Twelve of Roses

This new Rose was a fraud.

This town was her cowardly way of running from what she did and who she really was.

We would be an incredible team once she paid her dues.

But she had to suffer first. I had to make her understand that her actions had consequences.

Watching my first chosen victim rise from her booth and walk towards me, I smiled, knowing I was that much closer to getting what I came here for.

Chapter Seven

Life had a very funny way of sweeping the rug out from underneath me. All my problems began because of Vicky goddamn Burrows.

She was a consistently bullheaded girl who just wouldn’t quit. She started coming by every damn day with her friend Julie. My grandfather was over the moon about this new development. He thought they were ‘good’ girls like me.

Super bad judgment on his end. Not that I could blame him. I thought they were regular girls, too. Darcy, on the other hand, had warned me from the start. She warned me the very day I set foot in their house for the last time.

“There’s something off about that family.”

“Off how?”

“I don’t know. I just always had this gut feeling about them. Be careful, okay?”

I chalked it up to her being a little paranoid. There wasn’t much I could do about it once Grandpa accepted Vicky’s invite to a girl’s night in on my behalf.

Things hadn’t been going too badly since I’d arrived. I’d say I was enjoying myself, if it weren’t for Julie. She was the reason I had a cup of Jack Daniels in my hand after promising Grandpa I wouldn’t drink.

There was nothing like some liquid courage to ease tension.

We were in the Burrows’ den, playing some good old-fashioned truth or dare, and things were getting intense. There were four of us all together. Vicky and Julie sat on one side of the coffee table; Molly (a girl from my PE class) sat beside me on the other.

“Truth or dare, Barbie doll?” Julie slurred in my direction with an ugly curl of the lip.

I eyed her, wondering what her problem was. This chick was either a mean drunk, or a fake sober bitch. She’d been trying to rile me up since I’d gotten there.

“Truth,” I shrugged, refusing to let the evil wench dare me into a fucked-up situation. Everyone knows you can’t recant on a dare. If she told me to drink lighter fluid, I would have to do it. Then, I’d spit it in her face and light her ass on fire.

She grinned wickedly and leaned closer to me, the stench of alcohol on her breath blowing right into my face. “Is it true you watched your parents die?”

“What kind of question is that!?” Vicky objected before I could respond, outraged on my behalf.

It was official: Julie was Lilith in the flesh—a demonic blonde with giant tits. I stared at her, waiting for her to take it back, but she never did. What happened to my parents wasn’t a secret in Ponty-Poole.

This was my father’s hometown. News of his passing had spread like wildfire.

Did I watch him and my mother die? Not exactly. My mother managed to wrap her Subaru around a tree, trying to avoid a head-on collision with a drunk driver. Accidents happen all the time. I knew that. But everything that could have gone wrong in this scenario did.

Her shoulder restraint didn’t lock up like it was supposed to, launching her face-first through the windshield.

My father died on impact. His head took a fatal hit, and he just slumped in his seat. I remember crying for him to do something, stuck in the backseat with a jammed seatbelt of all things, not yet realizing he was gone.

Three hours.

That’s how long I sat with their dead bodies until a passerby finally noticed the truck.

As for the drunk driver? He never stopped, never came to check on us, and he didn’t get any help. I later found out he died shortly after that night, so justice was never served.

My mother lived through a full thirty minutes of pure agony, fading in and out of consciousness. I could see her blood dribbling down the windshield and tiny bits of glass embedded in her skin.

I tried to comfort her as best I could. I soothed her with lies, for both her benefit and mine, knowing she wasn’t going to be okay. Tears streamed down my face and my heart crumbled in my chest. I felt those same tears burning behind my eyelids now.

What kind of asshole asks a question like that? It was so hard living without them that I hardly mentioned their names.

Their death seemed to have been the catalyst of some screwed-up curse.

It was another reason I didn’t like getting close to people. Death was always dancing over my shoulder, her skeletal hands constantly reaching for someone I cared about.