She Lies Twisted
When you pass out and come to, there's this feeling of loss. Like time has passed you by and you've somehow been cheated out of a part of your life. When I found my sister, Jessica, dead, I passed out and when I woke up, her body was gone. The blood was gone. She was gone. There was this piece missing from my mental jigsaw puzzle. A family portrait with a missing head. When I woke up on the beach that day, it was nothing like that. It wasn't like I had missed a part of my life. It was as if it had never been.
I sat up, salty and wet, coated in a fine layer of sand and pebbles and bits of dried kelp and tried to remember how I had gotten there. The ashes, the cliff, falling like Alice down the rabbit hole. I rubbed my temples in tight circles. Blood, blood, blood. Every significant moment in my life was covered in it, drenched, soaked, consumed by it. The sea still held its quiet menace, the air still hung in gray sheets, but something was different and it wasn't the scenery.
“
What is wrong with me?”
As soon as the words left my throat, I could feel it. There was something different in my voice, my words, the way my tongue crept across my lips.
Table of Contents
- Excerpt
- Table of Contents
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- Enjoyed This?
- More Books By
- About the Author
C.M. Stunich
Sarian Royal
She Lies Twisted
Copyright © C.M. Stunich
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information address Sarian Royal Indie Publishing, 1863 Pioneer Pkwy. E Ste. 203, Springfield, OR 97477-3907.
www.sarianroyal.com
ISBN-10: 1938623037
(Kindle)
ISBN-13: 978-1-938623-03-5
(Kindle)
Cover art and design © Amanda Carroll and Sarian Royal
Optimus Princeps font ©
Manfred Klein
Stock images © Shutterstock.com
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, businesses, or locales is coincidental and is not intended by the author.
to the real Goth girls, who don't go for the popular boys at school but for dead ones on the beach with stitches in their faces
T
he day that my best friend killed himself, I was tucked into a chair in the kitchen trying to finish a book I'd started over a year ago. It wasn't like I'd meant to ignore it for so long; it had somehow gotten wedged between my headboard and the wall. As soon as I'd moved the bed out, in a desperate search for my other shoe, I had seen it and been struck with the urge to finish it. I glanced at the clock. I had less than twenty minutes to get to school. I focused my gaze back on my reading. School could wait. The printed words had my attention, and the ones scribbled in the margins had my soul. My brother, Abe, had penned things like, “The world is full of possibilities!” and “Love is the oil to the engine of the world.” I wished I believed those things. If he weren't already dead, I would've asked him about them.
I finished the book with ten minutes to go and snapped it shut, savoring the satisfaction that only comes with finishing a task you've set for yourself. My phone chirped at me. I grabbed it on the first ring.
“
Are you picking me up?” I asked.
“
Can't,” Boyd replied, voice muffled by the wind against the receiver. “The Orangutan took my truck.” I rolled my eyes and tried to send some negative psychic energy at Boyd's dad. Not that I believed in that either but it couldn't hurt to try.
“
Fine,” I said, grabbing my bag and heading for the front door. I paused in the hallway and went back to retrieve the book. Maybe it would serve as a good luck charm of sorts. I hadn't had a good first day since the sixth grade.
The walk to school was short enough that I didn't have to hurry. As soon as I turned out of the front yard, I could see the old brick building standing guard over the neighboring cemetery. I dug around in my sweater pocket for a cigarette and wished that Boyd had been able to pick me up. The old ladies that ruled my neighborhood were just starting their daily routines. They stood in their yards with pink gardening gloves and gave me once-overs that said, “I already know what I want to think about you and it isn't going to be good.” I ignored them and started across the street.
In the middle of the road was a dead body.
It wasn't unusual, really. I attracted death like honey attracted flies. I wasn't happy about it, but it was fact. I paused on the curb and watched the cars run past, waiting for an opportunity. When the traffic died down, I stepped out into the road and knelt down. The crow couldn't have been dead more than fifteen minutes.
Its body will still be warm.
I wrinkled my nose. It wasn't ideal, but I needed a new specimen. Taxidermy wasn't an easy hobby. I couldn't exactly run down to the craft store and pick up extra Popsicle sticks. No, my craft was death. Well, halting it anyway, putting a pause on a sequence as old as time. I sighed and dropped my backpack to the pavement. Cars kicked up dirt and gravel, the wind from their passing crinkling the plastic bag and snapping it against my skin like a glove.
I examined the bird for a moment before wrapping it up and stuffing it into the front pocket of my bag next to my brother's book. I was going to have be careful to keep it hidden. Having a dead bird fall out of my bag on the first day of school was probably a pretty bad idea. I was already known as, “That Fucked Up Bitch With the Dead Parents.” I didn't really need to add more fuel to the fire. It was already stoked and raging. That much was obvious as soon as I walked in the front doors.
Necrophiliac was scrawled across my locker in red lipstick.
I stuck the end of my sweatshirt sleeve into my mouth and sucked on it. I ignored the stares and the giggles and rubbed at the big, looping letters with little hearts dotting the i's.
“
They hit you already, huh?” asked Boyd as he shuffled up behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and smiled at my best friend.
“
The necrophobes are out in force today,” I told him as I stuffed my textbooks into the dirty locker next to a fossilized sandwich and a stack of Tarot cards left over from last year. The card for death was staring at me in reverse. It wasn't an omen or anything. I had put it there because I liked looking at it.
“
It's the attack of the living.” Boyd paused and smoothed his hand down his curly, red beard. “So much more evil than the dead.”
