Behind Every Lie

Prologue prologue
WHAT HAVE I DONE?

The thought charged at me, stark and unrelenting. Blood was everywhere. Under my fingernails. In my mouth. In my hair. It was streaked across my shirt. On the floor, it blackened and congealed, filling the air with its metallic breath. The sickly sweet scent clung to the back of my throat.

My mother was slumped on the floor in the living room, mouth gaping, brown eyes staring at nothing. A dark pool of blood seeped from a gaping wound at the base of her neck. The urgent beat of her pulse had faded to an unrelenting nothingness.

Both my hands were clamped around her throat. An emotion thudded so viciously in my chest it was painful, like searing.

“Mom!” I tried to scream.

But only a choked sob came out.

Hail clattered against the windowpanes. The wind thrashed against the house. The living room lights flickered and darkened. Fear, salty on my tongue, shot through me like an electric pulse.

Suddenly I was outside, the night sky pressing on my skin.

The burning scent of ozone scorched the fine hairs of my nostrils, mingling with the pungent scent of wet earth. Black and purple clouds roiled in the night sky. Thunder rumbled ominously. The air crackled with electricity, static lifting the fine hairs along my bare arms. Rain skidded into my scalp, licking at my face.

Tears mingled with the rain on my cheeks as I ran. I was crying so hard I could barely breathe. I skirted the perimeter of the elementary school and pounded toward the park, passing cars parked neatly along the curb. In the distance, a metal statue, the Seattle skyline just beyond.

There was a massive boom, an explosion as I drew level with the statue. Then only light was all around me, inside me, crashing against my retinas, hissing along my nerves, an explosion inside my organs.

I fell to the ground spasming, crippled with pain. Fire engulfed me from the inside, every nerve ending flayed open. I was no longer in control of my brain or body. They had cracked into a million pieces.

And then there was nothing.

Blackness swallowed me whole.