Excessica Anthology BOX SET Winter Read Online Free PDF

gestured more aggressively toward the window. On
the loneliest night of the entire year, she was either hallucinating the angel
of death or death had truly come for her. A flood of tears came with a sorrow
so profound she closed her eyes to the shrouded figure again.
    Sensing
movement, she saw him approaching her through the haziness of her tear-covered
lashes. When he finally knelt on the floor so close to her body that she could
feel the heat of him, he brushed away the trail of tears on her cheek with a
human hand. Her breath caught with the life-like, gentle caress that radiated
tiny shocks to her flesh. His hand rubbed over her cheek lovingly, and she
instantaneously missed the touch the moment it was gone.
    Without warning,
he laid his hooded head on her stomach. Her heart beat wildly as a necessary
gasp for air burned her lungs. Her whole body strained wanting the contact of
the image she feared. He wrapped his arms around her pulling her midsection to
him hard enough that she thought momentarily he might hurt her. The physical
ramifications of his touch stopped the mental battle of real verses unreal as
she gave into the sensations he created within her. For so long she had yearned
to be touched like this that it didn’t even matter that death himself might be
the one doing it. Then her hands landed on his shoulders, and his lungs stopped
pushing repeatedly against hers. All she could fell was his trembling. Indecision
haloed with fear left her overwhelmed body quivering in tandem.
    She remained
braced against him. The figure lifted his head. She didn’t stop him when he
moved his cloaked face inches above her breasts before placing his lips upon
hers. He pushed into the kiss swiping his tongue inside her mouth. Instead of
recoiling at the concrete evidence of the humanness of the stranger, her whole
body warmed. When she started to kiss him back, she didn’t even care that his
hood had bunched up over her eyes like a blindfold. He smelled like forest and
water; he felt real and virile. Her hands went around his neck, and she pulled
her body harshly up against his. Then, just as quickly she let go and pushed
him away.
    Behind her on
the TV that man ran through the black and white streets of Bedford Falls as he
did each year yelling his love for the old Savings and Loan. She finally sat up
to confront the kneeling man before her.
    “What do you
want? Who are you? What are you? You appeared from out of nothing, and yet you
feel human under that black shroud. You kissed me!” She shook from stopping
herself from yelling anything further.
    In response he
hung his cloaked head and shook it back and forth slightly.
    “I deserve some
words here!”
    “Pardon me,” he
said in a hoarse voice. “Please forgive my inappropriate behavior. I am the
Spirit of the Christmases that are yet to come. I come not to bring you death. I
came to show you what the future could be if you continue on in the manner to
which you have become accustomed.”
    “Spirit…of
Christmas? Right! You mean like the Dickens thing. I am losing it! So why
didn’t the other two, you know past and present, visit me first? Oh yeah, and
what about that Marley guy? I didn’t even know him.” She paused as the
idiocracy of her own words registered. “What is going on here? What kind of
trick are you trying to pull?” She scooted away from him to the arm of the
couch. Sliding her hand to the end table without moving any other part of her,
she produced a gun from the drawer where she hid it. “You have to be kidding
me. I can’t even be left alone on Christmas Eve?”
    When she readied
the gun, he disappeared again. As she jumped off the couch, the gun hit the
coffee table and was knocked from her hand to the floor. Then, she collapsed to
the floor as well. Somehow the loss of her crazy hallucination devastated her.
    “Even a figment
of my imagination doesn’t want to be with me.”
    “I am sorry
Janie. I have messed things up.” She looked up in