Read The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) Online
Authors: Willow Rose
The Afterlife series Box Set (Books 1-3) (64 page)
When Jim pulled out the joint I no longer had any resistance left in me to say no. I wanted to get drunk. I wanted to get high. I was sick and tired of being the quiet pretty boy. I wanted another image, I wanted to be different “over-there” and I knew if I got high I would start talking. That was the effect smoking had on me in the past. I was even sometimes funny when I was high. So when it was my turn, I accepted the joint and started inhaling it like a man desperate for nicotine. I kept going until I was so dizzy I could hardly take it. When I passed it on to Mike I had to lie down, so I did. The stars above us were dancing in a spectacular show that seemed to be for my eyes only. It looked like beautiful women circling and dancing to slow music, trying to lure me into their arms. I felt good. I felt relaxed and happy. Everything was going to be great here. I just knew it.
“So are you going to play for us on that thing or what?” Danielle asked. She and Mike were in each other’s arms. I raised my head and looked at them. I felt a smile on my face. I had no idea where it came from. Then I grabbed my guitar and sat with it in my lap. How I loved this instrument that had brought me through so many sleepless nights of thinking about my mother. How I adored the woman that had held it between her soft hands before I did.
“Don’t be sad, Chris,” Heather said, stroking my hand gently.
I looked into her spectacular green eyes in the light from the flashlight. Her cheeks were blushing from the wine. Then I leaned over and kissed her cheek carefully. She was startled, I could tell, but she didn’t dislike it. Then she laughed and so did I. We laughed the laughter of a high person or a mad man—the kind of laughter that doesn’t stop and has no cause or trigger other than maybe a funny word or a look from someone.
“I don’t even think he knows how to play that thing,” Jim muttered and caused us to laugh even harder. Mike and Danielle sensed nothing since they were all tangled in each other’s kisses and had only eyes for one another.
Once the laughter had worn off I finally managed to start playing. Tears were still rolling down my cheeks as my fingers danced on the strings. Notes floated out of my mouth like water from a fountain and my music temporarily drowned the many sounds of the surrounding forest and swamp. Regina and Heather looked at me with their heads slightly tilted, smiles on their faces while Jim had turned his back on me. He obviously hadn’t expected me to actually be able to play. I sang one of my own songs and received a huge applause from the girls once I was done. Even Mike and Danielle had stopped to listen to me sing and applauded me afterwards. My music did that to people, I have been told on several occasions. It touched their hearts.
The only one whose heart seemed unwinnable was Jim. As the rest of them encouraged me to keep playing another song, Jim got up and started walking towards the river with his beer in his hand.
“Come on Chris, just one more,” Heather said.
I shook my head and put the guitar down. I saw Jim empty his bottle and throw it in the water.
“What’s the deal with you two?” I asked Heather.
“We dated for awhile, but it was nothing. Really.”
“That doesn’t look like nothing to me,” I said and looked in Jim’s direction. “I don’t want to come in between something here.”
She smiled and stroked my hand again. Then she leaned over and kissed my cheek as gently as I had hers. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “He is not important.”
I looked into her eyes and felt indecisive. Heather was beautiful and I was certainly attracted to her. But she was also the daughter of the people with whom I lived, who had taken me in and were taking care of me. If I broke her heart I would ruin everything. If I let this go any further I knew I would be in over my head. On the other hand I was certain that she would soon grow tired of me. Right now I was the new and interesting guy, the sensitive European Pretty Boy as she called me. But that wouldn’t last long. I figured she would grow tired of me very quickly once she realized that I was a pretty normal guy and even boring at times. I knew her type well. Heather was the kind of girl that owned things and threw them away once she was tired of playing with them. I was nothing but a new toy.
Heather grabbed my hand and held on to it as Jim came back with a defeated look on his face. Then he sat down next to Regina while I let the joint and alcohol that was rushing in my veins like a river, take over my decision making. I leaned over and grabbed her neck and pulled her closer. I put my lips on Heather’s feeling her soft breast press against my arm. She didn’t turn away. Her lips were so incredibly tender and I felt a passion spark in me.
We kissed like we didn’t have a care in the world.
C
HAPTER 5
S
UDDENLY
I
FELT
H
EATHER’S
hand on my chest gently pushing me away. She got up on her feet and pulled my hand to have me follow her. She led me towards the river.
“It’s a full moon tonight,” she whispered and pointed at the moon that was now right above the river. The bright light was reflected in the water and lit up Heather’s face as we went closer to the river bank. She started undressing herself.
“Come on,” she said as she ran towards the dark water. “Let’s be naked like the Europeans and get in!”
I removed my clothes and followed her into the cold water that sprang from the center of the earth in a spring somewhere further north and therefore had the same temperature all year around. “Are there any animals in this water?” I asked as she carefully took me by the hand and led me in.
“There might be manatees,” she said with a shrug.
“What about alligators?" I asked and turned as I thought I heard something move behind me in the water. “Someone told me that there are alligators in all waterholes in Florida.”
She laughed. “There might be, but we rarely see them. Besides. It just makes it that more exciting, right?”
She pulled my hand and drew me close to her. Our bodies felt warm against each other, her skin was soft, and touching it made me forget about animals in the water and the sounds of nature. I even forgot about my concerns as to hurting her and disappointing her parents. All I could think about was her and me, here right now in this water that was caressing our bodies. I kissed her again and held her naked body close to mine while allowing the passion to rise in me.
Suddenly she pulled away from me. “Stop,” she whispered urgently.
