FINALLY OCTOBER!

Good evening everyone!

As most of you know, I love October. I love the Fall, the changing leaves, and the slight chill in the air. The best parts? Pumpkin spice lattes and Halloween! I have a lot going on this month. One of those things being a Frights Blog Hop with the amazing Clarissa Johal! As a part of this and a way to spread the word I will be sharing a snippet of my latest release "Pain-Killer: A Miss Hyde Novella Volume 2" to get your horrifying juices flowing. Below this I will be including a banner with a link where you can tune into the hop as well as a list of the participating authors, but first things first!

Cover art designed by Loraine Van Tonder

Images of blood and shining metal flashed before my closed eyes, causing my heart to race with fear and anticipation. Hot blood spurted as flesh was ripped, cut, and torn open. I was dreaming. I had to be dreaming. There was no way this could be real. Right?

I came into consciousness slowly at first as the pictures flashed behind my eyelids, and then I was brought back with a rush and everything was blurry as I opened my eyes.  I was already standing and I was somewhere I had never been before, and once my eyes spotted the bed I knew I was in a bedroom. But whose? The ceilings were high with exposed wooden beams running across in a parallel fashion. I felt plush, wet, and sticky carpet underneath my feet and the walls in the room I was in were mossy green with a brown colored carpet lining the floor.

There was something wet and warm in my hand and a tacky feeling spreading from my hand all the way down my body. I could even feel it dribbling down my chin from my lips. I looked towards my outstretched hand and saw something that shocked me to my core. There was a fresh, still beating heart clutched in my hand with chunks missing and bite marks all over it. That was when it hit me. What the liquid running down my chin was.

“Oh my God…” I cried as the heart beat it my hand one final time, stilling as the nerve impulses finally died away.

I dropped it to the floor and began to back away from it, my feet sliding through the wet carpet; almost causing me to fall down into what I was beginning to see was blood. It was still hot between my toes, but I didn’t see a body. My mind was still fuzzy and bits and pieces were beginning to come back. I met a guy. What was his name? I struggled with the name as I stood in a pool of crimson life, trying to ignore the sensation of it cooling and congealing on my skin. I wasn’t even sure how long I had been there and all I did know was that this was Hyde’s doing. But why had she done it? There had to be a good reason. And where was the body? Then the name and an image of his face hit me. Kyle. The man with a broad chest and hazel eyes framed by gorgeous lashes that any woman would kill for. Then the cosmopolitan I drank came to mind quickly followed by a bitter taste on my tongue that I realized wasn’t the lime juice in it at all.

“Fuck. That’s why you did it, isn’t it?” I asked Hyde. I knew I wouldn’t get the kind of answer I expected. She wasn’t another person standing in the room. She was inside of me and was deathly quiet. I wasn’t certain what to make of that. From what I could tell, Kyle’s apartment had the same layout as far as the bedroom and master bath went, simple and accessible. The double doors stood wide open and there was blood trailing from where I stood and into that room.

I began to follow the trail, slipping as I moved through the pool of blood. Somehow I managed to catch myself with a firm hand on the ground, avoiding a nasty swim in it. I was already covered in the stuff, but there was no reason to make it worse. My feet slapped the tile as I made my way into the bathroom, searching out for the body of the man who I had killed and whose heart I had been munching on. The thought of it made my stomach turn. Following the trail my eyes made their way to the shower where it led. Kyle’s body was beyond the clear glass doors, naked and cover in blood with his rib cage cracked open with his heart missing. Like I didn’t t know that already. A bloody kitchen knife lay on the shower floor, glinting at me in the overhead lights. Underneath the blood, I could see stab wounds in his gut. There were enough of them to where I wasn’t sure if it was the stabbing or the ripping open of his chest that had actually killed him. It didn’t change the fact that I, Hyde, we, had taken his life.

