Vespers: A Never Prayer Story, Episode 6

The tangle of souls is tumbling after me, faster now. It’s obsessing on me, like I’m obsessing on Eladio and whatever demon tricked me into coming to Junky Pete’s duplex in the first place.
From room to room to room the chase is relentless.
Starcat is my best option out of the nightmare place. If I can get her to choose, willingly, to stay in the duplex, such a selfless sacrifice will allow me to leave. Then I can fly to Eladio and make sure he stays far away from Fiona’s apartment. Best case scenario, I get him on the plane to St. Louis. Worst case? He dies at the hands of Kendrick, the drug dealer and knife aficionado.
Starcat is my only hope. But I ruined my chances with her. Why did she stay? What piece of selfish desire pins her to this world? That’s what I need to figure out.I fly back to her corpse in the spare room, which is mostly boxes and a stained mattress on a debris-strewn floor. An energy drink lies on its side in a puddle of sticky muck. The snowstorm glows sullenly in the curtain-less window. The pane is smeared with grime, adding to the gloom.
Though I’m being chased, I pause to focus. I study the dead girl’s pale face, the thick make-up around her eyes, the smear of lipstick. She was thin to begin with, but the drugs ate her into sticks. Rings loop around every finger; the black polish is mostly chipped away from her long fingernails. Again, I notice the hospital band on her wrist, so out of place next to the bangles and bracelets. The tag is from an inpatient drug treatment center. She tried to get help. But something went wrong. That hope to get clean gave me hope. She had been fighting her addiction.
She shouldn’t have been addicted in the first place. She should’ve been a carefree girl, but she wasn’t.

Read the entire exciting installment in the February 2019 issue of InD'Tale magazine.

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