I looked at her and saw that the expression on her face had suddenly changed. “What’s wrong?” I asked sensing that my voice was shaking slightly. If it was out of fear or caused by the arousal I didn’t know.
“I thought I heard something.”
“Like what?”
She shook her head while her expression cleared. She smiled. “It was probably nothing.”
“Was it like an animal or something?” I asked. I looked back at the shore. We had gone out further than I was comfortable with. We were almost in to our shoulders. “Let’s go back,” I said.
“Kiss me first,” she said with a flirting smile.
It was like she fed on the excitement of the situation, like it aroused her. But it had the opposite effect on me. I wanted to get back to the shore. I wanted out of this dark and murky water. I started walking as she grabbed my hand and pulled me back. “Come on. Just kiss me here in the water while the wild animals are watching, waiting to make us their prey. Amuse me, humor me. This is what I want, and I know you want it, too.”
“I really don’t,” I said.
“Don’t be such a sissy,” she said and still refused to let go of my hand. She was a woman that wasn’t used to people saying no to her. That much was clear. But that was exactly what I was going to do. I pulled my hand out of her grip.
“I am going back now. You do whatever you want,” I said and turned my back at her. See what you’ll do about that you spoiled little upper class girl, I thought to myself as I fought my way through the water that seemed to have gotten much deeper than when we got in. It was probably just an illusion from my jet lag and the remains of the pot in my blood.
“Fine,” I heard Heather say behind me as she also started walking her way towards the shore. “Maybe you are gay after all,” I heard her mumble but didn’t care to comment. Or maybe I didn’t get to it. Before I could even think of a way to reply something grabbed on to my right leg and pulled me under water. The shock left me defenseless before I managed to try and fight whatever was pulling my leg and dragging me deeper under water. My leg was hurting badly as something had pierced the skin several places. I tried to kick it in vain since I lost sense of what was up or down. Water was everywhere while my body was tossed around. Then I felt like something bit me again. This time it was my right arm and I must by then have fallen unconscious.
What I remember next is the feeling of suddenly rising—rising above my body in the water, seeing the faces of my attackers, two large dark alligators preying, feasting on my leg and arm, trying to hold me under water long enough for me to stop breathing. I rose above the water, weightless, and into the air where I was greeted by a light even brighter than the sun but that never hurt my eyes. I remember looking down seeing Heather standing in the water screaming in panic and the others running towards the shore yelling at her and pointing at the uproar in the water. Water was splashing everywhere to all sides while Heather was frozen in a scream. I remember feeling her fear like it was my own, I somehow knew how she felt and it scared me. I wanted to help her, I wanted to touch her and tell her that it was alright, that I was alright, but I couldn’t reach her. Then I saw more people coming to the scene. But these people weren’t running towards the water, they were floating towards me. I remember their faces because I had seen some of them before. One of them was the gentle face of my beloved mother. She held out her arms towards me and approached me with a smile. “My dear Christian,” I heard her whisper in my head, her lips unmoving, as if her thoughts were speaking directly to me. I remembered that voice. I loved that voice. I had longed to hear that voice for so long. I had tried to recall it so many times alone in my room, but as the years passed by it slowly disappeared, was disintegrated and finally deleted from my memory even though I tried so desperately to cling on to it. The sound that I loved the most in the world left me with such a calm feeling of complete peace inside and part of me was ready to go with her to wherever she would take me. If this was dying then I wanted to go.
But another part of me must not have been ready to leave this world, I later came to realize. My time wasn’t up yet. Because what happened next had to be an act from whoever or whatever decides when you’re supposed to go and when you’re not.
As I floated in the air above the scene of my own death along with my beloved mother she suddenly pointed down and made me look. Out of the black water an almost unbelievable and amazing sight appeared. A predator with tawny fur and big black spots formed as rosettes on the back leaped out of the water and jumped directly onto the back of the alligator holding my leg, sinking its huge front teeth into its skull and with one bite killing the animal by crushing its skull. After life was sucked out of the first alligator, the predator went on to the second one and sank its teeth into that as well. The water suddenly went calm. My friends, who were still screaming, watched as the predator grabbed my arm in its mouth and started dragging me towards the shore. All of them backed up as the jaguar placed me on the ground, everyone expecting that the next thing it was going to do was to eat me.
That was when I had to leave my spot above everything else and go back. It started with the tremendous pain in my arm and leg as I slowly oozed back to my body, a body that had been dead for several minutes and now like a lightning strike came back to life. I recall very clearly, even today, the eyes I met when I opened mine as I stared into the face of the jaguar. Those two yellow pearls glowing from the fury face with the big black spots. The only sound I could hear came from its heaving breathing. I started coughing loads of water up from my lungs and gasping for air. My leg and arm were hurting badly and I looked down and saw what I assumed was my own blood coloring the ground. I was certain it was a mistake that I had gone back and that I was now about to die once again, either from bleeding to death or more likely by the teeth of the terrifying predator bending over me.
But then I saw something in the animal’s eyes that I never quite managed to describe afterwards to people who asked me how it was to be so close to being eaten by a savage beast. Something I still have no words for, something gentle that made my heart stop pounding so incredibly hard. It was like I knew those eyes or maybe they knew me, I don’t know, but the way they looked at me, I just knew that it wasn’t going to hurt me. This was not what was going to kill me.
Calmed by that feeling I remember beginning to feel a tremendous weakness in my body and I felt myself drifting. That was when I again lost consciousness. I was hoping, maybe even expecting, to see or hear my mother once again, but this time there was nothing but complete darkness.
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