29
“Who gave you this doll? How stupid are you to accept something from a stranger?”
“I found her, Mama, I swear! Someone threw her away!”
“You know what we did with trash when I was your age?”
“No! Mama, please!”
“We burned our trash, Deirdre Anne. You best be careful, because if you keep acting like trash, you’ll burn too.”
Smoke—flames.
Ash in the burn barrel.
Charred remains.
Goodbye, dolly.
“You’ll feel cold first,” I tell him. “Embrace it, cherish it, because when the pain comes, it won’t stop no matter how much you beg.”
Julep blinks at me with his good eye, the other black and swollen closed.“I always knew it would be us in the end,” he rasps.
“Shut up,” I snap.
His chuckle is wet with blood. “Tell me there isn’t a part of you that wants to stay.”
“You’re a piece of filth, and I’m about to take out the trash.”
“I never made you do anything. You wanted it, Deirdre. The power and control. You brought them all to their knees and you reveled in it.”
I look away. “I’m done talking.”
“Kill me or not, mi alma, my soul, but I’ll never leave you. We belong to each other.”
“You belong in Hell.”
A bloody smile. “I’ll see you there.”
Smoke—flames.
Ash in sky.
Charred remains.
Goodbye, Julep.
* * *
There’s fire everywhere.Under my skin. In my blood and bones. I’m melting from the inside out, drifting on a flaming sea. Everything I touch is dead or dying. Black and brown-red, the color of old blood.
This is Hell, those brief moments with Gideon a passage through Purgatory. A final glimpse of the life I wanted to deserve but didn’t. Julep was wrong—at my core isn’t a desire for what I think I deserve but what I want to deserve.
Mama always said my dreams were too big for the trailer park in my veins.
“Shhh, I’m here.”
Gideon?
