The Lynnie Russell Trilogy Read Online Free PDF Page A

tight as I let out a hefty scream of pain,my first scream since I had been cut. When I opened them I could see everything as if it were twelve in the afternoon instead of night. The colors and contrasts were different. Strange shades of purples and greens instead of the normal range of colors. I looked down to my hands to see thick murky greenish black hair growing from my pores, covering what used to be my hands and arms. I shot my eyes upward to find Rusty trying to stop the red haired woman from spewing her chant. The others in the group just stood and watched me convulse and contort into something frightening. My ribs cracked suddenly and I threw my head back and howled in pain. A long, high-pitched sound came from my lungs. As I pushed the noise of pain from my throat the sound changed. I could hear, with my once human ears, that the voice was no longer mine. My screams of pain had transformed into the howls of an animal, a creature. The creature I had become. 
     
     

 
    Found Girl Lost
     
    I was naked when I woke up in the dirt and leaves. The sky was a weird shade of white, the kind that comes a bit before dawn. It was damn cold on the forest floor with nothing on, not even my skivvies. My body hurt to the bones. The beds of my nails, my eyes, damn even my scalp hurt. For a moment I thought I’d drank too much the night before. I sat up and looked around me. I was wrong.
     
    I was sitting only feet from a fire pit that had been left alone too long and was only smoldering coals. On the other side of the pit three hooded women lay bloody and broken in the dirt.  One was laying half inside the circle of river rock around the pit. Her black robe smoked still, like she’d been burning for a while.
     
    I stood up and almost fell with a dizzy spell. I caught myself on a soft velvet cushion by my feet. I shook the dizzy off and looked at what I was leaning on. My throat caught and puke came out where a scream should have been. My velvet cushion was a red haired woman, or what was left of her anyhow. Blood covered her shredded face. Her red hair was sticky with it. I managed not to throw up right on her, but barely.
     
    I scrambled backwards on my hands and feet and backed as far away from the bloody body as I could. My naked butt drug across the gritty dirt and scratched it up good. The tiny cuts on my backside were stinging like little bits of fire on my skin when I ran into something behind me with my open hands. I flipped my body over and ended up face to face with another, more familiar, tattered body. I stopped breathing for a minute. I'm pretty sure my heart stopped beating at the sight. For the first time in fifteen years I realized that I loved Rusty Kemp with my entire soul. A dry-heave came from the pit of my stomach before I could catch my breath. I panicked for the few seconds it took for my lungs to fill up again. In that few seconds tears started pouring down my cheeks, dripping on Rusty's bloody face. My tears ran across his cheeks making long lines of flesh peek through the mask of blood that covered his face. When my breath came back to me a terrible sound of sorrow came from my throat and echoed through the trees. I knew he was gone, he was dead as dead could be, but I begged him to talk to me. I grabbed him around his cheeks and moved his head to look at me while I screamed at him just be alive. When I squeezed him big long lines of open wounds pushed open. His bone peeked through from under all that blood and meat and I screeched and let go. I closed my eyes and pleaded with God to wake me up, begged for it all to be a dream. Hell, a nightmare.
     
    I sat naked in the dirt, twigs, and leaves and sobbed uncontrollably, for a very long time. My eyes closed tight, I refused to look at the bloody pulp that lay just under my streaming tears. After a long while I let my eyes open. I looked down at my friend. My would-be, or at least could be, lover. His chest was clawed up, like an animal had gotten to