Today’s a good one here in Atlanta. Sunny, 70 degrees, and not a cloud in the sky. I’ve got a whole day to myself and a comfy spot on the front porch. Armed with my laptop, Foster the People on Spotify, some sunglasses, and a venti Starbucks iced black coffee, I’m ready to disappear into Darcy’s world for a few hours while I re-write some scenes for Deadly Perception.
I’ve got admit, it’s really starting to come together better than I could hope for-thanks in large part to an awesome beta reader. She’s been really thrilled with it so far (YAY!), so I can’t wait to share it with you guys once it’s ready
Until then, here’s a quick little snippet:
(Deadly Perception is the story of 25 year-old Darcy Harbinger, an art student with a dark secret-the ability foresee the death of any doomed soul that crosses her path.)
At the end of the hall, I came to a stop in front of a windowless green door with a female stick figure painted across it at eye-level. Goosebumps prickled down my arms. The women’s public restroom—or, as I like to call it, My Personal Hell. Aside from the fact that you could probably catch some kind of disease from the toilet seats (trust me, I have seen and heard some pretty nasty things going on in those stalls), it was nearly impossible to avoid the huge mirrors in a public restroom.
Maybe she’s not even in there, I told myself, but my gut said otherwise. She was a college girl in distress, and there wasn’t a bar or cupcake bakery within four blocks of campus. If she wasn’t drinking or carb-binging away her sadness, I was pretty sure I’d find her hunched in a stall sopping up tears with a wad of cheap toilet paper.
With a ragged breath, I squeezed my eyes shut and cracked the door open a sliver, pausing to listen for any sign of life on the other side. My heart sank when I heard a faint sniffling sound drift out from under one of the stalls. Crap.
“Shawna?” I called softly. “Is that you?” Maybe I could coax her to come out and talk to me in the safety of the hallway.
The sniffling stopped, and a tense silence stretched between us for several long moments. Finally, her voice came through the stall door, muffled but unmistakably angry. “Go away.”
I eased my grip on the door, tempted to do just that. Shawna didn’t want my help, and the public restroom was well beyond my comfort zone. I was having heart palpitations just thinking about the wall-length mirrors in there. I was starting to wish I had just stayed in the studio. I could be leaning back in my chair staring at Grayson’s perfectly styled hair right about now.
“Shawna, please just come out and talk to me. I’m sorry about everything. I didn’t mean to get you kicked out of class. It was all a big misunderst—“
“I said go away!” she barked. I winced as her words bounced off of the tiles and filled the room. She’s not coming out of that stall anytime soon. I’m going to have to go in.
I took a deep breath and flipped the hood of my sweatshirt over my head to block my peripheral vision, and then I pushed my way inside. The heavy door closed behind me with a loud thud, and I jumped. I spotted Shawna’s black flats on the tiled floor underneath the handicapped stall and made a beeline toward her.
“I can’t go away, Shawna,” I said, leaning against the stall door. “Not until you hear me out.” I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. “I-I want to make things right. Maybe I can try to get you back into Grant’s studio-”
The door to the stall flung open without warning, sending me flying backward. I banged the back of my head on the wall and crumpled to a heap on the floor.
A furious Shawna emerged looking like a something from a Stephen King novel. Bile rose to my throat at the sight of her. Her face was stained with a mixture of tears, blood, and running mascara. Thick ropes of dark blood spilled down her front and stained her sweatshirt. She was one prom dress short of a scene from Carrie.
I scrambled backward across the tiles as she moved closer, bearing down on me.
I’ll post more soon, promise!
How are you spending your weekend?
