Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

9. Jud

NINE

JUD

“You will always be my sweet boy. Never let anyone convince you of anything different.” His mommy whispered the words before she swept her lips over the top of his head. Her eyes were so green, like emeralds in the night. She looked at him like it was the truth when she tucked him into his bed.

He was safe.

Safe.

But the world canted as the years passed. The ground disappeared below him and he was gobbled by the abyss.

He fell and tumbled as darkness rained.

Bullets fired.

Blood.

So much blood.

His mom was gone.

“You belong to me.” His father hissed it into his ear as he wept. As the man forced him from his knees and onto his feet. He pressed the gun into his hands. “You or them.”

Shots rang.

Echoed in his ears for eternity.

His soul shattered as the demon raged.

Nothing mattered.

No right or wrong.

But the wrong glared too bright.

He rocked in the corner. Tore at his hair. Begged to be different. Screamed for peace. For forgiveness. For it to go away.

He crawled from the rubble.

Built walls. A solid ground.

Hope.

“Dada.” He held the child. Loved her to the moon.

He wanted to be good. Everything for her.

But the flames leapt, climbing the walls and licking at the ceiling.

Smoke billowed. A heavy darkness that filled the air and choked out hope.

Consuming.

Disorienting.

A black plague that annihilated everything in its path.

Still, he rushed, searched, fumbled through the disorder from one room to the next.

Nothing.

Nothing.

Fear crushed, as suffocating as the smoke that filled his lungs. He pulled his shirt over his face, his eyes wide and unseeing, the world a blur of fire and white-hot pain.

It didn’t matter.

He pressed on.

Pushed.

Forever passed.

A second.

A moment.

Misery the time that ticked on the clock.

A roar rose from the depths of him. “Where are you? Please. Fuck. Can you hear me?”

The whooshing of the flames screamed back.

He was on his knees. Blind as he searched.

Torment wailed.

As loud as the sirens he heard coming in the distance.

Tears blurred, burning against his charred flesh.

No. Please. No.

I jolted to upright on a choked gasp.

A rasp of pain.

Fevered, my eyes darted around to take in my surroundings. My senses were shocked to find I was no longer tumbling through the years that tormented me, but rather my ass was in the comfort of my own fucking bed.

Pale ribbons of pink streamed in through my bedroom window, a slow dance of warmth, while I felt like I was being burned alive.

Sweat soaked my flesh and my sheets while my heart raged with grief.

The scars on my back screamed like they were still red and raw.

Those? I could handle.

It was the ones written on my conscience, on my heart, embedded in my blackened soul that made me feel like I was getting torn apart.

I sucked for air. To draw oxygen into my lungs when they felt like they’d been charred and singed and scorched all over again. Like I was back in that day that had turned to the darkest night.

It was the moment my mind always returned to. Where the dreams lured me into a nightmare that’d been real.

It was when I’d lost my soul. My purpose. My right.

My head dropped forward, and I focused on trying to slow the rampage in my heart, the chaos that raged.

I deserved it, though, so what the hell did I expect?

Yet, still, I tried. Tried to be better. To pay a penance for the sins that could never be made right.

I’d wait—wait for the day when maybe it would be enough.

Lumbering to standing, I started for the shower. I knew I was fucked when in an instant a face infiltrated my mind.

The face of a girl who had spun me into a thousand mangled knots.

The one who’d be downstairs in the office when I got there.

The one I couldn’t seem to scrape from my thoughts.

There was something about this Salem. Something dangerous. Something I should avoid. And I was the masochist who wanted to find out.