth, and wiggled its way down her throat. And then it began pumping something thick and sludgy into her. She tried to scream, but all that came out was a muffled moan.

Images began to flash across her consciousness. She saw Shadowkin moving through the streets of Oakmont, destroying anything in their path, including people. There were so many, far more than had broken into her apartment last night, and more than she’d seen at the cemetery. Three times that number, maybe more. They moved so swiftly, killed so many…. They were far stronger now than they’d been when they’d broken into her apartment. They’d fed on her then, taken some of her strength. And had they retreated afterward so that they could digest what they’d taken? She thought so.

The images changed then, and she saw Melinda, Katie, and Justin riding together in Melinda’s white SUV. Melinda drove, her gray braid swishing back and forth behind her head while Katie – who now had tufts of fur on her face, along with cat teeth and cat eyes – scanned the sidewalk for something. Or someone. Justin sat in the back, face expressionless, his shirt open to reveal a chest covered with a mass of misshapen, discolored growths. What the hell had happened to them, and how had they ended up together? But she knew the answer to that, didn’t she?

The Cabal.

The images in her mind changed yet again, and now she saw the inside of Horizon’s Edge Mall, saw people running, mothers with children mostly, saw bodies and blood…. Reeny was on her knees, tears streaming from her eyes, mouth open in a silent scream as she cradled the limp body of Brian. Lori’s nephew had blood on him, a lot of it. Near Reeny and Brian lay the body of a uniformed police officer, gun in hand, the top of her head blown off. There was lots