My stomach rolled and nausea crept up my throat, burning its way into my mouth. I spun and ran to the toilet, surprised that I even made it there. As I retched the acid burned my throat and left a sour taste in my mouth. I had always seen her inflict the damage, but as her way of protecting what she perceived to be my fragile mind, she always blocked out the aftermath of her work. I was guessing this time she didn’t care and wanted me to see what the result would be if I held her back. Well, her point made it through loud and clear. Reaching up with one hand I flushed the toilet. I did not plan on leaving any DNA behind in the toilet. The heart on the bedroom floor would have to be contented with. I didn’t even know what I would do with that yet, but fingerprints were the first thing I needed to handle.

Hyde had never left me to clean up the mess before. I sat in front of the toilet as I tried to think up a plan of action. There was no way I wanted this to be traced back to me. What was I going to do? A thought waltzed into my frazzled brain then. There was only one person I could ask for the answers. I stood and stumbled to the mirror, making sure not to touch anything else and leave any more evidence behind. I guess the best thing about being what Hyde is could be the fact that she couldn’t be incriminated in any crime, big or small. I just happened to be the one she took for a wild ride every once and a while. The mirror was gigantic and was a series of three mirrors side by side with the outer two turning in at an angle. I could see three of me and that was very disturbing with the trail of blood on the floor behind me.

Looking deep into the eyes of my own reflection I let the words come out. “What do I do?” When nothing happened anger filled me and gave way to rage, pure and bitter like acid that was eating its way through my veins.  “You got me into this mess. What do I do?”  I yelled into the mirror, pointing a finger at my own reflection as it pointed back at me as if accusing me too. As I watched my eyes flashed from their natural amber brown to a bright green the color of fresh cut grass on a spring day. I blinked and my eyes were their natural color again like the change hadn’t occurred at all. Had I truly seen it? I shook my head and decided that I had and that Hyde was just playing games with me. Maybe she wanted to see what I’d do or would she finally took over if I was going in the wrong direction. After all, she could no longer kill her way through the club scene if I was locked away in prison awaiting the death penalty.

I took a few steps away from the mirror, not taking my eyes off of it and waiting for the transformation to take place again. Nothing. “God dammit!” I hissed. I couldn’t keep the hurt and the fury out of my voice. “Help me!”

2015 October Frights Blog Hop

October 1-10th

1.            Clarissa Johal, Author of Paranormal & Gothic Horror     

2.            Duncan Ralston, Author of Gristle & Bone           

3.            Blaze McRob     

4.            Kerry Alan Denney aka The Reality Bender          

5.            Thomas S. Flowers, Author of Reinheit                 

6.            A. F. Stewart     

7.            Kindra Sowder                 

8.            Cinsearae S.      

9.            Randy Speeg     

10.          Miracle Austin 

11.          Brandy Jeffus Corona    

12.          MYTHICAL BOOKS (INT)               

13.          Clay and Susan Griffith                 

14.          A Diamond In The Dark                 

15.          Precious Monsters         

16.          Nickronomicon                

17.          C.W. LaSart        

18.          The Cerebral Writer       

19.          Barbara Custer                 

20.          Katie M John     

21.          Lexa Cain            

22.          Mary Rajotte    

23.          Belinda Frisch (Mystery, Thriller, Horror Author)               

24.          S.C. Hayden       

25.          Ash Krafton       

26.          E.J. Stevens @ From the Shadows           

27.          J.H. Moncrieff - Things That Go Bump In The Night          

28.          C. Lee Spencer - Love/Kroft       

29.          Nicola C. Matthews: Paranormal Fantasy Author              

30.          Elizabeth Kelly 

31.          KM Randall        

32.          Anne Michaud                 

33.          Steve Vernon   

34.          Brick Marlin       

35.          Debbie Christiana           

36.          Angela Yuriko Smith       

37.          Cathrina Constantine    

38.          Kerry Adrienne                

39.          E. Chris Garrison              

40.          Scott Scherr (Don't Feed The Dark)         

41.          Crymsyn Hart    

42.          Zrinka Jelic         

43.          B.K. Brain            

44.          greydogtales     

45.          Chris Verstraete - GirlZombieAuthors    

46.          Juli D. Revezzo~Paranormal author